Skillshare is an online learning community, a teaching and learning program created by professionals for individuals who want to learn real-world skills. When the online learning program was first launched, it only had 15 or so courses available. Today, Skillshare has become a large online learning community with over 19,000 classes offered, more than four million students, and a multitude of teachers in different fields of expertise.
Skillshare’s teachers are professionals who share their expertise in various fields. The available classes or categories include business, design, entrepreneurship, film, photography, technology, writing, and more. Anyone can join and be a member of the learning community, either as a student (and learn skills) or as a teacher (and share your learned skills to individuals who are eager to learn).
Skillshare Operations
Skillshare works somewhat differently from other online learning programs and massive open online courses (MOOC) in the sense that it’s more than just a training platform where you watch lecture video footage for countless hours. The learning program aims to engage students through providing interactive sessions and project-based classes.
The Skillshare mission is to provide quality and affordable online education to those who want to learn real-world skills and to make the learning process engaging and motivational.
Students enrolled in any of the Skillshare classes learn by actually performing, not just by watching a long video of someone performing a lecture. This facilitates learning through hands-on projects, which are then posted to the class’ project gallery. Additionally, Skillshare promotes collaboration by encouraging students to communicate with each other, complete assignments given via video by the teacher, as well as receive or provide feedback back and forth between other students on the class’ discussion board.
The online learning platform offers users the opportunity to consume a wide variety of content, courses, and presentations pertaining to a plethora of subjects. Professionals and learned individuals who want to share their skills as instructors are able to teach by simply creating and publishing a class. The online learning solution ensures teachers have a robust and user-friendly platform to teach real-world skills, while eager students have easy access to a high-quality learning facility.
Skillshare Benefits
Skillshare is a useful learning platform for individuals who have different, personal objectives as far as which skill or subject they wish to learn. As an online learning community, Skillshare provides a variety of classes and courses to those who want to learn new skills they can actually apply in the real world, whether they want to pursue a new career, get a refresher for already-acquired skills, or simply learn a new hobby.
The learning program does not offer one-on-one classes. While some may see this as a disadvantage, the fact that Skillshare focuses on a shared learning experience makes it an advantage to others. The platform enables students to collaborate and share insights and perspectives with each other, hence creating an engaging learning community.
Skillshare allows students to learn new skills through the aid of networking and support. They can give feedback to their online classes as well as receive pointers and advice from fellow students and instructors. The features and tools that come with the online learning platform are designed to promote and nurture creativity.
The online learning community offers a wide range of features beneficial to both students and instructors. Some of these features include:
- Free classes
- Group classes
- High-quality learning materials and courses
- Complete catalog of premium classes
- Referrals
- Building channels
- Networking
- Feedback functionality
- The shared learning experience
- Class creation and publishing tools
- Learning through support
- Offline viewing for premium students
For users who want to share their knowledge and skills, the online platform makes it easy for them to become teachers and instructors. If you want to share your passion, your learned knowledge, and your skills to people around the world who are willing and eager to learn, you simply have to utilize the “create a class” function. Simply provide a class description and then publish it for students to access.
The class creation tool provides a step-by-step guide for would-be teachers, from the creation phase all the way to publishing and promoting the class by creating a channel. Once your class, and your channel, is up and running, Skillshare also provides you with the opportunity to earn money. This is a great way for professionals, entrepreneurs, and creators to earn well-deserved compensation as students enroll in their classes and watch the education videos they share.
Registered teachers and instructors may also earn revenue for every student they refer who opts to subscribe to Skillshare as a premium member. On the other hand, students have unlimited access to a comprehensive catalog of courses and premium classes when they subscribe as a premium member of the learning community. And as a premium member, classes can be viewed offline by way of the Skillshare mobile app. Free classes are available to the entire community as well.
Skillshare offers over 16,000 classes across a plethora of disciplines for teams. You can build your organization with productivity and innovation. The online learning platform allows SMBs to enroll entire teams and departments. It includes usage reporting, which enables you to monitor the progress of each individual team member.
Skillshare for teams also comes with an Admin Mode, which allows users to swap out seats in classes as their roster changes. Finally, the online learning platform allows your team to learn on-the-go with offline access via the mobile application, whilst the company gets discount pricing based on the number of personnel you have enrolled in a class.
Skillshare Pricing
Skillshare is available for free, for a premium subscription, and for teams. There are three premium and team packages available with a one-month free trial. The monthly package costs $15 per month, while the annual plan is $8.25 per month or $99 per year (billed annually). The team package is priced per student, starting at $99 per student per year and is billed annually also.
As a premium member, you have unlimited access to more than 19,000 classes, offline access via tablet or any mobile device, the ability to view classes without interruptions from ads, your membership fee supports teachers and provide scholarships to students in need, and you get a variety of additional perks like discounts on services and benefits.
Conclusion
Skillshare is a good online learning community with more than 19,000 classes offered. It benefits both students and teachers with the easily navigated, various features available. Teachers can easily create classes, publish, and promote them, all while having the opportunity to make money off their work.
Students get unlimited access to thousands of courses covering different disciplines, from art and literature to business and technology. The platform is designed to be interactive, easy-to-use, and it promotes collaboration and creativity among users.
