Month five of a nine-month course
Your teacher training has twenty trainees. They meet one weekend a month, and they also have to observe classes, practise teach and log hours between weekends. Each trainee has a spreadsheet of hours that they email to you. Some use your template; others send a photo of a notebook.
Payments are in instalments, and three trainees are behind. Assignments come by email with file names like 'essay final FINAL'. A trainee missed module three and needs to make it up with the next cohort, which you need to remember in a year's time.
At the end of the course, you need to confirm each trainee's hours against your course requirements. You have twenty spreadsheets in different formats.
Why training outgrows the studio's tools
A training course is closer to running a small college than a class. It has cohorts, modules, attendance, individual progress, coursework and long payment plans. Booking systems can sell the course, but they do not track progress.
Course requirements, including whatever your accrediting body specifies, are yours to set. Keeping the evidence of each trainee meeting them is the admin burden.
Trainees also expect to see where they stand. Without a shared record, they email you to ask, and you check your spreadsheets to answer.
The course also runs alongside the studio's normal week. Trainees observe and assist in regular classes, which means the class timetable and the course record overlap, and nobody wants to count observation hours by cross-checking booking histories by hand.
What spreadsheet training costs
| Pain point | Effect |
|---|---|
| Hours logged in many formats | Days of checking at the end of the course |
| Assignments by email | Lost submissions and version confusion |
| Instalments chased by hand | Awkward conversations with trainees |
| Missed modules remembered by you | Make-ups forgotten across cohorts |
| No trainee view of progress | Constant emails asking where they stand |
A course system built around the cohort
We build a small course platform connected to your payments.
- Each cohort has a schedule of modules, with attendance recorded by you on the weekend.
- Trainees log observation, practice teaching and self-practice hours in a simple form, in the categories your course requires.
- Assignments are submitted through the platform, with feedback and a status visible to the trainee.
- Payment plans are collected automatically through Stripe, with reminders and a list of anyone overdue.
- Missed modules are recorded, and the trainee is automatically offered the matching module in the next cohort.
- Each trainee has a progress page, and you have a cohort dashboard showing who is on track and who needs a word.
At the end, you can export a record of each trainee's hours and completed work in the format your accrediting body or your own records need.
Situations it handles
- A trainee who pauses for personal reasons: their progress is kept and they rejoin a later cohort.
- Guest tutors for specialist modules: they record attendance and feedback for their module only.
- Hours logged outside your studio: the trainee notes the studio and teacher, which you can check if needed.
- Deposits and early-bird prices for the next cohort: sold through the same system.
Month five with the platform
Trainees log hours as they go, and observation hours in your own classes can be confirmed by the instructor who taught them with a single tap. You glance at the cohort dashboard and see two trainees behind on hours and one on payments. Assignments are in one place with their feedback. End-of-course checks take an afternoon.
- Hours, attendance and coursework in one record per trainee
- Instalments collected automatically
- Make-up modules tracked across cohorts
- Trainees who can see their own progress
Does your training run like this?
- Trainees email you spreadsheets of hours.
- Assignments arrive as email attachments.
- You chase course instalments by hand.
- Missed modules are tracked in your memory.
- End-of-course checks take days.