Mastering Udemy

Much of the conventional education system has been dramatically altered. Technology has a strong on this. It empowers ordinary people with ubiquitous information at their fingertips.

Many prestigious Universities from all over the world provide online programs, so that physical attendance in class is no longer needed.

Similarly, private Internet companies arose to offer similar programs and courses, most often at a fraction of the cost.

One of such companies is Udemy, one of the largest online learning platforms - with 5 million students and more than 30,000 course - as of December 2015.

People with no formal credentials can auto-entitle themselves as instructors and teachers. They can create and publish courses at Udemy (and other platforms) on their areas of expertise. Is this bad?!

It would be very bad if the students enrolled in these online courses would not be able to provide feedback - which is visible by anyone who visits the official course page. In this way, the market regulates itself, promoting serious instructors and well created courses, while bad, low quality courses fade away.

Cristi Vlad is an instructor at Udemy. He recently published his first course on this platform. He teaches a combination of techniques (ketosis and intermittent fasting) that helps him maintain a lean physique all year round.

In this book you will learn how, as a total newbie, Cristi created and published his course from scratch in a matter of weeks. His first online course consists of 4 hours of instructional video lectures, accompanies by learning resources (whenever required).

From the inside of this book:

1. That Insomnia Provoking Idea! - How I came to think of doing an online course with no formal credentials
2. How the outline came to life - And my return trip from Mexico
3. Opening and account with Udemy - a 5 minute process (free)
4. Writing the transcript of the course - 22,000 words in 4 days
5. Recording the lectures
6. Getting the course published - And how to avoid the struggles I've been through
7. Promotions and marketing - How I told the world about my new course

This guidebook is definitely for you if you consider creating an online course and you do not know how to do it. The tools that Cristi used to create his first course are free or have a free version. These tools are:

1. Camtasia Studio - for screen recording and video editing
2. Word processor - to create the outline and the manuscript - Ms. Word, OpenOffice, etc.
3. Presentation maker - PowerPoint, OpenOffice, etc.
4. Audacity - for audio editing.

This guidebook is not for you if you do not want to use these tools when creating your online course. You should not read this book if you want to short-circuit the course creation process by saving time and sacrificing quality.

Cristi is much against that. He was able to publish his first course so fast because he had the knowledge that would make the content of the course, and the willingness to sacrifice nights in a row to meet his self-imposed deadlines. In part, this is a story of perseverance.

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