Enrollment & Cohort Management

Overview

Enrollment & Cohorts covers the tools instructors use to manage who is in their course — manual enrollment/unenrollment, cohort group assignment, enrollment reports, and access control. Cohorts allow instructors to segment learners into groups that see different content (cohorted discussions, cohorted content tracks).

Current State (2026)

• Enrollment management: Instructors can enroll/unenroll individual learners or upload CSV lists from the instructor dashboard
• Cohorts: Defined per-course; learners can be manually assigned or auto-assigned to cohorts; cohorted content shows different subsections to different cohorts
• Enrollment modes: Multiple enrollment modes (audit, verified, professional, honor) with different access levels; set at the course run level
• Enterprise enrollment: B2B enterprise learners enrolled via edx-enterprise; may use enterprise-specific modes and access policies
• Waiting list / capacity: Not natively supported in standard Open edX; typically handled at the application layer

Architecture

• Enrollment API: edx-platform exposes /api/enrollment/v*; stores CourseEnrollment records in MySQL
• Cohorts: CohortMembership model in edx-platform; cohort assignment triggers membership updates
• Cohorted content: Course sections/discussions can be marked as cohort-specific; different content served based on CohortMembership
• Enterprise enrollment: edx-enterprise EnterpriseCourseEnrollment model bridges enterprise users to platform enrollments

Relevant Repositories

Repository	Role in This Feature	Activity Level	Notes
openedx/openedx-platform	Enrollment API, cohort management backend	High	Core enrollment system
openedx/edx-enterprise	Enterprise enrollment, bulk enrollment	High	B2B layer
openedx/enterprise-access	Enrollment policies and subsidy management	High	Access control

Recent Changes

• Enterprise enrollment improvements in edx-enterprise and enterprise-access

History

Origin

• Year introduced: 2012 (enrollment launched with edX)
• Initial implementation: Simple CourseEnrollment model; open enrollment (no approval required) for most MOOCs
• Context: Massive open enrollment was the defining feature — anyone could enroll in any course

Key Milestones

Year	Milestone	Teams / People Involved
2012	Open enrollment launched	Unknown
~2013	Cohorts feature introduced	Unknown
~2014–2015	Enrollment modes (audit/verified) introduced	Unknown
~2016	Enterprise enrollment (edx-enterprise) developed	Unknown

People Who Shaped This Area

• Engineering: Unknown — open question for interview
• Product: Unknown — open question for interview
• Design: Unknown — open question for interview

Open Questions

• [ ] When were cohorts first introduced and what was the pedagogical use case?
• [ ] How do enrollment modes work — what does "verified" vs. "audit" mean historically?
• [ ] When was enterprise enrollment (edx-enterprise) built and what drove the B2B feature investment?
• [ ] How do instructors typically use cohorts in practice?
• [ ] What are the known limitations of the current enrollment/cohort system?