Discover how cohort-based online programs foster community, enhance learning, and improve retention. Drawing from a successful EdD program, this session explores program and course design strategies that help institutions and educators harness the full potential of online learning cohorts.

Cohort-based online programs admit groups of students that will move through a degree plan together. These programs have several advantages for institutions, instructors, and students, but also require careful design and upkeep in order to be successful. Cohorts have been used to unite students who might otherwise feel isolated (Wisker et al., 2007). Community does not always form organically within cohorts, and may need to be supported (Conrad, 2005), but when is present the effects may extend well past graduation (Green et al., 2022). In terms of pedagogical and learning effects, cohorts can work together to foster critical thinking and extend learning in ways that are not possible when students take courses in isolation (Akhtar et al., 2024) and their prolonged engagement with their peers creates a supportive learning interdependence (Green et al., 2022).

This presentation will explore the power of the cohort as an online learning approach. It covers the advantages and challenges of online learning cohorts, and describes the design, development, and ongoing support that is necessary for a cohort-based online learning program to survive.

Context and Significance

The [name redacted] EdD program at [name redacted] university is an example of a cohort-based online program. Now in its seventh year, this three-year program has admitted 7 cohorts of doctoral students, ranging in size from 14-20 students per cohort, and has graduated 4 cohorts of students. While engaged in continuous improvement practices, refining the curriculum and cohort support from year to year, the program faculty regularly recognizes the power of the cohort model as an online learning approach.

This presentation is relevant to the OLC community because it offers a glimpse behind the scenes of a thriving cohort-based program. Attendees will gain insights into how a program might maximize the advantages, address or avoid some challenges, and design learning experiences that leverage the power of the cohort.

Overview of Advantages. There are many advantages of a cohort-based program, particularly when cohorts are class-sized and move through all their courses as a stable group.

For institutions

• Program planning: Cohort enrollments allow for predictable course scheduling and offerings.
• Efficient resource use: Programs can plan for resources that will be needed based on predictable cohort progression through the curriculum. Group advising is possible for student engaged in coursework and students are likely to pass through key milestones at the same time.
• Retention and completion: Institutions benefit from cohorts that support each other through program completion.

For instructors

• Course sequencing and planning: Instructors can rely on established course sequencing when planning their courses. Instructors can collaborate across courses with shared students and can create course projects that might extend across courses or terms. A spiral curriculum becomes possible.
• Course community: Students in a class have established relationships and communication patterns before a course begins, which lessens the time and effort needed to foster course community. A strong sense of community within a cohort can lead to robust course discussion and effective learning collaborations.

For students

• Sense of belonging: After the first course, students are continuously enrolled with classmates they know from prior semesters. Cohorts are likely to develop their own unique identity.
• Support networks: Cohorts are a built-in peer support network. When one student is struggling, others are there to lift them up. Cohort backchannels offer a space for developing and sharing knowledge that will help students succeed in their courses and juggle schoolwork with other responsibilities. Cohort relationships may become long-term professional networking relationships.

Overview of Challenges. Running a cohort-based program is not without its challenges. These challenges also occur at all levels.

For institutions

• Recruitment and scalability: Cohorts may be dependent on a specific number of students, and programs may not be easily scalable.
• Resource intensiveness: In a program with a limited number of faculty members, a cohort can be a strain on advising or supervision resources.

For instructors

• Course dynamics: Instructors may find it intimidating to begin teaching a group that already has established relationships and may have a collective high expectation for the learning experience.

For students

• Rigid curriculum: A cohort-based curriculum may not have space for students to pursue individual electives and may also pose challenges for students who fall behind, struggle to maintain a full course load, fail a course, or need to take time off.
• Interpersonal dynamics: If a student does not get along well with their peers, they must still continue to enroll in the same courses and collaborate with them.

Advice for Designing an Online Cohort-based Program

Based on our experience as instructional designers and faculty in an online cohort program, we have advice to share with others seeking to design and support similar programs. Some of the features of our cohort program that have been particularly effective include:

Group advising: While in coursework and even leading into doctoral milestones, group advising ensures consistent messaging to all students. It keeps students on track together until they naturally diverge to complete their program milestones.

Skill-focused mini courses: These one-credit courses with flexible learning objectives provide space for embedded group advising, milestone preparation, and knowledge hubs. They become courses in which students develop skills that might not be overtly taught in other graduate classes, including relevant technology, presentation, leadership, and professional networking skills. These skills are often developed informally and out of class by full-time students in campus-based doctoral programs, but an online cohort benefits from the structured, communal learning experience with timely development of skills (i.e., aligned with needs in other courses).

Cohort back-channels: With the encouragement of the faculty, each cohort has developed a students-only back-channel on a social media platform. This offers students space to engage with each other outside of the course spaces where faculty are in charge. Back-channels offer support, commiseration and also a way to spread news quickly within a cohort. Back-channels can become toxic, but faculty awareness and advising can help foster a sense of responsibility among student leaders to maintain a positive and productive back-channel.

Connections with other cohorts and programs: Although cohorts build their primary academic relationships among the peers with whom they are learning daily, they nonetheless value the opportunity to engage with students in cohorts ahead and behind them in the curriculum, and with students in other degree programs.

Faculty support and sharing: Faculty work closely to support each other and the students, ensuring consistency and with a focus on continuous improvement. This continuous improvement focus has helped us strengthen the curriculum and student experience with each cohort.

 Additional features include robust scaffolds and templates that are shared across advisors and cohorts; a spiral curriculum; projects that develop across courses; integrated open pedagogy and reusable assessments. These features capitalize on student interdependence and relationship, a predicable program of study, and the need for consistency to minimize confusion or perceptions of uneven access to information, skills, and supports.

Measuring Success

How do we know that these efforts have been successful? Student feedback, retention rates, and graduation rates along with continuous word of mouth referrals from our current students and alumni help us assess our continuous progress toward providing the best possible learning experience to the cohorts. When students tell us that they sensed our strong community from their first interaction and that they have experienced a much more supportive program than their friends elsewhere, we feel we are on the right track.

Plan for Interactivity

In this session, we will invite attendees to share their experiences with learning cohorts or similar community-focused learning environments as administrators, faculty, or students.

We will have a digital brainstorming board where people can share ideas and which will remain accessible after the conference.

Takeaways

By the end of the session, attendees will be able to:

• Identify the key benefits and challenges of cohort-based online programs from multiple stakeholder perspectives.
• Apply practical strategies for designing and supporting cohort-based online learning, including advising models and course structuring.
• Anticipate common cohort dynamics and plan for both organic and structured support systems.

We will provide attendees with digital handouts that address core issues in designing and supporting cohorts.

Dr. Vanessa Dennen

Professor at Florida State University

Dr. Secil Caskurlu

Assistant Professor at Florida State University