Cohort Courses

Some courses are best taken alone, at your own pace. Others come alive when a group starts together — everyone on the same schedule, learning in step, with content that unlocks week by week. That is what a cohort course is for.

A cohort course looks like a regular course, but instead of one price and instant access, it runs in scheduled cohorts: a group of students that begins on a set date, works through the material as it is released, and can join live sessions and a shared group chat along the way. You can run the same course as a new cohort every season.

Creating a cohort course

1. Go to Courses in your dashboard sidebar, then click Courses.
2. Click Create Course.
3. When asked What kind of course is this?, choose Cohort. (The other option, Self-paced, is the classic buy-once course — see Creating a course.)
4. Fill in the course details — these carry across every cohort you run:
   • Course title — The name of the program, like "Songwriting Bootcamp."
   • Description — Your main pitch, written in the rich-text editor.
   • Cover image and Intro video — Optional visuals for the course page.
5. Set up your first cohort:
   • Cohort name — A label for this particular run, like "Spring 2026."
   • Start date and End date — When this cohort begins and wraps up.
   • Timezone — The timezone your schedule is anchored to. Content release and session times are all read against this, so pick the one that matches how you plan your program.
   • Capacity — Optional. The maximum number of students you want in this cohort. Leave it blank for no limit.
6. Click Create cohort course.

You land straight on the new cohort, ready to add content.

The cohort workspace

Open a cohort course from your course list, and you go to its Cohorts page — a card for each run showing its status, start date, and how many students are enrolled. Click a cohort to open its workspace, which is organized into tabs:

• Details — Name, description, dates, capacity, and status.
• Modules — The curriculum, with per-module release scheduling.
• Students — Everyone enrolled in this cohort.
• Pricing — What students pay to join, including installment options.
• Sessions — Your calendar of live sessions.
• Announcements — Cohort-wide updates you post to enrollees.
• Chat — The group chat channel for the cohort.
• Page — The layout enrolled students see when they open the cohort.

Details

The Details tab is where you edit the cohort's name, description, start and end dates, and capacity. It also has a Status setting so you can mark a cohort as Draft, Scheduled, Active, Completed, or Archived as it moves through its lifecycle. Click Save details when you're done.

At the top of the cohort you'll also find Publish and Archive buttons. A cohort stays hidden until you Publish it — publishing is what makes it available for students to enroll. Archive takes it back out of circulation while keeping all its records; you can Restore it later.

Modules and content release

Building the curriculum works just like a self-paced course — you add modules, then add lessons inside each module. See Modules and lessons for the full walkthrough.

The difference in a cohort is that each module has a release rule — this is the drip schedule that keeps everyone moving together. When you add or edit a module, choose when it unlocks:

• Immediately when the cohort starts — Available from day one.
• A number of days after the cohort starts — For example, unlock 7 days in. Great for a weekly rhythm.
• On a specific date — Pin the module to a calendar date.

TribeNest handles the timing for you. Students only see a module once its release moment arrives — you don't have to unlock anything by hand.

Pricing and installments

The Pricing tab is where you set what students pay to enroll. Click Add plan to create a pricing plan:

• Title — What buyers see, like "Pay in full."
• Total amount and Currency — The full price of the cohort.
• Installments — Set to 1 to have students pay the whole amount at once, or a higher number to let them pay in installments (for example, 3 payments).
• Interval (days) — How many days apart the installments are spaced.
• Default plan — Mark one plan as the default so it's the one buyers see first.

You can offer more than one plan — for instance, a pay-in-full option alongside an installment option — and students choose at checkout.

Payments run through your connected payout account, the same one you use for the rest of your store. See Managing courses and your settings for connecting it.

Live sessions

The Sessions tab is your calendar of live gatherings for the cohort — weekly Q&As, workshops, office hours, whatever your program calls for. Click Schedule session and set:

• Title — Like "Week 1 Q&A."
• Description — Optional details.
• When — The date and time.
• Duration — How long you expect it to run, in minutes.

Scheduled sessions appear in order on the tab, and enrolled students can see the calendar. You can Edit a session or Cancel one — cancelled sessions stay on the list, marked as cancelled, so everyone can see what changed.

Announcements

Use the Announcements tab to post updates to everyone in the cohort. Click New announcement, give it a Title and a Body, and choose how it goes out:

• Publish now — Post it immediately, or leave it unchecked to save as a draft.
• Pin to the top — Keep an important announcement at the top of the list.
• Email enrollees when published — Send the announcement to every enrolled student's inbox as well.

You can edit, pin, unpin, or delete announcements at any time.

Group chat

Every cohort comes with a General chat channel, ready as soon as the cohort is created. Anyone enrolled with active access can post, and replies can be threaded one level deep. The Chat tab lists the channels attached to the cohort so you can see what's available to your group.

The student page

The Page tab controls the layout enrolled students see when they open the cohort — their home base for the program. You get three views:

• Templates — Pick a starter layout for the page.
• Customize — Add, remove, and reorder blocks to make the page your own.
• Preview — See exactly what students will see, using the cohort's real content.

When you're happy with it, click Publish to push the layout live. Unpublish falls back to the previous layout. Applying a new template replaces the current blocks, so customize after you've picked your starter.

Managing a cohort's students

The Students tab lists everyone enrolled in the cohort, with a search box to find someone by name or email. Each row shows the student's name, email, when they enrolled, and whether their access is Active or Revoked. You'll also see whether a student has Claimed their account or still has a Pending claim — the latter means they've enrolled but haven't finished setting up their login yet.

Running the same course again

Because content and pricing live on each cohort, running your program a second time is simple:

1. Open the course's Cohorts page.
2. Click New cohort.
3. Give it a fresh name and dates, and choose to copy content from an existing cohort.
4. Adjust anything that changed, publish, and you're live for a new group.

Related guides

• Creating a course — Set up a classic self-paced, buy-once course.
• Modules and lessons — Build the curriculum inside any course.
• Managing courses — Edit, archive, and organize your courses.
• Managing students — Track enrollments and revenue across all your courses.