Skillshare Review

Skillshare Review Introduction

Skillshare might not have a course on “How to Enjoy Learning,” but if you’re seriously considering using their online platform to acquire new knowledge, then you’ve likely already developed this important life skill.

Michael Karnjanaprakorn and Malcolm Ong are the godfathers of Skillshare, having created the platform while living in New York City, New York in November of 2010. The platform has evolved into what we see today: A thriving marketplace for learners and teachers. It has been steadily making its mark as the go-to digital platform for elective online learning since its inception nearly 10 years ago.

We took Skillshare for a spin with a Premium access trial and can’t wait to show you what we found. Read on to find our comprehensive and honest review of Skillshare.

Skillshare is a digital platform designed to connect students (you!) with online courses taught by real-world experts, creators, entrepreneurs, and professionals. It’s built to teach anyone anything.

Course subjects span the gamut but typically revolve around sharing desirable creative and entrepreneurial skills. You can find classes like securing your WordPress site or how to paint fantasy woodlands in watercolor. All it takes is a quick search of their database to find a course built to teach you what you need to learn. If you’re not exactly sure where your curiosities are taking you, users can browse courses via the following predetermined categories on the site:

Create: Animation, Creative Writing, Film & Video, Fine Art, Graphic Design, Illustration, Music, Photography, UI / UX Design, Web Development
Build: Business Analytics, Freelance & Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Management, Marketing
Thrive: Lifestyle, Productivity

Since there are thousands of Skillshare courses to choose from, chances are high that you’ll find a relevant course for your knowledge gap.

Many users wonder “Is Skillshare accredited?” The answer is no—since Skillshare is neither a school nor college, none of their courses will earn you “certificates” in the same way that other learning institutions can underwrite your accomplishments. For those who are, in fact, seeking accredited online courses, you should consider checking out other e-learning platforms such as Coursera or edX instead of Skillshare.

Notable Experts on Skillshare

Some of the most notable experts sharing content on the platform include:

Marc Ecko—entrepreneurship and brand creation
Seth Godin—entrepreneurship
Young Guru—audio mixing and recording
Jessica Hische—lettering
Guy Kawasaki—entrepreneurship
Paula Scher—graphic design
Yuko Shimizu—inking and drawing techniques

How does Skillshare Work?

Self-Paced Courses

Skillshare members get instant access to the platform’s course catalog, but which classes are available to you depends on your membership level (free vs. paid—more on that later). All you need to do is conduct a search for your target skill to find dozens, sometimes hundreds or thousands, of related courses to choose from.

For instance, a quick search for “painting” classes yields ~5000 results. You can easily refine your search with the built-in platform filters based on the following factors:

View “Free,” “Premium,” or “All” courses
Course length (How in-depth do you want your training to be? Do you prefer courses that are less than 15 minutes in length or more than 60 minutes long?)
How old is the course? Was it recently published? Are the tips still relevant today?

Once you’ve found a class that piques your interest, you can assess course quality by reading both its “About” page and reviews from past students. Clicking around to the “Discussions” or “Project & Resources” tabs will give you a clearer picture of course contents and expectations. If it’s a good fit, you can get started immediately by simply starting to play the videos of the course.

Accessing the courses is ultra-convenient. You can keep your courses in your pocket via your phone or fire it up in your workspace from your laptop. Because Skillshare classes are pre-recorded, you can learn on your own time, at your own pace. No more class interruptions from Full-Of-Questions-Timmy or Constantly-Cracking-Jokes-Tommy.

Thanks to the “Discover” feature on the mobile app, you can get personalized recommendations based on your course participation and search history. This is a great feature if you’re hungry to learn, but you’re not quite sure what you want to learn just yet.

Pro tip: Get Ideas in the Project Gallery

Visual learners might consider browsing course options by viewing the Project Gallery in your Skillshare account. Here, you can see actual examples of completed work by other Skillshare members, as this photo gallery quickly displays the “final results” of others’ class selections and personal learnings. If you’re not satisfied at first glance, you can filter the gallery by Trending, Most Recent, and Top Voted projects, not to mention similar categories from the site’s “Course Browse” functionality.

