Hey guys, I wanted to share my instructor experience for a while and I now found some time to write. In this small article, I will explain how easy (and hard!) it is to become an instructor and share your course on Udemy.
As many of you know, I just published my first Udemy education about Software Testing.(link) It took me about 3,5 months and roughly 300 hours to create 5 hours of content, which explains different testing concepts and various testing tools. You may think that it’s a lot of time to create a course, but the reason that it took me a bit longer than expected is that in the meantime I learned how to record voice, screens and videos, and how to edit them. The result is a concise 5 hours of high-quality content, which is (lets say) also bug free. :))
At the end, I am super happy with the results because in 1 week 4000+ students from 128 countries enrolled in my Software Testing Masterclass course on the Udemy portal.
Why did I create an online course for Udemy?
By the time I started to create my course on Udemy, I have been a user of Udemy for more than 2 years. There are many cool stuff I’ve learned on Udemy, for example Java, Kotlin, Cucumber, SoapUI and much more. For a while, I was thinking that it must be so hard for someone to create a course, and I was pretty grateful that some people were `brave` and `good` enough to do that, so I can actually benefit from their knowledge. đ
But last December I had this âaha!â moment when I was teaching the basics of software testing for a friend of mine. She told me something like that âI wish I could find this information on Udemy.â Then she explained that she already purchased 2 software testing courses, but neither of them, let’s say, âreached her expectationsâ đ So then it clicked into my mind that I must do my very own testing course on Udemy, which could easily help people (you guys!) to become a software tester.
So first things first, I wanted to check the courses which were already listed on the Udemy portal. I really wouldnât like to say anything bad about the other courses, but I was quite surprised by the result of my research. Low-quality audios, almost no editing, and most importantly poor contents. This is, of course, my opinion, but being a software tester for 10 years I knew I could do something much better. I know from my own experience as a self-taught tester that it could be really challenging to learn from low quality videos. I wanted to create something where I could share my knowledge with people, who want to improve themselves online. This quote or advice from Naval Ravikant, the co-founder of AngelList is one of my favourite referring to online learning:
â-What to study and how to study it are more important than where to study it and for how long.
-The best teachers are on the internet. The best books are on the internet. The best peers are on the internet.
-The tools for learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.â
Online education and Udemy helped me a lot to improve in my testing career, to perform better and to become a Test Automation Engineer.
But, besides my certified software testing profession, I must mention that I have BSc in Astronomy and Space Science, and I used to teach astronomy for children and youth between the age of 4 to 20. So this experience was also a great help for me to create a course in a way that more people could understand how to transfer the theoretical testing knowledge into practice. As you probably experienced that many of the testing courses out there are mostly in theories, and very few contents are really helpful or sometimes they are even confusing when it comes to real life testing. With my course I`ve tried to fill the gap between theory and practise, and I try to show the way how you can improve yourself within the course and with other supporting resources.
How hard to become an instructor on Udemy?
Many of my friends and colleagues asked this question after I published my course. Surprisingly it is quite easy. Anyone can become an instructor on Udemy, you only need to follow a couple of their standards, which is also listed on their website:
- HD video, good audio
- 5 lectures or more
- At least 30 minutes of video content
- A complete course landing page
You can find the all list here :https://support.udemy.com/hc/en-us/articles/229604988-Udemy-Course-Quality-Checklist
Thatâs it! If you have a cool idea and time to record it, you can easily publish it on Udemy and become an Instructor.
How much money I invested to create a this course?
You donât need to invest too much money to create high-quality content. This is the list of items I purchased to create my course:
- Microphone and Pop Filter. I`ve got a Samson USB Mic for 37$ (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001R76D42/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00__o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and a cheap pop filter which was around 7$. (But if you check some videos, you can even make your own pop filter.)
- Chroma key green background. I ordered it from aliexpress for 10$. It helped me to edit the background image and create a quite nice introduction video.
Thatâs all I needed. In total, I spent around 55$. I assume that you have a nice laptop and monitor. For video processing, you will need a strong machine. I would recommend a ~2.3 GHz machine with at least 8gb of ram. (of course, 16gb would be even better)
So you can see it is not too much but a great idea and a lot of dedication to make your own course.
Well, I think it is enough for this time. If you would like to learn software testing and support me, you can use my special discount coupon to purchase my course on Udemy : PROMO CODE(Link)
This was the first part of my Udemy journey. In my next article, I will share the bugs I found on Udemy portal while creating my course. As a software tester, it was an interesting experience to find a lot of MAJOR issues on Udemy. Follow me and you will find it out next time! Thanks for reading!