Someone Please Create a Xojo Course on Udemy

Udemy is one of the largest and well known online platforms for learning just about anything - from coding to business courses, it’s all there. There could be an opportunity here to build an suite of courses for Xojo - from beginner courses, to the more advanced and obscure topics. I realize that Xojo has a number of videos on YouTube…we discussed this in the final session at XDC, but that’s not the same as having a comprehensive, methodically laid out training course on Udemy.

Look how many courses are on Udemy that relate to Visual Studio - 2,233 at the moment: link text

For Xojo? Just ONE: link text

Bob Keeney has an excellent video training series that you can take advantage of now, and this is the model that would work well on Udemy, Coursera, or almost any other online learning platform. Perhaps Bob can bring his existing training videos over to Udemy. link text

Xojo’s web site is quite attractive and grabs your attention. However, your initial excitement might become diminished after you look for Xojo in the various online learning platforms that are out there. There are of course the YouTube videos that we know about, but some of them are older and there’s not enough energy and excitement in the presentation of those topics.

I am incredibly excited about building solutions in Xojo, especially after attending XDC, but I believe there needs to be a lot more out there in terms of online training resources for people who are initially exposed to Xojo.

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The Xojo entry is named Wordpress und Xojo…

Advertising entry ? :wink:

[quote=434978:@Emile Schwarz]The Xojo entry is named Wordpress und Xojo…

Advertising entry ? ;)[/quote]
I wish that he’d done an English version :slight_smile: .

I agree that Bob’s collection would make a great “Master Course”. Also, just to boost Xojo presence on the Udemy platform, the existing recent Xojo and MBS videos could be brought over as “Free” content. While it’s the same content as on YouTube, Udemy brings a more curated feel to the subject matter.

I’ve been mulling over doing this for the last 9 months or so and hearing the discussion at XDC made me think that perhaps I should take the plunge and do it. It’s a lot of work but if people think there’s demand for it it then I would. I have a lot of experience teaching at university and postgraduates, perhaps that’ll translate to Udemy…

@Garry Pettet - Are you this guy:

https://youtu.be/gYxx7hVAD88?t=2008

or this guy:

https://youtu.be/FjcCjkRArsE?t=1583

:smiley:

Garry - you would absolutely shine in a Udemy course. You have the expertise and personality to make it happen! I’m telling you right now that I would be first in line to pay $199-$299 for a comprehensive Xojo course on Udemy, and I suspect we could promote the hell out of it and get a lot more people to pay as well. The course could be promoted on the Xojo web site as well as various forms forums and social media outlets.

You may have twisted my arm Aaron :slight_smile:

Udemy is a great resource. I have been buying courses there for years. Though… most of the courses in my library, I got for free. Just do a quick search for “free courses” and you’ll find thousands. Most often instructors create free teaser courses to get students interested in their catalog. And there’s plenty of full courses free as well.

Everyone should have a Udemy account. Soon after you sign up, they’ll start sending you discount coupons. 20-40% off. Plus they often have sales, like 10 or $12 for any course. I’ve gotten a lot of full courses this way. Also they make great gifts.

I doubt many Udemy instructors are really getting $199 for any course. I know I’ve bought many $99 courses for $12. Anyway, check out their commision structure. Especially the affiliate discounts you have to agree to, before committing to selling your course(s) through Udemy. Also listen to some youTubers. See what Udemy instructors saying these days. Sure they let you build and sell your course with no upfront fee. But…

At this point, the new kid on the block is thinkific.com. The allow individuals and GROUPS to build and sell courses, just like Udemy. But instead of paying a commission on every sale, you pay for hosting and keep 100% of your income. The best part, especially for building a library of Xojo coursework, is how an administrator can recruit teachers, taking a small commision of their course sales to pay for hosting. Individual instructors can create discount coupons and or choose to pay affiliate commissions and they get to keep 100% of their income, less commission to the administrator.

So… dozens of Xojo instructors can create 100’s of topic specific courses, and each would get paid for their particular courses.

I may be wrong on some of these particulars, but thinkific.com is definitely the next big thing in online courses. Here, check out their list of features: Thinkific Features

I hope so! I understand what Paul is saying but Udemy is still a significant and recognizable player when it comes to online learning. I’m just saying that I would pay $199-$299 for a comprehensive and engaging Xojo course because I’d get so much value out of it and right now there’s nothing really out there except for Bob’s courses and some limited material from Xojo.

Paul - I did not know about Think-O-Rific™ - this seems like another appealing option for Garry.

