Community App Starter · Industry version
Cohort Community Template
Discussion that follows the syllabus — per-cohort spaces, weekly prompts, instructor presence — in code your program owns.
A cohort course lives or dies on whether the group talks. This starter generates the discussion layer built for that: spaces scoped to each cohort, prompts that follow the syllabus week by week, and the instructor visibility that keeps threads alive — as code your program owns and runs.
- 6 core entities
- Moderation built in
- Code you own
- Vibe + Governed modes
01 · The problem
Why a generic Community falls short
A cohort isn't a public forum — it's thirty people moving through the same six weeks together. Spring and fall cohorts shouldn't see each other's threads, alumni belong in a different room than current students, and a generic community platform with one shared space collapses those boundaries on day one.
Course discussion also has a clock. Week 3's conversation should center Week 3's material — prompted, time-boxed, and archived when the cohort moves on. Without syllabus-aware structure, discussion drifts to whatever is loudest, and by Week 4 the instructor is manually herding threads back on topic.
And the metric that matters isn't engagement — it's completion. Programs need to see who has gone quiet, because silence on Tuesday predicts a drop by Friday. Platforms built for open-ended communities don't surface participation-by-student-by-week, which is the one report a cohort program actually runs on.
02 · Data model
The data model, adapted
Everything in the base Community starter —
forumstopicsrepliesvotesmoderation_flagsprofiles— plus the entities this industry actually runs on:
| table | what it holds |
|---|---|
cohorts | Named runs of a course with start and end dates, membership, and their own scoped spaces. |
discussion_prompts | Instructor-authored prompts tied to syllabus weeks, published on schedule into the cohort's forum. |
03 · Screens
Modules through the industry lens
Cohort-scoped forums
01Each cohort gets its own spaces — introductions, weekly discussion, help — visible only to its members and instructors. Alumni graduate into a cross-cohort commons, so the network compounds without current cohorts losing their intimacy.
Prompt-driven weekly threads
02Prompts publish automatically as each syllabus week opens, seeding discussion where the course is rather than where it drifted. Past weeks archive read-only, leaving a clean trail of the cohort's thinking through the material.
Participation-aware moderation
03Instructors see participation per student per week — posts, replies, last-seen — so the quiet-since-Tuesday student gets a nudge before they become a refund. The moderation queue is the same one, tuned for classroom norms.
04 · In practice
Workflows it models
Cohort launch week
01The cohort opens with its intro space and the Week 1 prompt already live. Thirty introductions in three days, instructor replies on each, and the norm that this group talks is set before the first hard module.
The mid-course quiet patch
02Week 4's participation view shows five students silent since Monday. Two get a personal note, three respond to the peer-discussion prompt that asks less than the assignment did — and four of five re-engage before the drop point.
Graduation into the commons
03At cohort close, its spaces archive and members join the alumni commons alongside every prior run. The archive keeps each cohort's discussion intact; the commons keeps the relationships — and referrals — alive.
Cohort Community template — frequently asked questions
Can multiple cohorts run at once without seeing each other?
Yes — cohorts are first-class, and each one's forums are scoped to its members and instructors. Parallel spring and evening cohorts run the same course in parallel rooms, and alumni mix only in the shared commons.
How do weekly prompts work?
Instructors author prompts against syllabus weeks, and each publishes into the cohort's discussion space on schedule. Discussion stays synchronized with the material without anyone remembering to post the Monday thread.
Can instructors see who is falling behind?
The participation view shows posting activity and last-seen per student per week — the early-warning signal cohort programs rely on. Because it's your data in your schema, tying it to completion outcomes is a query, not a feature request.
Is this an LMS?
No — it's the conversation layer. Lessons, quizzes, and progress tracking belong to a learning management system, and there's a dedicated LMS starter built on the same conventions; the two pair naturally over your shared student data.
Related
Dual7 App Starters
Build your Cohort Community on your terms
Discussion that follows the syllabus — per-cohort spaces, weekly prompts, instructor presence — in code your program owns. Describe your version to start — the output is a project you own.