Course Administration: Cohorts

Overview

Cohorts split a course's learners into groups. Each group gets its own discussions and can be shown content meant only for that group. The Cohorts card describes it as: "Split learners into groups for discussions and cohort-specific content."

Cohorts are off until you turn them on. While they are off, the card reads "Turn cohorts on to create groups and assign learners to them."

Target Audience

Course staff | Administrator

Features

Enabled / Disabled

The switch at the top right of the card turns cohorts on or off for the course.

New cohort

Enter a Cohort name, choose how learners join it, and click Create:

• Manual: you add learners yourself.
• Automatic (random): learners are spread across the automatic cohorts as they arrive.

Cohort list

Each cohort shows its name and "{n} learners · manual" or "auto-assigned", with Manage. With no cohorts yet, the list reads "No cohorts yet."

Manage a cohort

Manage opens the cohort:

• Name with Rename.
• Assignment: Manual or Automatic (random).
• Add learners: "Usernames or emails, separated by commas or new lines", then Add to cohort. The result counts who was added, who moved from another cohort, who was already there, who was pre-assigned before creating an account, and any unknown or invalid entries.
• Remove a learner: enter a username and click Remove.

Click Close to collapse it.

How to Use

Step 1: Turn cohorts on

Flip the switch to Enabled.

Step 2: Create cohorts

Add a cohort for each group, for example one per campus or section.

Step 3: Assign learners

Click Manage, paste the learners' emails into Add learners, and click Add to cohort.

Step 4: Use them

Filter the Grades table by cohort, and set discussion topics to be divided by cohort.