When you come across an image that captures your ideal project outcome, click on the image to learn more details not only about the creator but also the actual course they took to create such a masterpiece!

Workshops

If you prefer to have more accountability and structure to your virtual learning, Skillshare’s workshops are a great path to explore. Workshops are a way of taking 2-3 complementary Skillshare classes in succession on a designated schedule set by a teacher. They typically last four weeks and are done simultaneously alongside other students, perfect for learning from not only your instructor but from your peers as well.

So, if you’re looking for more of a “classroom feel” and like the idea of having a Community Manager helping you keep track of deadlines, this more intensive learning experience could be a good fit for you.

Groups

Groups were a late add-on to the Skillshare platform as a response to the growth of its massive community. After all, navigating millions of other platform users to find your peers is no easy task! Now, you can instantly connect with like-minded folks to learn more, stay abreast of current industry trends, and for general connections and networking. Groups can be a great tool to further challenge your own skill development and growth with the added benefit of peer review.

Current Skillshare groups (and approximate size) at the time of writing include:

Creative:

Animators ~4800
Writers ~6200
Creative Business Owners ~10,700
Digital Marketers ~8700
Filmmakers ~4000
Procreate ~2000
Musicians ~3000
Illustrators ~12,000
UX/UX Designers ~3500
Graphic Designers ~10,000
Photographers ~8000
Painters & Sketch Artists ~4800
Watercolor Enthusiasts ~5000

Technology:

UI/UX Designers ~3000
Developers ~4500
Creative Coding Community (New)

Business:

Skillshare Teachers ~3800
Entrepreneurs & Small Business Owners ~7500
Creative Business Owners ~11,000
Digital Marketers ~9000
Freelancers ~6000
Productivity Tips ~9000

Lifestyle:

Crafters ~3000
Calligraphers ~6000

Professionals & Aspiring Teachers

If you consider yourself an expert in a topic area, you can add new courses to the platform so long as you follow the Teacher Handbook and create project-based, actionable lessons. It is free for teachers to add content to the site, but they earn income for their courses via a built-in affiliate program and royalties.

Review of Skillshare Pricing & Costs

No Skillshare review is complete without talking about the bottom line, so let’s get to it. The cost of Skillshare varies based on your level of membership—free (no cost) or premium (costs vary dependent on billing cycle).

Skillshare’s premium membership costs $15 per month if you pay monthly, or $99 for a full year if you choose to be billed annually (~$8.25 monthly). To get 2 weeks of premium membership for free, use our Skillshare coupon

Free Skillshare classes can be accessed with only an email address and an Internet connection. While you won’t have access to all of Skillshare’s 27,000+ classes, there are still many free classes on the site covering their go-to topics of Creative, Technology, Lifestyle, and Business.

If you’d like access to the full course catalog, you’ll need to sign up for the premium Skillshare membership. This membership tier not only gives you heaps of classes to choose from, but you can take your learning offline, too—perfect for long flights or road trips. It also gives you the ability to view classes without pesky interruptions from ads.

My Review of Skillshare Courses

My honest Skillshare review? They knock it out of the park for me in a few big ways. First, the courses are both easy to find and easy to match my goals. The provided course descriptions, reviews, and project outlines help me understand quickly whether or not the course will meet my needs.

The courses are broken up into “chapters” as short videos, which means I can easily replay parts of the course where I feel I have more to learn. This ease of jumping back and forth between content helps me get the most out of the course.

The Skillshare dashboard is a wealth of inspiration. The ability to quickly navigate to my saved lists of classes, see courses my favorite teachers are facilitating, and even view what’s hot across the platform starts to quench my thirst for knowledge from the moment I sign in.

The drawbacks of Skillshare are essential to consider and why I awarded the platform 4.5 out of 5 stars. I am disheartened by its lack of inclusivity for learners of all capabilities. They even have courses on website accessibility and singing on their own site! (Maybe its exec team will sign up for this course someday ?. The platform also fails to quality control for instructors, putting the responsibility on us, as members, to assess our options more thoroughly. This is added work that the platform could alleviate with only a few changes. The ads of the free membership tier are downright annoying, so one downside of Skillshare is the need to pay for a truly better overall experience.