The good news is that Garry is doing a course that will not only benefit newcomers to the platform, but also help others in the developer community hone their skills!

Garry, I am telling you right now that I will be first in line to buy this course, wherever you choose to host it. And I’ll pay up to $299.95, or even more, depending on how comprehensive the course is! I’m so excited!

I’ve looked at Thinkific in the past. I’ve heard good things about it. I think the issue is that there is far greater traffic to Udemy but that they implement the “pile it high, sell it cheap philosophy” whereas Thinkific is more profit per unit but getting traffic to a course is an issue.

In any case, I’m going to do this. I’ll start sketching out a framework and topics. After all, the content is the most important aspect.

Garry - I can’t wait to see what you come up with! I really believe you can improve people’s lives (including mine) with such a course. You, along with so many others at XDC have inspired me to become a better developer. I believe in Xojo not just because of its merits as a development tool, but more significantly due to the community of developers that has embraced it.

To maximize gains, break the courses into modular topics. Like: Intro - free (History, Why Xojo, IDE, language capabilities, etc; something to tease people to get on board) , Basic - $15 (IDE, language, console apps), Intermediate $20 (brief recap of the previous course as people must know what they miss if skip one of those), framework, Desktop apps, SQLITE, etc), Advanced $20 (Brief recap of previous courses, Database, Web integration, JSON, Services, Reports, etc), iOS $30, WEB $20, Android ($20) in a way people do a “pay as you go” and don’t feel intimidated by the price. Something by these lines. Have a common name for the series like “Garry teaches Xojo - iOS”, “Garry teaches Xojo - Introducing XOJO! (Free)”, etc ; so people can find all the series doing a search for something like “garry teaches xojo”. Good luck.

Rick - excellent suggestions! I still like the idea of a “comprehensive” or complete course as there are some of those on Udemy that are quite popular. I would most definitely pay $299 for a complete course, but I suspect that I’m in the minority here. The most important thing is that Garry is doing this. Whether this is in bite size pieces or one complete course…I’m all for it!

The way I suggested he can start monetizing the work as soon as he finishes the intro to intermediate. That’s enough to publish a start. Then he’ll just add new modules ASAP. Later, he can compile a full pack in one (complete) for a higher price lower than the sum of the parts. Udemy courses don’t sell ok for prices higher than $30. There’s a magic spot where you sell 100 in a week and increasing $1 you will sell 2.

Rick, you are fantastic. Love this idea. Now Garry has to do the real work :slight_smile:

I talked to several people at XDC about creating a Udemy class. It’s a great idea.

The problem is always time to do the videos. I redid a few videos earlier this year and each of them doubled in length because of including more content and more examples. And then there’s the issue of videos going obsolete as I still have some that use Real Studio, the initial Web series has version 1 (which had a completely different way to create/load WebPages), the iOS videos were done at version 1 as well (so it’s missing subsequent additions). Add in API 2.0 (soon) and Web 2.0 (not so soon) and Android (not any time soon) and you can see how depressing it is.

I figured it out one time that for every minute of video there is 10 minutes of off-screen work. I have 65+ hours of video. You do the math. :frowning:

@Bob Keeney is right about the amount of work it takes to make the videos, especially well done ones. And as someone that that watched most of the 65+ hours of videos that Bob has, his quality is great.

As for the recommendation of Udemy/Thinkorific/etc, that is a good idea. I would have a free “intro” course to get people a glimpse on how you will present material in paid courses. I have bought several courses on Udemey/coursa/etc that I had to ditch as I couldn’t follow the instructor. if they would have had the free course so I could see their style, I could have avoided wasting my time/money. it also would had kept the bad taste of those sites away.

I am all for more tutorials/education for Xojo. they easier for people to come to it the more we can convert from other languages to it. My suggestion is when you do something like iOS that it be a series of short videos. the young crowd (teenager->mid twenties) like the youtube format (5-10 minutes). and for some of us, we get slammed for time and shorter videos can be beneficial as we can work it in between tasks.

just my two cents worth

I would also love to see a course on Udemy, Lynda.com or another video tutorial site that goes from beginner to advanced. I tried a couple of times to use the workflow as given on the Xojo website, but am getting stuck at some point because it goes too fast and the examples are too complex for beginners. I did ask many questions on the forum and even though the forums are very helpful, it didn’t help me and I simply could not continue.

I actually started an outline for a course on Udemy. I gave up at about 100 videos. People have no idea how much work is involved. I’d love to do it, but it would be a full time job for a year.

what do you expect to learn in this course. which topics you need?