Supercharging Instructors with GenAI Capabilities

A message from Scott Rogers, Udemy’s Senior Vice President of Instructor & Content Strategy: 

Generative AI (GenAI) is revolutionizing how professionals learn, demonstrate, and validate new skills daily. At Udemy, we’re committed to embracing this transformative new technology in a responsible way. We believe that GenAI can serve as a valuable tool to continually improve and augment the learning experience for our customers, strengthen our partnership with the instructor community, and expand and grow opportunities for Udemy and our employees.

Today, more than 75,000 real-world experts create courses on Udemy that keep pace with industry innovation. We’ve always believed in bringing together a community of people so that knowledge can be shared, and our instructors are at the core of our vibrant and healthy consumer marketplace and Udemy Business offerings. We want our instructors to continue to grow and thrive alongside our business. To do this, we know we have to create an environment of trust and transparency. 

As part of our commitment to transparency and bringing instructors along in real-time as we build even better experiences for learners worldwide, we’re sharing a snapshot of our upcoming instructor GenAI Program, the instructor tools we’ve released and what’s to come, and where you can learn more in the coming weeks: 

Instructors are in the driver’s seat 

While we believe GenAI-enabled features and products have positive potential for both Udemy and instructors, one thing is paramount: instructors have control over whether or not their content is included in Udemy’s GenAI models. Moving forward, Udemy will hold an annual GenAI participation period for instructors. The period allows instructors to evaluate the advantages of participating in our GenAI Program and gives them the option to opt out. Instructors who opt out, including those who currently have access to these GenAI-powered features, will lose access to these tools. Our goal is to create a collaborative AI-powered future that instructors want to be a part of, recognizing the value it can bring to their courses and learners. 

As we roll out these GenAI offerings, we’re committed to ensuring our instructors can benefit from these tools. We’re adding new ways for instructors to share in our success with a mutually beneficial incentive model that fairly recognizes how instructors’ content contributes to our GenAI features. We expect GenAI solutions to increase Udemy’s success and the success of instructors within our GenAI Program. For more information on Udemy’s GenAI participation period and our commitment to instructor success, please visit this FAQ. 

What we’ve done

Udemy has rolled out several AI-enabled features that free up instructors’ time to focus on creating more high-quality, impactful content for their learners. From explaining practice test answers to generating coding exercises, we’ve leveraged GenAI to reduce workload and streamline the course creation process. “This new practice test feature works great, and in most cases, there’s no need for any fine-tuning of the generated text before accepting and saving it. It’s a real time saver,” said Memi Lavi, Udemy Instructor Partner. 

Where we’re going 

In the coming months, we’re rolling out a number of new features that will help learners more easily discover and consume content and help instructors maximize their time. Products like our AI Assistant for learners are designed to enhance the learning experience and provide learners with timely support based on the instructor knowledge captured in the course. It will also help reduce instructor Q&A workload by automating responses and surfacing frequently asked questions. Additional features like AI-powered learning paths for Udemy Business administrators will increase instructor course visibility. Offering these personalized, responsive learning options has the potential to drive increased engagement and revenue for both instructors and Udemy.

It’s critical to bring instructors along in the development process, so Udemy’s Research team has previewed these tools with multiple instructors who offer courses in the Udemy Business catalog and are familiar with AI capabilities. 

After testing these features, the Research team found that these instructors responded positively to the AI Assistant as a tool to better manage Q&A, giving them more time to focus on updating course content and improving course quality. Instructors also reacted positively to GenAI-powered learning paths, recognizing that it will give their content more exposure and help tie course content to solving real business problems. We also had the opportunity to address instructor concerns about privacy and the AI Assistant’s response accuracy. Instructor feedback is invaluable, and it will continue to serve as a critical component of new product testing and quality control. By getting instructor feedback early, we are able to create a better user experience across the Udemy platform. 

Transforming lives, together with instructors 

We’re proud of our vibrant instructor community, their passion for teaching, and the wide array of content they provide to more than 70 million learners worldwide that help us achieve our shared mission of transforming lives through learning. We believe that by approaching GenAI responsibly and collaboratively, we can continue to enhance the learning experience on Udemy, create new opportunities for instructors, and further our vision to create a world where everyone, everywhere has access to the skills they need to unlock their potential — a world where everyone can create possibilities for themselves and for others. 

For more information about our upcoming AI features designed to help instructors, and our comprehensive AI policy timeline, please visit this article and the accompanying FAQ.