The Advantages (Pros) of Skillshare

These are the main benefits of Skillshare:

New and varied content
Communities of like-minded learners
Easy to use all around
Free trials available
Skillshare mobile app available

New and varied content

The sheer amount of new content that is added to the platform weekly is enough to keep even the busiest of brains engaged. Whether you want to pick up a new skill to make your resume shine or master a hobby “just for the hell of it,” you can easily find dozens of opportunities to level up your repertoire. Further, Skillshare’s generous payment plans for teachers mean that there’s no shortage of excellent instructors creating new and high-quality content regularly.

Now, if only there was more time in the day to learn it all!

Communities of like-minded learners

Feeling part of a peer group can be hard when you have niche interests like Board Game Design or Floral Embroideries. Between Skillshare’s Groups, Workshops, and varied instructors, you’re unlocking a treasure trove of opportunities for connection and community building. This is a big perk for us “nerds” to feel part of something bigger than our own individual efforts AND it allows for us to learn not only from the experts but from each other.

Easy to use all around

It took me all of 5 minutes to create my account, log in, browse for content I’m interested in, and find a course that fits the bill. I was diving deep into my first course in less than 20 minutes, eager to find even more content to devour.

Kudos to Skillshare for making an easily navigable desktop AND mobile platform, and for including a start/stop functionality that syncs across devices.

Between the ability to “favorite” great teachers and save Skillshare classes to personalized lists, not to mention the Discovery section of the Skillshare app, I am never for want of new material to learn. And the fact that I get to learn on MY schedule makes Skillshare the equivalent of the 100 emoji.

Free trials available

Skillshare offers free Premium trials, giving new students a chance to “try before they buy”. You can always access a Skillshare free trial from their website.

Skillshare mobile app available

You can access Skillshare from your computer/ laptop via its website, or from your tablet/phone thanks to the Skillshare app. The best part? You can sync your progress in your selected Skillshare courses across all devices, be it your computer, phone, or tablet.

The Disadvantages (Cons) of Skillshare

These are the primary disadvantages of Skillshare:

Not fully accessible
Not every teacher ROCKS
The ads are annoying, so you’ll want to pay

Not fully accessible

As I was testing courses and building my Skillshare review, I was continually disappointed by the lack of closed captioning available on the videos. This essentially makes the platform impossible to use for those who are hearing impaired and not able to read lips. Minus points for exclusivity!

Not every teacher ROCKS

The variance in the quality of instructors can be a continual challenge on your way to knowledge gain. Since being able to teach effectively is a hard-won skill in it itself, it would be naive to believe that every instructor on the platform excels at the basics of teaching.

A good quality indicator is the number of students a course has hosted, as higher numbers tend to correlate with higher quality instructors. However, this isn’t always the case—some courses are just niche enough to not appeal to the “masses” anyway.

The ads are annoying, so you’ll want to pay

When you’re focused I mean, really focused—interruptions become even more of a nuisance. The ads displayed when utilizing Skillshare’s free access not only jolt you out of your deep thinking but make it harder to get back into the flow, too. This constant juggling of in, then out, then in again is detrimental to knowledge retention, so we recommend that you pull out your credit card to pay for premium, ad-free access.

Pro tip: Search the web for a Skillshare coupon before you make your purchase. You might get lucky with a 30% off deal like this one!

Conclusion: is Skillshare Worth it?

The chance to learn for learning’s sake is reasoned enough for me to soundly proclaim that Skillshare is worth it. The hands-on projects and ability to connect with others, including experts in your desired fields of knowledge, make the $10 a month fee a bargain. The onus is on YOU to determine which courses would bring you the most value, whether you aim to bolster your resume with sparkling competitive skills or assert yourself as a professional hobbyist.

Skillshare members can gain much more than just new skills from the courses. You’ll fall in love with learning again, meet motivated and skilled peers that will challenge and inspire you, and may find yourself addicted (nay, obsessed!) with gaining knowledge.

Add a line item to your annual budget for Skillshare access. Your brain will thank you for it!

To try Skillshare Premium Membership for 2 weeks for free, here’s a Skillshare Coupon.

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Skillshare Review