Selecting topics for your course is a quick way to report more 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, so that we can surface it to interested students more effectively.
Please note: the topics option will be rolled out to all instructors in the next couple of months, so not every instructor will have access to the feature initially.
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. 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 is related to “Finance”, and includes extensive information about financial modelling, then we would recommend adding “Financial Modelling” as a topic.
How to Add Topics to Your Existing Courses
Instructors with published courses will be prompted to add topics to their courses, as part of the initial roll-out for the topics feature. If you have access to the new feature, you can add up to four topics to your published courses by following the steps below:
- Click on the notification bar that is posted at the top of the page, and you will be directed to Your Course Topics page editor. You can also access the topics feature by heading to https://www.udemy.com/home/teaching/topics/.
- In preparation for the release, Udemy reviewed your course titles and proactively suggested related topics. If you wish to remove one of the topics that has 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. You can can select up to four topics for the course.
- Select the topic that is most representative of your course. 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 extra review and will delay topic approval.
- Once you have added topics to all of your published courses, click Save
- Your topic selections will be sent to the Quality Review Team for approval
Please note: the notification bar that is posted at the top of page includes the deadline for selecting topic(s) for your published course(s). After this date, if no topics have been chosen, the Udemy team will select the most relevant topic(s) for your course(s).
How to Add Topics to Your New Courses
If you’re creating a new course, then you will need 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:
- Click on the draft course from your Instructor Dashboard
- Click on Course Landing Page on the left hand side
- Scroll down to the Topics section
- Topic selections will have been proactively generated based off the course title. If you wish to remove one of the topics that has 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. 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.
Primary 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 primary topic for my course if it doesn’t already exist as an option?
Yes. You can propose a new topic that doesn’t currently exists as an option. Once you submit your topic selections or your new course for review, the Quality Review Team will approve the selection if it’s applicable to the course.
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 Udemy Support to submit the new topic proposals.
I don’t see the topics option in my course but I would like to add them. What can I do?
Since the topics feature is being rolled out in phases, unfortunately you will not be able to add a topic to your course, until the option is added to your courses. We hope to have the feature available to all instructors soon, and we will notify you when the topic option has been added to your courses.