Course Styles on Udemy

This resource highlights a few examples of real courses from our Udemy platform and explains
which specific course style they are, and why. Read through our description to get a better
understanding for thought-based, solution-based, competence-based, and experience-based
courses.

Thought-based Course Style:

Before you jump right into picking the projects for your course, let’s back up for a quick moment and
focus on the skills your course is teaching. Answer the following questions below.

Instructor Name: +Acumen Courses, Elizabeth Gilbert

Course Name: Acumen Presents: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Creativity Workshop

This course is thought-based because it is focused on getting you to break your own mental
patterns around creativity. The instructor encourages keeping a “Creativity Notebook” which she
invites students to share with the class, to help track their progress and reflect. Gilbert shares
real stories from real individuals who broke through creative problems and stepped into creative
confidence. A strength of this course is that it is focused on one main idea and probes it from
multiple angles.

Instructor Name: User Experience Design Fundamentals

Course Name: Joe Natoli

This course is primarily thought-based because it introduces the field of UX Design and defines all
of the foundational concepts that students need to know to continue learning in the subject area.
The instructor includes opportunities for students to think critically about how UX Design concepts
apply to real problems, but students aren’t asked to get to work actually designing things. This is a
good example of a course that introduces students to a new area of study and offers concrete ideas
for how to continue learning about it after the course. Another strength of this course is that it
introduces many concepts and ideas simply, without becoming overwhelming.

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Solution-Based Course Style:

Instructor Name: Jimmy Naraine

Course Name: Travel Hacking: Cheap, Smart & Fun Travel - Travel Smart

This course is solution-based because each lecture covers a distinct, practical tip for traveling, like
how to cut expenses, how to stay safe, and even how to make friends abroad. It even teaches you
basic phrases and includes a downloadable travel cheat sheet that you can print out and take with
you in your travels. A strength of this course is that it covers such a broad range of topics that
students can definitely find relevant solutions or ideas to put into practice on their next trip.

Instructor Name: BenJamin Wilson

Course Name: Instagram Marketing: A Step-By-Step to 10,000 Real Followers

This course is primarily solution-based because it covers many concrete tactics that all contribute to
growing your Instagram following. There is no one perfect way to grow a following, so the instructor
teaches you tips, tricks, and tools that can be quickly applied or tried later. The instructor also
provides value through extra resources, including a ready-made template for sizing your instagram
profile picture. A strength of this course is that it is well-organized and packed with ideas, which
empowers students to skip around and choose the best methods for them to build an Instagram
marketing plan to reach THEIR goals.

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Competence-based Course Style:

Instructor Name: Phil Ebiner, Sam Shimizu-Jones

Course Name: Photography Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to Photography

This photography masterclass is competence-based because it teaches many basic photography

concepts that build upon each other, and asks students to take photos each step of the way. This
gives students a chance to develop clear skillsets based on many different concepts, such as “taking
photos inside”. This is a course that takes beginners and turns them into photographers, which is
why it’s a competence-based course. A strength of this course is that it features a lot of examples
and includes many small, well-designed mini project assignments to help students get better
through direct action and feedback.

Instructor Name: Stephen Grider

Course Name: ES6 Javascript: The Complete Developer’s Guide

This course is competence-based because it takes you teaches students everything they need to
know about JavaScript ES6 and prompts students to practice what they’ve learned independently
by completing multiple Coding Exercises in each section. This course provides students with a
pathway to understand everything there is to know about this topic, and to practice their new skills
along the way. Each time a new concept is introduced, the instructor gets students to practice it
in several different ways which helps with retention and helps students understand how to code
JavaScript in context with a greater level of complexity. The strength of this course is its equal
balance of lectures spent teaching concepts and and lectures spent getting students to practice.

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Experience-based Course Style:

Instructor Name: Mikey Borup

Course Name: Motion Typography from Scratch

This course is experience-based because the focus of the course is on how to use Adobe After
Effects in a particular way to design text based animations for music videos, film credits, and
advertisements. When a course is using complex tools and programs to accomplish a task, it is great
to use a guide-based format like this instructor does. The course is strong because it introduces
tools and concepts only when they are relevant to the larger goal and because the instructor very
clearly shows how to put design techniques in action. The instrutor also uses a workflow students
can follow along with, which is a halmark of the experience-based course style.

Instructor Name: Dao Bloem

Course Name: Thai Cooking with MamaDao

This course is experience-based because the instructor is focused on clearly showing students how
to cook different Thai recipes in a step-by-step manner. What is great about this course is that
after highlighting the ingredients needed, it then zooms in to show you exactly how thick to slice
things and common mistakes to watch out for, each step of the way. The instructor does a great
job zooming in and annotating each step with text overlays. She also includes a downloadable
ingredients list for each recipe, so you can take that along when you shop for the groceries.

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