Cohorts and enrolment
Manage Cohorts is where programmes actually get run. If you only learn one screen in the admin console, learn this one.
What a cohort is
Section titled “What a cohort is”A group of people moving through a programme together.
| Field | Options |
|---|---|
| Name | Whatever your organisation calls its intakes |
| Type | Part-time or full-time |
| Kind | Scheduled or self-paced |
| Start date | Required |
| End date | Optional |
Scheduled cohorts have classes and a timetable. Self-paced cohorts have the content and the grading without the calendar.
A cohort’s lifecycle badge is derived from its dates, not set by hand:
| Badge | Means |
|---|---|
| Upcoming | The start date has not arrived |
| Active | Between start and end |
| Ended | Past the end date |
The step everyone misses
Section titled “The step everyone misses”A cohort has to have courses attached to it before anyone can be enrolled.
A cohort running a course is called an offering. Enrolment is into an offering, not into a course in the abstract. A brand-new cohort with no offerings has an empty course list in the enrolment dialog, and that empty list is the symptom.
Manage courses on a cohort attaches them. You can also attach courses while creating the cohort.
One thing to know before you do: an offering cannot be removed once added. Removing one would orphan every enrolment and every grade hanging off it, so the product does not offer it. Attached courses are shown as fixed rows rather than as checkboxes that refuse to clear. Attach deliberately.
Assigning staff to an offering
Section titled “Assigning staff to an offering”Staff sit on the offering, not on the cohort, because a cohort running three courses needs three different sets of people.
Each offering takes:
| Role on the offering | How many |
|---|---|
| Lead instructor | 1 |
| Co-instructors | Up to 2 |
| Manager | 1 |
| Co-manager | 1 |
Instructors teach and grade. Managers own the run without teaching it — they track it, chase it and answer for it.
Each selection saves as you make it, rather than behind a Save button. A row is four independent decisions and batching them would only create a way to lose three of them by closing the dialog.
An offering with no instructor still works — learners can access content and hand in work — but the submissions queue has nobody pointed at it.
Enrolling learners
Section titled “Enrolling learners”Enrol students on a cohort adds people to it and into the courses it runs.
Bulk enrol does a group at once, which is the normal case for an intake. There is also a bulk upload for creating cohorts themselves in quantity.
Enrolment is refused for a course the cohort does not run. That is not an obstacle; it is the model telling you the offering is missing.
The cohort page
Section titled “The cohort page”| Tab | What is on it |
|---|---|
| Students | Who is in the cohort |
| Courses | The offerings, and their staff |
| Enrolments | Each person’s enrolment per course, with status |
| Grading | Marks across the cohort |
| Submissions | Everything handed in |
| Class schedule | The timetable |
| Announcements | Messages sent to this cohort |
Enrolment statuses
Section titled “Enrolment statuses”| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| In progress | Under way |
| Completed | Finished |
| Withdrawn | Left this run |
| Deferred | Paused, expected back |
These are the only four the grading engine recognises. They can be changed individually or in bulk from the Enrolments tab.
Deferred and withdrawn are not the same thing, and the difference shows up in your completion figures as well as in how the person is treated. Deferred means they are coming back.
Retakes and attempts
Section titled “Retakes and attempts”Enrolling somebody into a course they have taken before, in a new cohort, creates a second attempt.
Attempts do not overwrite each other. Both are kept, and the learner’s record for that course takes the best of them — not the latest, and not an average.
This is why deferring and re-enrolling is safe: a worse second run cannot damage a good first one.
Removing an enrolment
Section titled “Removing an enrolment”Deleting an enrolment removes the person from that offering and the marks attached to it. It is not the tool for somebody who has dropped out — set their status to Withdrawn instead, which keeps the record of what happened.
Delete an enrolment when it should never have existed: the wrong person, or the wrong cohort.
Bulk operations
Section titled “Bulk operations”The cohort list supports batch actions — delete several cohorts, change their type, enrol into several at once. They are genuinely bulk and genuinely immediate.
Batch delete in particular is worth a second look before confirming. Deleting a cohort takes its offerings, enrolments and grades with it.