tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21674313514097953432023-11-15T13:27:37.257-05:00Teach Game DesignLewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.comBlogger109125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-52237967986179157672021-03-21T11:17:00.004-04:002021-03-25T08:42:33.211-04:00"Good old Udemy" (not) Good old Udemy.I was unable to submit tax paperwork because the submission process failed many times over the course of some weeks.Now that I need a 1098/99 for tax purposes, they haven't sent one, and can I get any help? No. I've written to the instructor team (twice) but cannot get a word from them. Yet the address seems to be good. So my taxes are waiting on Udemy.Now Udemy is changing Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-3898040415117492592019-06-15T20:24:00.002-04:002019-06-15T20:24:56.030-04:00Another way for Udemy to screw things upUdemy now expires all free coupons older than 30 days. This is to prevent "coupon abuse", though they don't say what that actually is.
It's in Udemy's interest that people pay as much as possible for every course they take. Some instructors use free coupons for a class intended to be free, to attract customers who might later pay for a course. Yes, you could make a course free from the Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-50398073862280926532019-04-10T09:26:00.002-04:002019-04-10T09:26:23.657-04:00Udemy introduced "charm pricing" (e.g. $14.99 instead of $15). Odd thing is, I could swear I'd read that consumers don't like it, and tend to be turned off by it, even if it increases sales. Udemy thinks it'll "generate more sales for you by better highlighting your course's value to students!" Doh!? What kind of BS is that?
And if research showed that "charm pricing" was better, why haven't Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-90839618736022796672019-02-26T08:56:00.002-05:002019-02-26T08:56:33.073-05:00Response to quora question about UdemyThis is a response to a question on Quora: How much money did I make in my first year on Udemy?
This question depends so much on when I started, how many classes I had, and other factors that it isn’t worth answering with numbers. My topic is game design, a niche, so I’ve never made the vast sums some instructors have. I will say that I make less now annually, despite having many more Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-41376346827989486002017-08-15T07:52:00.001-04:002017-08-16T09:58:15.020-04:00A messy failure?In early 2014 I was recruited to offer online courses at LFE.Com. Not seeing any advantage over my existing platforms, I declined.
But I still get some of their emails, and a few days ago I received notice that they’re shutting down. This is supposed to be orderly, according to a second email, enabling instructors to choose to allow members to download courses. But whenever I go to LFE.COM I getLewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-40711950422845985342016-06-23T12:46:00.003-04:002016-06-23T12:46:27.461-04:00Udemy problems and Amazon rumorsFollowing the poorly-considered price changes on Udemy at the beginning of April, my Udemy earnings are about a quarter of earnings in the three months before the changes. I believe a big mistake was limiting course prices to $20-50 instead of $10-80 or even $100 (in other words, in line with books prices). I never participated in Udemy's kamikaze marketing, or in affiliate marketing, so limitingLewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-83170711559988856332016-05-25T08:40:00.000-04:002016-05-25T17:35:25.097-04:00Reactions to Completely Free ClassesI've been offering online audiovisual classes for more than two years. Most of my Udemy courses (https://www.udemy.com/user/drlewispulsipher/) cost modest sums, $39 (with coupon) for the most expensive, in line with book prices. (After all, they're oral books, practically speaking.) One offering is free with a coupon, another is absolutely free.
I've found that the hardest critics Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-71554785169878170522016-05-06T16:46:00.003-04:002016-05-06T16:46:40.773-04:00Marketing, or Teaching?Teaching on Udemy can be a trial for an actual professional teacher (or a retired one, in my case).
Fundamentally, Udemy is run by marketers and the marketing mentality, not by teachers. The people in charge see metrics, they see dollars, they see number of users per month, they don’t see education, or even just training.
Though recently there have been turns for the better, such as banning Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-44506637717035600572016-04-14T10:54:00.004-04:002016-04-14T10:54:49.459-04:00Traffic stats for online education and training platforms?I'm currently being recruited by the Coursmos platform. Unlike most recruiters, this one has a track record in the online "micro-learning" (max 3 minutes per segment) industry. I've decided to try to find some traffic figures (from http://www.trafficestimate.com/). Note that these are visits, not unique users.
Coursmos.com has received an estimated 141,900 visits over the last 30 Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-89327894528752863012016-03-25T15:59:00.000-04:002016-03-25T15:59:17.893-04:00Udemy “rushes to the bottom” once againUdemy has finally figured out that their kamikaze marketing, which is to say huge discounts and an affiliate program that leaves instructors with almost nothing at times, has only facilitated a “rush to the bottom” of prices in a manner typical of digital products (products that can be copied infinitely at practically no cost). They appear to blame this discounting on the instructors, but I thinkLewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-69532249799979708372016-03-14T17:30:00.004-04:002016-03-28T21:58:54.490-04:00Yet another learning platform with no advantages to teachersI got a message from ulearning.com urging me to become a founding instructor (with a deadline of March 15, arrived March 11). I checked the website briefly, then wrote:
"Hello Jazmin,
First, I have received many offers like this in the past, and most such companies fall flat on their faces. What makes you different?
Second: "In keeping ULearning’s principles, ULearning will beat Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-44114364259807969552016-01-25T13:37:00.000-05:002016-01-25T13:37:05.114-05:00Contrasting Skillshare with UdemySkillshare's guide to teachers starts with this:
"1. Be a great teacher, not a filmmaker:
Many of our most successful teachers filmed themselves at home with screencasts and webcams in 2015, proving how it’s the quality of your content that makes you a great teacher on Skillshare, not your video skills."
In contrast, on Udemy it's SO much about the video and audio quality, very little about theLewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-16539924117575777332015-12-17T14:58:00.002-05:002015-12-20T10:46:57.950-05:00Hazards of Video EditingHere’s a story about the hazards of video editing.
