Selecting topics for your course is a quick way to report additional information about it, so that prospective students can locate it faster and easier. By adding topics to your course, you can provide the Udemy team with more specific information than what’s presented via categories and subcategories. This way we can surface it to interested students more effectively in course recommendations, topic pages and badges on the Udemy marketplace, and in emails and promotions from our Marketing team.
- Choosing the right topics for your course
- How to add topics to your new courses
- Topics: commonly asked questions
- Do I have to choose four topics for my course?
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Can I create a topic for my course if one doesn’t already exist?
- Can I add any topic that I want?
- After I’ve selected the course topics, can I change a topic at a later date?
- Can I select topics for private courses?
Choosing the right topics for your course
When deciding on what topics should be chosen for your course, we recommend you consider what’s primarily taught in it. Each individual topic chosen should comprehensively describe your course’s content without being too broad. The most representative topic should be the topic in a list of topics that most effectively and narrowly defines what the subject of the course is. For example, “The Complete Tennis Course” should have “Tennis” selected as a topic, but not “Sports”, since the latter is too broad and not specific enough. Or if the course includes extensive information about financial modelling, and is specifically focused on this topic, then we would recommend selecting “Financial Modelling” as a topic, rather than just “Finance.”
How to add topics to your new courses
If you’re creating a new course, then you will need to select topics for it, before you can submit the course for review. To add up to four topics to your draft course, please follow the steps below:
- Navigate to the course page (steps on how to can be viewed here).
- Click on Course Landing Page on the left-hand side
- Scroll down to the Topics section
- Topic suggestions are sometimes generated based on the course title. If you wish to remove one of the topics that have been suggested, however, you can do so by clicking on the X. You can select a new topic by clicking on Choose a Topic. If the topic you type doesn’t automatically populate, you can still enter it by clicking on propose a new topic below.
- Select the topic that is most representative of your course (see above). If you think your course has multiple, equally representative topics, however, you can check the box below indicating this, and our review team will evaluate if there are, indeed, two equally representative main topics. Please note that this will trigger an additional review and will delay course approval.
- Click Save at the top right or bottom of the page
- Your topic selections will be reviewed, along with the rest of your course content, when you submit the completed course for review. Please note that while our review team always considers the topics suggested by instructors, they may determine to select different topics as they deem fit.
Please Note: After your course is published, the topics that were approved by Udemy’s review team are locked, and cannot be changed by course instructors. If you think that the topics that were approved for your published course are incorrect, or if you think that other topics are a better fit, please contact our support team to submit the new topic proposals. We can’t guarantee that your suggestion will be implemented, but we’re happy to share them with our review team for another look.
Topics: commonly asked questions
Do I have to choose four topics for my course?
No. Instructors can select up to four topics for a course, but you’re not required to select four if you don’t feel four are applicable. Topics that are selected should be relevant to the course subject, and should provide a comprehensive insight into its content. Adding irrelevant or excessive topics will result in your course being misrepresented to students, and could lead to a poor learning experience for them and negative reviews.
Can I create a topic for my course if one doesn’t already exist?
Yes. If after searching for a topic in our list of topics you can’t find one that is appropriate for your course, you may suggest one to us. To do this, enter the topic you would like to propose in the dropdown option.
Once you’ve entered your suggestion, click “Propose new topic” just below the text field. Please note that in order to propose a new topic that doesn't already exist in our system, you will need to change your profile language to English first.
After doing this, you should see your proposed topic appear in the primary topic section:
Some additional guidelines:
- Please only propose a topic that meets the criteria for the topic of your course. The word or phrase that reflects the majority of what you are teaching in your course curriculum.
- Please limit your topic to a short word or phrase rather than a sentence or paragraph.
- Please do not include URLs.
We consider a number of factors before adding topics to our list. Current supply, demand, and mutual exclusivity of the concept, all factor into whether a topic will be approved. Topics that could be approved at a later date are stored and re-evaluated periodically.
Can I add any topic that I want?
As noted above, while you can propose a topic if it’s not currently listed as an option, our Quality Review Team will only approve a topic if it’s applicable to your course.
After I’ve selected the course topics, can I change a topic at a later date?
If you wish to select different topics for your courses in the future, please contact our support team to submit the new topic proposals.
Can I select topics for private courses?
No. Currently, topics are only available for courses that are public (not private). Review instructions on how to adjust the privacy settings of a course.