Classes don’t have a fixed format, and the quality and quantity vary. Some courses have a few videos that run about 10 minutes each, while others might have 50 short videos of only one or two minutes each. It all depends on who made them.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of courses: Skillshare Originals, which are those produced by Skillshare, and classes uploaded by individuals. When individuals create a class, they can earn money from it. More on that in a bit.
Some classes have assignments. When that’s the case, you’re invited to share your creations with other people who have taken the class, usually in a comments section. Some teachers stick around to give feedback on student work or answer questions, which enhances the learning experience. However, other teachers clearly haven’t logged onto the site in a long time. Khan Academy lacks this feedback.
Some Skillshare Originals are created with partners, such as Mailchimp (email marketing) and Patreon (crowdfunding). They may have celebrity or semi-celebrity instructors, and the production quality is delightfully high. An Original class almost always contains several videos of about 8 to 10 minutes each, clearly labeled and meant for you to watch in order.
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The best classes from the user-created content are similarly structured: short, sequential, and labeled clearly. Skillshare, the company, says that it audits user-created videos and pulls those that don’t meet its quality standards. Regardless, you can tell which ones are good because they get high ratings from other members, and many students sign up for them.
(Credit: Skillshare/PCMag)
While you, the learner, may never know how much work went into creating a class, the best ones clearly follow a detailed outline but don’t force the instructor to read word-for-word from a script. The best instructors know where the lesson is going and take you there in an authentic way. It’s a far superior structure to the scripted style of most classes on LinkedIn Learning, where all too many instructors have an overly corporate and sometimes robotic stage presence.
