Cohort sync and enrolling a cohort are two different methods; each has advantages and limitations.

If you follow the preceding instructions, you can synchronize a cohort's membership to a course's enrollment. As people are added to and removed from the cohort, they are enrolled and unenrolled from the course. When working with a large group of users, this can be a great time saver. However, using cohort sync, you cannot unenroll or change the role of just one person. Consider a scenario where you have a large group of students who want to enroll in several courses, all at once. You put these students in a cohort, enable the cohort sync enrollment method, and add the cohort sync enrollment method to each of these courses. In a few minutes, you have accomplished your goal. Now, if you want to unenroll some users from some courses, but not from all courses, you remove them from the cohort. So, these users are removed from all the courses. This is how cohort sync works.

An alternative to cohort sync is to enroll a cohort, that is, you can select all the members of a cohort and enroll them in a course, all at once. However, this is a one-way journey. You cannot unenroll them all at once; you will need to unenroll them one at a time.

If you enroll a cohort all at once, after enrollment, users are independent entities. You can unenroll them and change their role (for example, from student to teacher) whenever you wish.

To enroll a cohort in a course, perform the following steps:

1. Enter the course as an administrator or teacher.
2. Select Administration | Course administration | Users | Enrolled users.
3. Click on the Enrol cohort button. A pop-up window appears. This window lists the cohorts on the site.
4. Click on Enrol users next to the cohort that you want to enroll. The system displays a confirmation message.
5. Now, click on the OK button. You will be taken back to the Enrolled users page.