Introducing New Policies & Processes for Ensuring Quality Content on Skillshare (Updated July 2024)

Starting May 1, 2023, we are introducing a few changes to the teaching experience on Skillshare with the goal of creating the highest-quality learning experience for our community. Read on for more details about these upcoming changes and how they may impact you as a current teacher on Skillshare.

Sign Up Process for First-Time Teachers

Starting May 1, first-time teachers will be required to sign up to teach and be approved by our team in order to launch their first class on the platform. Any current teacher, as of May 1, 2023, with one or more published classes on Skillshare will not be impacted by this change and will not have to sign up to teach additional classes.

Updates to Permitted Languages and Categories

Starting May 1, we will also be making updates to the languages and categories that teachers are permitted to teach in. These changes will apply to both newly accepted and current teachers. Find more information below on what languages and categories will be permitted. Classes that do not fall into permitted languages and categories may be subject to removal.

Why Skillshare is Making These Changes

These updates are a part of a larger strategy to deliver value to Skillshare members. Through research, we have continually heard from our community that the volume of classes on Skillshare can be overwhelming and that quality can be inconsistent. We’ve taken a number of steps over the past year to address this feedback, including our updated class performance requirement and additional investments into our teacher programs. 

Our continued efforts to improve the member experience are directly tied to our goal of improving the teacher experience. By addressing our members’ quality concerns, we hope to see improvements in member retention and revenue, with the ultimate goal of increasing the value Skillshare delivers and growing teacher earnings over time. In addition, we believe that adding more specificity and guardrails to what can be taught on Skillshare will ultimately create a better opportunity for high-quality classes to get discovered, unlocking greater teacher success. 

 

Check out these FAQs for more specific information on what is changing: 

Do I need to sign up to teach if I already have a published class available on Skillshare?

No. Current teachers will not need to sign up to continue publishing classes. If you have at least one published class on Skillshare before May 1, 2023, you will not need to sign up. 

If you previously published classes to Skillshare but they are no longer available on the site as of May 1, 2023, you will need to sign up to begin teaching again.

How will the sign up process work?

Through a short form available on skillshare.com/teach, prospective teachers will be asked to share information about what topic they are interested in teaching. If the proposed topic aligns with our content guidelines, teachers will be accepted quickly.

Potential teachers proposing topics that are less clear or fall outside of guidelines will typically hear back from our team within 2 weeks. If the form isn’t accepted, it can be resubmitted at any time.

How will Skillshare ensure that the process to teach remains fair and equitable?

At Skillshare, we believe in building a diverse and inclusive community — this applies to our team, our partners, our teachers, and our community at large. Ensuring that teaching on Skillshare remains accessible to people from a wide variety of backgrounds — regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, and economic status — is a top priority. We do this by building an application system that is topic-dependent. All prospective teachers who comply with our content guidelines are enabled to teach on Skillshare.

What languages will teachers be allowed to teach in once these changes go into effect?

Starting on May 1, 2023, Skillshare will only accept new classes taught in English, French, German, Portuguese, or Spanish. These are the languages that represent a vast majority of our non-English audience and are the languages in which members can currently experience the Skillshare site. 

We believe that aligning the languages that classes can be taught in with the languages in which the Skillshare site can be experienced will best serve our audience of students and teachers at this time.

What categories will teachers be allowed to teach in once these changes go into effect?

For more information on the topics allowed on Skillshare, please see the article in our Teacher Help Center, Complete List of Categories on Skillshare. To learn more about restricted topics, please see our article, Class Content & Topic Restrictions.

In tightening the categories that are permitted on Skillshare, we aim to ensure that our catalog is relevant to our community and reflective of the ways in which the Skillshare brand has evolved over the past several years.

What will happen to my existing classes if I previously taught in a language or category that is no longer permitted?

For classes published before May 1, 2023 in languages or categories that are no longer permitted, we will be taking a gradual and curated approach to determining what classes may be subject to removal, taking into account our class performance requirement and our Curation team’s assessment of class quality. If your class is subject to removal, you will be notified directly by our Moderation team.

How will these changes affect teacher earnings?

Initially, we do not anticipate that these changes will have a significant impact on teacher earnings. Over time, we expect that the new process and policies will slow the influx of lower-quality classes and classes that are not relevant to our member community. Longterm, our vision is that these changes will positively impact teacher earnings in a few ways:

  • Our goal with these changes is to improve member retention, which will likely increase as students have an easier time finding classes they love, resulting in an increase in revenue to Skillshare. Ultimately, we hope this outcome leads to our ability to grow the Skillshare Teacher Fund. 
  • Teachers with high-quality classes may have an easier time getting discovered, enabling them to capture higher minutes-watched and earn more of the Skillshare Teacher Fund. 
  • The teacher community is likely to continue growing but at a slower rate than it has historically, decreasing the ratio of teachers to revenue (in the Skillshare Teacher Fund), which we expect will result in higher average earnings.

 

Have questions or feedback? Email us at teach@skillshare.com, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible!