udemy courses

[PatronWizard11]

Has anyone had experience with these? I saw they are having a blanket $11.99 sale on their courses for St. Patrick day and was thinking about picking up
excel from beginner to advanced and possibly Japanese Language level 1 (there are like 5 or 6 total levels).

The excel normally runs $149 and Japaneses is normally $89.99
*I am pretty sure they always goes on sale so I am not looking at the retail price but at $11.99 I cannot see them being a waste of money. I just wanted your opinion on them...thanks

[Scortius]

I'm not a huge fan of Udemy as they pretty much let anyone set up a class. Of the major ones, I recommend Udacity as they have a much more rigorous set of classes taught by expert instructors. Coursera would be second. That said, those are more geared towards STEM topics and might be lacking on Excel and will almost certainly not have foreign language.

Honestly, I wouldn't pay money for any of the classes directly. Especially for Excel training, I'm sure you could find more than whatever you needed directly on Youtube. On the other hand, $12 isn't a huge investment so it may be worth a trial (although you'd probably have better success just signing up for a live class at your local CC).

[CatamaranSailor]

I've purchased 6 or so course on Udemy. 3 were outstanding, 2 were "meh" and one was so bad I only finished it for comedy's sake. They certainly vary in quality, however you can find some really good content and they run sales all the time. I wouldn't hesitate to purchase a course if it was something I was interested in (but again, I've never paid full price). YMMV. 

[Trying2bFrugal]

Has anyone had experience with these? I saw they are having a blanket $11.99 sale on their courses for St. Patrick day and was thinking about picking up
excel from beginner to advanced and possibly Japanese Language level 1 (there are like 5 or 6 total levels).

The excel normally runs $149 and Japaneses is normally $89.99
*I am pretty sure they always goes on sale so I am not looking at the retail price but at $11.99 I cannot see them being a waste of money. I just wanted your opinion on them...thanks

Irrespective of what Udemy claim 'discounts', you should be able to find for reasonably less (around $5-$15). Check some cashback sites (ebates, befrugal, swagbucks) if you are planning to buy multiple.

Is it best site? - No, in fact you cannot say any single site as excellent.
Can you find tutorials in youtube?- yes, but supporting these guys are good

For Japanese, you need someone to interact with. Listening to videos wont do much. (I did basic Japanese through traditional way of a teacher/sensai with hard books).
For Excel, you need to practice by taking some small works. (13+ years here).

[Rosy]

I'm not a huge fan of Udemy as they pretty much let anyone set up a class. Of the major ones, I recommend Udacity as they have a much more rigorous set of classes taught by expert instructors. Coursera would be second. That said, those are more geared towards STEM topics and might be lacking on Excel and will almost certainly not have foreign language.

Honestly, I wouldn't pay money for any of the classes directly. Especially for Excel training, I'm sure you could find more than whatever you needed directly on Youtube. On the other hand, $12 isn't a huge investment so it may be worth a trial (although you'd probably have better success just signing up for a live class at your local CC).

Thanks for the extra sources.

OP - I picked three different Excel courses from Udemy when they were $10 and it helped to see the same material presented in different ways. I tried to find good Youtube info for Excel, but it was a total waste of time.

I am picking up Babble (product) for language (French), they are running a free trial at present so I'll see if their teaching style works for me.

[Tynianee]

I am an active Udemy user for a long time and what I have noticed is that they're ALWAYS having some kind of promotions (e.g. courses for $9.99/$10.99/$14.99), so please do not ever purchase the course at full price. However, individual instructors can decide if they want that these massive promotions would be applied to their courses or no and they can set their own prices for their courses. Therefore, it happened to me that the courses I wanted to purchase were not discounted despite the fact that Udemy was running massive promotion on their site.

In this case, individual instructors can generate their own coupon codes and run promotions individually, so one of the tactics is to contact the instructor and try to get the discount. Another option is to look through some coupon code websites. You should not expect much from them as most of the coupon codes are rarely updated, but these are several ones with which I had good experience:

- groupon.com/coupons/stores/udemy.com
- bitdegree.org/udemy-coupon-code
- udemycoupon.discountsglobal.com

I often use these websites to look for Udemy coupons.

Now, regarding the quality of the courses, I agree that (especially these days) it's really hard to determine a quality course because there are just so many courses uploaded on Udemy. People have noticed that you can earn easy money by selling your courses and started to focus on quantity rather than quality... However, when selecting some Udemy course it's good to look over the reviews. I understand that they can also be 'fake' and not genuine, but it will help to get an overall view. Also, the enrollment number can help to determine whether the course is worth the time or no.

I'm not an expert or anything but there are just some of my notices from using Udemy for about 3+ years now.

[CowboyAndIndian]

I have found open culture to be quite decent.

It is a site which has a list of free courses. I do see a few langauge courses there

http://www.openculture.com/freelanguagelessons

[FamilyGuy]

I am an active Udemy user for a long time and what I have noticed is that they're ALWAYS having some kind of promotions (e.g. courses for $9.99/$10.99/$14.99), so please do not ever purchase the course at full price.

I second that. They always sell courses at discounts around $10 dollars. It's quite helpful if you like a video & structured approach to learning.

[eyesonthehorizon]

I'm sort of disappointed nobody's brought up Duolingo as an option - they're ad-supported (or you can buy a subscription to skip ads), they have GREAT course material for most languages I've tried (although the precise format varies), good mobile app, good desktop experience (especially timed practice, which is as close to real-life spontaneous speech skills as I've ever seen in software.) They're also pretty humanistic in their goals as a company.

I haven't done the Japanese course specifically, but my roommate does; of the three courses I've really spent a good deal of time with, I feel like it's been a huge help keeping my skills up.

[Zola.]

I did a Salesforce Certification exam and a lot of the study was powered through a udemy course. It was a piece of the puzzle, but it landed me a pass in the exam and has got me certified.

For 15 bucks or so, it added a lot of value.