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Offer courses multiple ways with cohorts
👩‍🏫Member-created Cohorts: Allow anyone to lead a private group
👩‍🏫Member-created Cohorts: Allow anyone to lead a private group

How to offer a Course so that anyone (teacher, leader, or employer) can take with it with their members in a private cohort.

Laurie Garcia avatar
Written by Laurie Garcia
Updated over a week ago

For administrators and editors

Do you create course content that other people might want to teach or take with their own team, class, or group of friends or family members? 

In the below video, we'll introduce you to the Member-created cohort feature and show you how it works:

How does it work?

The Member-created Cohorts feature enables other teachers, coaches, managers, etc. to guide their own private cohort of learners through your course. Cohorts can be offered for free, by subscription, or for a per-person fee of your choice.

Member-created Cohorts are available on the Complete Plan and above and include the following features:

The cohort creator can...

  • Create their own cohort right from your course "About" page (set this up for your course once, and everything else is self-serve).

  • Invite their own learners to join their private cohort to take your course together.

  • Use Pathwright's built-in teaching features to guide everyone through your course, give feedback, schedule dates and reminders, and personalize the learning experience.

As the course owner, you can...

  • Uniquely describe the benefits of taking the course with your own private cohort and prominently show the option to create a cohort on your course "About" page.

  • Offer member-created cohort access for free, for a set fee per member (e.g., $12 per member), by subscription only, or offer multiple payment options.

  • Choose which role (permissions) the cohort creator is assigned (learner, moderator, or teacher). 

  • Optionally set a required number of seats to create a cohort (e.g., the cohort creator must pre-purchase 4 seats minimum).

  • Optionally set an expiration date for when the cohort access will expire.

  • Optionally provide promotional codes that offer a certain percentage off of the regular listed price or free months on a subscription plan.

  • Optionally provide the cohort creator's seat for free.

💡 Tip: If you don't see the Member-created Cohorts option, please contact support at hello@pathwright.com and we'll help you get the feature enabled in your account.


How to enable Member-created Cohorts

Enabling the Member-created Cohorts option for any course only takes a minute. Here are the steps:

  1. Open Course Settings for the course where you want to enable Member-created Cohorts. 

  2. From the Course Settings screen, select the "More settings" and then the "Member-created cohorts" option.

  3. Toggle on the Enable member-created cohorts switch and then list 3-5 bullet points under "What's included" to highlight the benefits someone would get from creating their own cohort for your course (e.g., Take privately with your own members, Track everyone's progress, etc.).

  4. (Optionally) if you need to accept payment, follow the additional steps below.


Select pricing options (or offer for free)

Set a price per seat

  1. If you'd like to charge per member, select the Pricing & Access option.

  2. To charge for access, enter the amount the cohort creator will pay per member. This enables the cohort creator to select any number of members when they create their group and pay for them in advance (e.g., $9 per member for 12 members of a group = $108).

  3. You may also optionally set a minimum number of seats that cohort creators will be required to purchase in order to create their cohort.

Sell by subscription plan

If your school has a subscription plan set up, then you can also include member-created cohorts in your subscription plan. Each participant will need to have a subscription or purchased seat. To require a subscription, use the "subscription-only" setting.

  1. If you'd like to sell by subscription, select the Subscriber Access option.

  2. Check all plans that should include access to create cohorts for this course.

  3. If you'd like to sell by subscription only, select the Pricing & Access option.

  4. Select the "Not available for non-subscribers" button.

Selecting plans under "Subscriber Access"

Selecting "Not available for non-subscribers" under "Pricing & Access


Select cohort creator role (defaults to Moderator)

Select the role that the cohort creator will be automatically assigned when a cohort is formed. Learn more about roles here

  • Learners can take the course and if they are the cohort creator, they can invite other learners and observers to the group. 

  • Moderators can both take and teach the course and invite observers, learners, and moderators. 

  • Teachers can teach and edit the course for their group, and invite observers, learners, and moderators. They can preview the course as a learner, or sign up with another account to take the course as a learner and track their own progress. 


Make cohort access expire (optional)

  1. If you'd like to set an expiration date for cohort access, select the Pricing & Access option.

  2. Change access from "Never expires" to "Expires..." and enter the number of days until the cohort will expire after it is created (e.g., a cohort with 30 days of access set will expire 30 days from when the cohort creator starts it). Note that once the cohort expires, both the cohort creator and their members will no longer be able to access the course.


FAQs

Q. Can the cohort creator purchase additional seats after the cohort has been set up?

A. No, once a cohort is created, the cohort creator cannot pre-purchase additional seats. However, after all prepaid seats are filled, they can continue to invite additional members, and each member will be prompted to pay (or subscribe) for their own seat.

Q. What kind of data can I view for the learners in each Member-created Cohort?

A. As the administrator of your account, you will be able to see each Member-created Cohort that is working through your course Path and track how the learners are progressing. You can also go under Reports in your account to download the Cohort Information and Stats report for detailed information about each Cohort.

Q. I want to offer Member-created Cohorts exclusively. How do I do that?

A. Under Course Settings, go to More Settings and you'll see an option that says "Always visible?" with an on-off toggle. Switch this on if the only option for taking your course is the Member-created Cohorts option. This will allow your course to be public without creating any other public cohorts. 

Q. I want to offer Member-created Cohorts privately, not publicly. How do I do that?

A. Currently, Member-created Cohorts are only accessible if the course is public, or if there is a staff-created cohort that is set to members-only. We'd like to add a members-only setting and invite-only setting in the future.

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