Today is the day I want to become an online teacher, by teaching online via course marketplaces - Udemy and Skillshare.
Why Do I want to teach?
Over the years, I realized that the times that I enjoy are times where I teach. When I am tutoring students, I enjoyed the tutoring part tremendously. When I am an consultant engineer, I enjoyed sharing engineering concepts with my clients. When I am teaching my kids, I enjoy the teaching portions.
And I decided, since I like to teach, why not make it my career?
And hence, I started my online teaching journey.
Why teach online?
The pandemic has put home- based learning on the front stage. My kids also experienced home- based learning in one form or another, and I see the many advantages of home- based learning.
One, parents like me, can finally understand what the teachers are teaching and how they are teaching. Of course, I can then tailor myself to suit what schools are teaching. This makes them more confident in school since I have prepared them for school.
Also, online learning allows one to fast forward content that we know already, and replay content that we are still unfamiliar. The problem with class- based teaching (I feel) is the hard parts are taught too quickly (faster than one can catch up), and the easy parts are taught too slowly (slower than what a person can learn). It's so time efficient to learn online because of this. Fast- forward things you already know, slow down on things you find difficult, so that ultimately, you get to understand and learn everything.
During the pandemic, I too, bought a number of online courses (particularly on Udemy), and experienced the benefits of online learning first- hand.
Why Teach on Udemy or Skillshare?
If you search online, most people discourage teaching on Udemy or Skillshare. The argument against teaching on Udemy is the discount they offer people. As a consumer, I too bought most of my Udemy courses for less than $20 (due to the discount). What's more, you get between 25% to 97% of the revenue (97% if people buy through your link, and 25- 50% if they buy through Udmey website).
But, I see some benefits of selling on these marketplaces. For one, they already have traffic, so I don't need to do promotional efforts to my website. Next, they are in charge of the administrative part (e.g. login issues, payment, etc.), so I can truly focus on just the course creation.
And also, I have benefitted a lot from people who had put their courses up online. I'm a fan of Angela Yu from App Brewery, and have benefited tremendously from her for just $20. To pay if forward, I should create quality courses on these platforms where people can buy and learn at a highly affordable price.
What do I want to teach online?
I have so many things that I want to teach, and am planning for a long list of courses this year, so stay tuned.
If you look at my homepage, I indicated that I will be teaching Music, Math, Science, Engineering, Happiness, Productivity, Happiness, Coding and more. These are skills that I have picked up over the years, and I believe when I continue in my course creation journey, there will be more topics for me to share, since I gained new skills. So do stay tune.
My Goal for 2021
My goal for 2021 is to create 20 different courses on Udemy and repurpose them to publish on Skillshare. I've not created an online course before, but well, it sounds achievable, with 2 courses per month.
I hope, at the end of the year, I could write that I'm a seasoned course creator in my resume when I feel like it.
