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, so that we can surface it to interested students more effectively.
Please note: currently the Primary Topics feature is only available for courses that are public (not private). For instructions on how to adjust the privacy setting of a course, click here.
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 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. Please note: the propose a new topic feature is not currently available for non-English courses, but will be added in the future.
- Select the topic that is most representative of your course. This is the topic you spend the most time covering in your course, from the primary topics that have been selected for the 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.
Please note: the propose a new topic feature is not currently available for non-English courses, but will be added in the future.
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.