At Udemy, our mission is to improve lives through learning. And so we are harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to supercharge how our instructors, learners, and organizations can achieve better learning outcomes.
We are dedicated to providing high quality, relevant learning that is driven by the collective talent of our instructors and our ever-evolving learning ecosystem. With recent advances in generative AI, customers can build targeted skills frameworks, systematically identify gaps, and create personalized learning paths to develop technical and leadership skills for employees around the globe.
We are committed to the responsible use of AI and we’re engaged in thoughtful testing and learning in a way that aligns with our commitment to providing a trusted platform. You can expect us to continue innovating our products and services, adding AI where it adds value and drives results. Here’s what that will look like:
- Amplifying human expertise
Our network of 70,000+ instructors, who share their expertise through our platform, create the core of Udemy. Their expert guidance remains at the heart of our content model and now with the support of AI, they can more quickly translate their unique knowledge and instructional styles into effective learning.
This year, we will be launching in-platform tools to assist instructors with the creation of active learning experiences.
We recently released a new, AI-enabled tool to assist instructors of Software Development courses in creating Java, Python, and C++ coding exercises. Udemy’s coding exercise functionality allows learners to directly practice what they’ve learned in a course by writing code directly in the product. With our new tool, instructors provide a description of the task for learners to complete, and AI fills in the details by automatically writing the supporting code needed to implement the coding exercise. What used to take instructors an hour or more to create can now be done in just a few minutes. Check out the recorded demo below to see this feature in action.
This is the first in a number of innovations that we will be launching this year. In the second half, we will bring AI-assisted active learning to topics beyond software development and develop tools to help instructors with creating questions for formative assessments related to the content in their courses. These tools will make it easier for instructors to develop learning experiences that drive effective learning outcomes.
- Personalizing Learning
There are more than 200,000 courses on Udemy, representing over a million hours of content on thousands of topics for every level of learner. If there’s something that you’re interested in learning, there’s a good chance that the relevant material exists somewhere on the Udemy platform. Udemy’s content discovery has traditionally focused on pointing learners toward entire courses, which bundle information across broader sets of knowledge.
Recently, we introduced new AI-based capabilities that recommend specific video lectures within a course to learners based on their occupational goals. We were excited to see that access to bite-sized learning led to increases in engagement among our subscription learners.
In the next few months, we will roll out new smart search capabilities that make it even easier for subscription learners to locate specific learning content. Rather than trying to guess the specific keywords used in the content, learners will be able to describe their learning goals or ask questions in simple language. This new smart search will display relevant courses and specific video lecture results that most directly address what the learner wants to know. By providing direct access to specific pieces of learning content within courses, these new capabilities will enable subscription learners to more effectively access the breadth of information within Udemy’s course catalog.
- Addressing skill gaps
As change accelerates, organizations face the enormous challenge of identifying and closing skills gaps in their workforces. We are helping organizations understand the skill gaps within their workforce, and helping their employees grow effectively and strategically.
Recently, we partnered with the 1EdTech Consortium to bring Open Badges to the Udemy platform. Open Badges, which are used by a number of popular industry certifications, provide a transparent, industry-accepted standard for representing the specific learning objectives that must be met for a learner to demonstrate proficiency in a skill. We’ve already launched the ability for learners in our subscription products to discover certification preparation courses that support their journey to earn these third-party badges. This supports nearly 250 badges, across 160+ certification topics in 25 subject areas.
In the second half of this year, we will launch new capabilities to help learners self-assess their proficiency on skills and find learning content to help close any gaps. These features will point learners to targeted learning content based on the results of assessments that measure preparedness for leading 3rd-party industry certificates based on Open Badges. For example, consider a busy software engineering manager who is preparing for the AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate exam. With a limited amount of time to prepare, she can take a diagnostic assessment and quickly identify that she needs to improve her knowledge of specific skills. Udemy will be able to direct her to the specific video lectures and hands-on exercises that will help her master these skills. Giving managers a view into the badging and certifications within their organizations will also help organizations identify the skills available within their teams and address any gaps.
AI is evolving every month, and the ways we use it to drive learning will evolve too. As more and more people turn to Udemy to learn about artificial intelligence, we’re excited to use it to make learning more efficient, personalized, and powerful than ever before. We are Udemy and we are innovating how the world learns.