For about two years I’ve use the same combination of programs to produce the videos for my Udemy classes and for my Game Design channel. For screen tests I capture slides made using PowerPoint (2003 version!) with Cam Studio, a free screen capture program. Unfortunately, Cam Studio is poor on my system in capturing cursor (mouse) movements. Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-68591016715364944182015-12-13T09:32:00.002-05:002015-12-13T09:48:13.154-05:00 Screencast (video): Are you Designing a Game, or Throwing one Together?
This is sufficiently important for those who are teaching game design that I'm posting it here.
Here is the text of the slides. The entire presentation (over 15 minutes), obviously, contains more than this text.
Are you Designing a Game, or Throwing one Together?
Dr. Lewis Pulsipher
Pulsiphergames.com
“Game Design” channel on YouTube
This is Really Important
Yes, there is Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-49873739882031904812015-11-28T09:58:00.000-05:002015-11-28T09:58:32.588-05:00"Get Rich Quick" versus improvement in hobbies and lifeI've realized there's a distinct difference between Udemy and Skillshare classes.
Udemy is littered with "get rich quick" schemes, and courses that appeal to those who think get rich quick is the norm. That is, classes that offer you the "complete solution" to something complex in one class (often, a not very long class). After all, "get rich quick" is a part of a belief that:
• Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-78477020119171452262015-09-01T14:49:00.001-04:002015-09-01T14:50:13.135-04:00Skilfeed announces shutdownMany of you know that there are (were) three subscription-based online learning platforms of note, Lynda, Skillshare, and Skillfeed (a subsidiary of Shutterstock). Several months ago something went seriously wrong at Skillfeed, at which point they said they would concentrate on web design and programming courses and would not take new courses of any other kind. Unfortunately this was poorly Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-892456929731352672015-05-01T14:32:00.000-04:002015-05-04T06:50:50.387-04:00How not to deal with a problemI have been offering courses via Skillfeed (a subsidiary of Shutterstock) for nearly a year. I have 23 courses there, most of them quite short (one video) as seems to be popular on that site.
When I submitted the latest, about freelance game design and writing, I was told
Your course does not quite fit in our catalog at this time.Please contact teach@skillfeed.com with any Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-36846041590580952832014-09-24T14:59:00.003-04:002014-09-24T14:59:29.686-04:00They're everywhere . . .A couple times a month I get invitations to join new online course providers. The latest is eliademy.com in Finland, before that create-elearning.com in Scotland, before that EduPow (NY?). None had any students at the point of asking, and that's a common thread with the new ones - big ideas, perhaps, and sometimes outrageous claims, but no students. So I usually decline to Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-26912834799300366672014-08-27T11:07:00.001-04:002014-08-27T11:07:16.745-04:00Writing a book derived from an online audiovisual courseThe surprisingly large attendance at my talk about “How to Write Clear Rules” at GenCon made me focus on the fact that there is nothing in print about writing game rules, other than the occasional blog post, and a chapter in the “Kobold Guide to Boardgame Design” by Mike Selinker that is primarily an exhortation to use simple, clear language in your rules. (Mike also recapitulated that Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-14107183588698178642014-07-01T14:23:00.001-04:002014-07-01T14:23:50.312-04:00Drastic Changes in Online not-for-credit Education and TrainingOut of the blue, today Udemy drastically changed its compensation to instructors. Formerly, if an instructor recruited a new-to-Udemy student who signed up within two hours of coming to Udemy, the instructor received 97% (3% was for tuition transaction fees (paypal)). But this rarely happened. And if the student had even visited Udemy before, without signing up, then he or she Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-81358918363307814252014-05-24T08:50:00.001-04:002014-05-24T08:50:13.095-04:00Education: Should school homework be abolished?On quora, which is an interesting if not always satisfying site where people ask questions and others propose answers, someone asked is school homework should be abolished. This is my (modified) answer"Educational theorists" are infamous amongst actual teachers, for the bizarre courses of action they advocate - like this one. It's often because they have not actually taught much, and Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-57941521742389160812014-04-29T13:43:00.000-04:002014-04-29T13:43:13.817-04:00Pricing Online CoursesWe start with something related to, but not exactly, online classes. In a recent tweet I said “Why do people pay $4 for a coffee, not for a mobile game? Maybe because no cost to making more of the game, there is to making more coffee.” Some people have proposed that the “natural” cost of an item is equal to the cost of making a copy. I’m not sure I can separate this Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-36495444628086814532014-04-12T09:24:00.001-04:002014-04-12T09:24:09.905-04:00Online Degrees: a Disaster for EducationI’ve not posted in this blog for a long time, though I’ve had many interesting experiences in the past year.I’ve always been opposed to online education for the purpose of awarding a degree, because quite apart from the serious limitations on interaction with students, you don’t know who’s doing the work. I smile at the extraordinary naïveté of people who say that online students do better Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-58900820274495366222012-06-27T08:05:00.003-04:002012-06-27T08:05:56.291-04:00DreamersAn amazing number of teenagers dream of making games for a living, if my informal surveys at local schools and colleges can be expanded to the entire generation.There are all kinds of individual delusions (see http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/2010/09/student-illusions-about-being-game.html ), but I’m talking about the big dream: “I’m going to be famous (and rich) as a video game maker.”Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2167431351409795343.post-14316394425312516642012-05-27T13:53:00.002-04:002012-05-27T13:53:42.271-04:00Book review: Masters of DoomMasters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, by David Kushner, is a history of Id Software, famous for Doom and Quake as well as many other games, and its founders John Carmack and John Romero. This is history written in a very personal form, as though it was a novel, and it is written very well. The author had extensive access to almost all of the Lewis Pulsipherhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11998403221823705918noreply@blogger.com0