For AWS Skill Builder Team Subscription customers managing learning cohorts, the work doesn’t stop once a cohort goes live. Plans change, schedules shift, links arrive late, and ownership moves around. At the same time, a single cohort owner becomes a bottleneck when responsibilities need to shift.

Cohorts Studio now supports edits, shared management, and more. Along with these core updates, this release also includes expanded content options, engagement tools, global cohort support, and streamlined administration. In this post, we cover how these capabilities help you manage cohort programs with less effort.

Edit published cohorts without starting over

Two out of three published cohorts require some form of edit after launch. Common examples include adding or removing a learning activity, moving activities between weeks, shifting start dates, or entering live meeting links not yet available at creation time. Instead of starting over, you update the live cohort directly. Edits that previously meant recreating the cohort can now be made in seconds.

You can keep your cohort intact when plans change. Edit weekly agendas, insert new weeks, and move start dates on a published cohort. Add live meetings that weren’t available at creation time. Designate optional activities and rearrange weeks. Custom holiday week messages let learners know when a break is planned.

Collaborate with your team

When a cohort manager changes roles or goes on leave, the cohort shouldn’t stall. Until now, only one person could own and manage a cohort at a time, creating a single point of failure for active programs. Sometimes an organization doesn’t have the time or expertise to create a cohort themselves. In those cases, they delegate creation to another individual within the org or to an AWS representative. Once the cohort is built, ownership may need to transfer back to the person who will run it day to day. Ownership transfers complete instantly, eliminating manual handoffs and single-manager bottlenecks.

Cohorts Studio now lets you assign management responsibilities to additional team members and transfer ownership when needed. Templates built on your behalf by AWS can be transferred to your team, or shared between team members within your organization. Shareable preview links let recipients review, edit, and create cohorts from those templates. Viewer access lets stakeholders observe cohort progress without editing anything.

Bring more content into your cohorts

Customers told us they needed more flexible ways to add content and get started quickly. You can paste a Skill Builder course or Learning Plan URL to add that activity directly to your cohort agenda. Cohorts Studio breaks down Learning Plans into smaller, weekly consumable chunks within the cohort program. Pre-built templates, including one for the AWS Certified Generative AI Developer – Professional (AIP-C01) exam, help you get started.

Drive engagement with built-in competitions and nudges

Keeping learners engaged across multi-week programs has been a consistent challenge, especially when cohort activities compete with daily work. Cloud Quest Tournaments, Escape Room, Trivia, and Jams are integrated directly within Cohorts Studio, giving your learners competitive, interactive experiences without leaving the cohort flow. Custom nudge emails let you send targeted reminders to keep learners motivated at the moments that matter.

Better experience for global cohorts

An improved AI recommendation interface helps you build cohorts with smarter content suggestions. Time zone selection means your global teams see the right schedule, regardless of where they’re located.

Efficient administration at scale

Adding learners manually, one at a time, slowed down program launches for large teams. Bulk import replaces one-by-one learner entry, turning dozens of manual steps into a single action. Skill Builder group integration connects your existing team structures. Learning Admins can create and manage cohorts using Cohorts Studio without consuming a Skill Builder subscription seat. Export cohort data to Excel for reporting and sharing with your team.

Get started

These enhancements represent the first major update to Cohorts Studio since launch, and they reflect what you, our customers, told us mattered most. These updates reflect our commitment to cohort-based learning on AWS Skill Builder that is flexible, collaborative, and impactful.

Ready to get started? Explore the updated Cohorts Studio on AWS Skill Builder or learn more about AWS Skill Builder Team subscriptions. Start building your next cohort with these new capabilities today.