Planning training batches and course schedules with rolling intakes

Many training institutes begin with one intake a year and a timetable that fits on a page. Then the weekday program fills and a Saturday cohort is added, and the two-day spreadsheet skills workshop that ran twice last year starts running every month. By the second year the schedule lives on a whiteboard and in the head of the person who built it. Trouble usually shows up on a Monday morning, with a trainer booked into two rooms or fourteen trainees arriving at a lab with twelve computers.

This guide is about planning training batches and course schedules once intakes roll and patterns multiply. The example is a fictional institute, Summit IT Training. For example, it runs a 10-week IT support program with rolling weekday intakes, Saturday cohorts, evening groups for companies and short workshops, using three computer labs and five trainers.

Choose an intake rhythm you can staff

A new cohort every month sounds like steady income. Before you advertise the dates, work out how many cohorts will be running at the same time. Divide the program length by the gap between intakes: a 10-week program with an intake every 4 weeks means up to three weekday cohorts running side by side. Each one needs a lab on its days and a lead trainer for its first module.

Summit has five trainers, and two of them also teach the evening company groups. Three overlapping weekday cohorts would leave no one free to cover leave, so Summit settled on an intake every five weeks. That keeps two weekday cohorts running at any one time. A slower rhythm with full cohorts usually earns more than a fast one where every cohort starts with eight trainees and an exhausted trainer.

Fix your time blocks once

Most clashes begin with times that almost line up. If one cohort runs from 9:00 to 12:30 and a workshop starts in the same lab at 12:00, nobody notices until both groups are at the door. Summit fixed one set of time blocks that every pattern uses, every day of the week:

Block	Time	Used by
Morning	9:00 to 12:00	Weekday and Saturday cohorts
Lunch	12:00 to 13:00	Break
Afternoon	13:00 to 16:00	Weekday and Saturday cohorts, workshops
Evening	18:00 to 21:00	Company groups

With fixed blocks you can count a program's length in blocks, and the pattern decides how many weeks it takes. Summit's IT support program is, for example, 60 blocks. A weekday cohort meets three days a week for a morning and an afternoon, so it finishes in 10 weeks. A Saturday cohort meets for the same two blocks once a week and takes 30 weeks. Tell weekend trainees that figure at enrolment, because a 30-week commitment loses more people along the way, and the plan should expect it.

A long Saturday cohort also crosses holidays and, often, the end of your training year. Plan the skipped weekends before the first session, and decide in advance how the cohort carries on into the new year.

Short courses and company groups

A two-day workshop looks easy to fit in, yet it competes for the same labs and trainers as the long programs. Summit treats each workshop date as a small cohort of its own, with a capacity set by the lab it uses, and books it into the same timetable as everything else. One rule protects the long programs: a workshop never takes a lab that a running cohort needs for a practical. When a workshop date is full, the next date opens.

Company groups bring a different problem. When a trainer teaches at a client's site, the timetable shows an evening block, but the trainer is also travelling for an hour before and after. Summit blocks the afternoon before every on-site session, so nobody books that trainer for a workshop that ends at 16:00 on the other side of town.

Check for clashes at three moments

A clash is one of three things: a trainer booked in two places at once, a room booked twice, or a cohort given two modules in the same block. Summit checks for them at the moments when they are most likely to appear:

• when a new cohort's timetable is built, against every trainer's whole week across all sites;
• when a trainer's leave is approved, by looking for the sessions that now need cover;
• when a company booking or an extra workshop comes in, before the date is confirmed to the client.

Rooms need a capacity next to their name. Summit's labs have, for example, 16, 16 and 12 computers, so a cohort of 14 can never go into Lab C, however convenient the slot. Specialist rooms need the same care. If only one lab has the networking equipment, place the networking module first and fit everything else around it.

Twelve weeks of Summit's plan

Here is part of Summit's plan for a twelve-week period, as an example:

Cohort	Starts	Days and blocks	Lab	Lead trainer
IT support, weekday, intake 1 (14 trainees)	Week 1	Mon, Wed, Fri, morning and afternoon	Lab A, 16 seats	Kofi
IT support, Saturday (15 trainees)	Week 1	Saturday, morning and afternoon	Lab B, 16 seats	Elena
Spreadsheet workshop (12 trainees)	Week 3	Tue and Wed afternoons	Lab C, 12 seats	Wen
IT support, weekday, intake 2 (16 trainees)	Week 6	Tue, Thu, Fri, morning and afternoon	Lab B, 16 seats	Amir
Company evening group (10 trainees)	Week 7	Mon and Wed evenings, on site	Client's premises	Lucas
IT support, weekday, intake 3 (16 trainees)	Week 11	Mon, Wed, Fri, morning and afternoon	Lab A, 16 seats	Kofi

Intake 2 cannot use Lab A, which intake 1 holds on Fridays, so it takes Lab B on the weekdays the Saturday cohort leaves free. Workshops go into Lab C, which caps them at 12. Intake 3 starts in week 11, the week after intake 1 finishes, so Kofi can lead its first module on the same days he taught intake 1. How Summit decides which trainer leads which module is covered in managing courses, trainees and trainers, and academies with visiting instructors face a similar puzzle in scheduling academy instructors and timetables.

Setting up batches and schedules in SkoolBro

In SkoolBro the training year is an academic year, each program is a grade level, each cohort is a class section of that program with an optional capacity, and each module is a subject with its trainer. A workshop can be a small program with one module and a section for each date. Each training centre is a campus with its own rooms and its own set of periods and breaks, which is where Summit's time blocks go. The same periods apply to every day, and Saturday and Sunday can be added to a timetable.

When you place a module in a period, SkoolBro refuses the slot if the cohort already has something there, if the trainer teaches at an overlapping time that day at any centre, or if the room is in use. Each trainer sees their own week in the app, and trainees see their cohort's timetable in the portal. When a date moves, you can send a notice to that cohort alone.

A few limits are worth knowing before you set up a busy calendar. Periods cannot overlap within a centre, so a centre where some cohorts start at 9:00 and others at 9:30 has to choose one set of times. A class section belongs to one training year, so a cohort that runs past the end of the year continues as a section in the next one. A trainee also holds one place in one section per training year, and moving them to another cohort moves that place. That suits long programs, where a trainee stays with one cohort from start to finish. If many of your trainees take two short courses in the same year, set up your real pattern during the free trial and check it fits before moving everything across. Our guide to digitizing training institute management gives the order for the rest of the move.

Questions

How often should a training institute start a new cohort?

Only as often as you can staff it. Divide the program length by the gap between intakes to see how many cohorts will run at once, and check you have a lab and a lead trainer for each before you advertise the dates.

Can weekday and weekend cohorts use different session times?

They can, but clashes are far easier to avoid when every pattern uses the same fixed time blocks. In SkoolBro each centre has one set of periods that applies to every day, including Saturday and Sunday.

Does SkoolBro stop a trainer being booked in two places at once?

Yes. When you place a module in the timetable, SkoolBro refuses the slot if the trainer already teaches at an overlapping time that day at any centre, or if the room or the cohort is already booked.