Reviews are one of the main ways that students can leave public feedback for other students. Instructors can view all reviews using a dashboard in the Instructor tab.
Go to the Instructor tab, navigate to the Instructor Dashboard and then click on Reviews.
Filtering Reviews
You can filter by course, recency, and star rating.
Responding to Reviews
To respond to a review, click the “Respond” button. Type your response in the box. Please note, only visible instructors of a course can respond to reviews. This article will explain how to check whether or not you are a visible instructor.
Once you click “Post Response”, your response will be posted on the course landing page. You can edit or delete a response at any time.
For a course, only one review per student is publicly visible. This means that once a student updates the review, your response will no longer appear on the course landing page.
Although ratings without reviews do not appear on the course landing page, you are able to reach out to your student by clicking "respond" and asking for clarification. The student is notified and is prompted to leave a review. If the student leaves a review, it will appear on the course landing page.
Best Practices for Responding to Reviews
Responding to reviews publicly is a great way of engaging with your students and providing clarifications about your course and what it promises to students.
Here are a few reasons why you may want to respond publicly to a review.
- Thank a student for a review
- Answer specific questions or concerns that students may have about your course
- Engage positively with students, where you can highlight changes that you may have made based on a specific student’s feedback.
If you’d like to have a back-and-forth conversation with the student, or if you feel more comfortable having a private conversation, please use Direct Messages to speak to your students.
When responding to reviews, do keep in mind that these reviews are public, and both prospective and enrolled students will be able to view them.
Do make sure that you’re:
- Respectful towards the student: Creating a course is hard work, and it can be frustrating to see a review that you disagree with. But do remember to make sure that your responses use language that is respectful. If you feel like a student’s review is disrespectful, fake, or dishonest, please flag the review to our Trust & Safety team or write to policy@udemy.com. For detailed guidelines on when the Trust & Safety team will remove a review, please go here.
- Acknowledge the student’s feedback: Just like every piece of positive feedback reinforces the great aspects of your course, every piece of constructive feedback gives you an opportunity to focus on improving your course. When you see reviews that you agree with, it’s good to express your gratitude to students, who will feel like their reviews are valued by you. Similarly, when you see reviews that you disagree with, use it as an opportunity to help address the student’s issues, and find ways to fix the issues so that prospective students don’t have to be concerned.
Leveraging Attribute-Level Feedback From Students
Sometimes students leave a star rating but do not include a written review. While the star rating is helpful for other students, reviews are more helpful when instructors understand the context behind the star rating. Through the attribute-level feedback students can select a reason for their review. Your dashboard will become populated with this feedback as students respond to this prompt.
You can view the attribute-level feedback a specific student leaves for your course, in the reviews section of the instructor dashboard. If a green, plus sign appears beside the feedback, then this indicates that the student believes the course includes that attribute. If a red negative sign appears, however, then the student indicated the course did not include it. If a question mark appears, then the student did not select yes or no.
Recent And All Time Ratings
A course’s ratings can be viewed via the Instructor Dashboard and are posted in two metrics: Recent and All Time.
The Recent rating measures the average rating your course has received in the past 90 days (for the last 10 data points). The All Time rating reflects the average rating your course has received since it was published.
The Recent rating is intended to provide instructors with a more current pulse on how students are enjoying their courses. Since some courses on Udemy have large numbers of reviews from many years ago, if the course has been updated, those reviews may no longer represent an accurate view of the student experience.
If you have additional questions regarding how to view and manage your course reviews, please contact Udemy support.