Sessional (multi-part) Courses Overview

Learn about Sessional Courses

1 About Sessional Courses
2 Benefits
3 Key Terms and Glossary
4 How Sessional Courses work
5 Example Sessional Courses
6 Where to find Sessional Courses
7 Sessional Course Management
8 Importing Sessional Courses
9 FAQ’s

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Course Cost Types | CourseCostTypes Sessional Cost Types

Related Resources

https://www.accessplanit.com/en-gb/webinars/demystifying-sessional-courses

About Sessional Courses

Sessional Courses are multi-part Courses, as the Course is split into multiple parts, they can be used to track attendance on multiple-day Courses, they can be used for Courses that contain a combination of formats such as classroom, web, and eLearning elements, and they can be used for Courses where you need to use different Resources on different parts - such as a different trainer on each day.

Benefits

Here are the benefits of using Sessional Courses

Flexibility in Course Delivery	Sessional Courses allow you to build Courses where your Delegates can attend only certain days of your Course, providing flexibility and options to your customers, to accommodate varying schedules. You can easily incorporate eLearning, classroom, and webinars into one comprehensive package to suit a range of learning styles.
Improved Resource Management	Each Session of your Course has it’s own Resource allocations, this means you can assign different trainers and venues to individual sessions, optimising your resource availability!
Increased Attendance Visibility	As you can monitor attendance for each session, you can easily identify patterns of drop-out through your Course and make changes to increase engagement.
Cost and Booking Flexibility	You can choose to charge your customers a fixed price for the full Course or charge for each Session they book.
Streamlined Administration	Your Sessional Plans (the structure of your Sessional Course) are defined on your Course Templates, this means that when you schedule the parent Course, all of the child sessions are automatically created which saves time and reduces manual administration.

Key Terms and Glossary

Sessional Course	A Course that contains multiple parts
Parent Course	Another name for a Sessional Course
Child Course	A Course that is contained within another (Parent Course), it can be booked on as a part of the parent
Session Plan	Details of the Sessions that are included within a Course, including when they are running and whether each Session is mandatory or optional
Session Plan Item	Details of the Sessions that are included within a Course Template, including when they are expected to run and whether each Session is mandatory or optional
Offset	Time period that this Session will run, based on the start date of the Parent Course, for example: A Session with an ‘Offset’ of '0 days' will start on the same day as the Parent Course A Session with an ‘Offset’ of '2 days' will start 2 days after the Parent Course, e.g. 1st & 3rd
Clone Trainers	An option when adding a Session Plan Item to automatically assign the allocated Trainers on the parent Course to this Session, this option only works when the Course is first scheduled
Clone Venue	An option when adding a Session Plan Item to automatically assign the allocated Venue on the parent Course to this Session, this option only works when the Course is first scheduled

How Sessional Courses work

Sessional Courses are used for any Courses that are made up of multiple parts! This includes:

Multi-day classroom Courses, where you want to track attendance on each day (Session), or to assign different Resources to each Session
Course which have mandatory and optional parts for Delegates to choose from
Blended Courses, which could contain some classroom Sessions, eLearning Sessions, and webinar Sessions

No matter the reason for setting up a Sessional Course, all Sessional Courses have the same two elements; a Parent Course, and a selection of Child courses.

Sessional Courses Diagram.drawio (1)-20240719-153928.png

Parent Course

The Parent Course is the Course that your customers will book onto, this is the Course that they will add to their basket.

The Parent Course contains most of your Course information; including the full duration, the course aims and objectives, and the ‘Sessions Plan’ where you define which Sessions are included within this Course, and which of these are optional or mandatory.

Child Course

The Child Courses (aka the Sessions) are the Courses that your Delegates will attend/complete. Each Classroom Session, Webinar Session, and eLearning Package to be included in your Sessional Course will be a Child Course.

The Child Courses contain information relevant to the Session, such as the start & end time of the Session, the trainers, and the venue.

Considerations

Whilst Sessional Courses are great for offering a greater level of granularity to your Courses, there are also some considerations to make before you begin to use them

Delegate and Placeholder transfers become more complicated and therefore the accessplanit transfer wizard cannot be used.
Each session booked is counted as a booking, so if your accessplanit contract is based on the number of bookings you process, you should double-check that using Sessional Courses will not cause you to go over your booking limit.

Example Sessional Courses

Here are two example Sessional Courses, and how these appear within the Course Calendar for administrators, and the Checkout Basket for your customers.