Course session represents an instance of the course that runs for a period within which a group of participants can be given access to take the course. To relate it with physical world, you can  call it a class, although course-session offers more functionality (being online) than a physical class. Each course session starts and ends on specific date, and no learners can get access to the course before or after the course session.

Course session represents a planned period (can be for few hours, days, weeks) in which a specific course can be taken by any number of participants, who are enrolled in that session. Each session has a start and an end date. Course can be taken only within the start and end dates of the session. You can have any number of course sessions going on at the same time and a single course can be used in several sessions at the same or different times. 

Why do we need to have a course session?

• Well, its needed to deliver the course. Note that EduBrite treats a course just like a resource, for simplicity you can call it like a book to relate it with the physical world (although it need not be). Just like a book (course) can be used by different instructors to conduct different classes, you can have several course sessions for the same course.
• CourseSession definition holds regardless of the delivery type of the course i.e. Self Paced (eLearning), Online classroom (ILT) or Physical classroom. For purely self paced delivery, you can have just one CourseSession that never ends (has a far in future end date) and you can still limit the number of days that a learner gets access to course by using MaxSubscriptionDays property of the session.
• Course Session also allows you to have different offerings for different Groups, and use different policies (like access method, credit, price, instructors, additional activities like forum, poll, events) associated with each session for the same course.
• Since learner's progress and course completion is tracked within each session, you can use multiple sessions for certification/re-certification cases, where users need to take same course again and again, without loosing / deleting their history from the prior sessions.
• Course session is always for a group and is visible in all sub-groups under that group. So you can't share a course session for multiple groups, unless those groups are sub-groups of the main group
• From the process point of view, in a large setting, there can be several course authors who make the course. After that they authorize the course for delivery into multiple groups. Then group-admins or group-instructors can create the courseSession within their groups.

Creating course sessions

Step 1 - Create a course

Step 2 - Authorize to one or more groups (optional)

Step 3 - Publish the course 

Step 4 - Click calendar icon to schedule the course

Step 5 - Ensure that course is scheduled to appropriate group

Step 6 - Define course session name and start/end date

Step 7 - Enroll all learners (optional). You can enroll all or selected learners later.

 Read more about

• Creating course session
• Managing learners in course session
• Course catalog and payments
• Completion criteria
• Certificate