Hello Kristin, Thank you for sharing management strategy for cohorts. Indeed, the mixing is good. I am on both ends of understanding cohorts . . . as an instructor and as a student. In my current class as a student, I am called a "drop-in." A drop-in student did not begin with the cohort, nor does that person follow the cohort to its completion. Acceptance into the cohort may vary with openness, maturity, diversity, and other factors. Our cohorts in the program where I instruct bond (or isolate students) early on, in the General Ed. courses. By the time they get to my classes, they can be a fairly cohesive and somewhat inpenetrable group. It is my job to discover the individual personalities in order to reach them and teach them. As has been said in some on-line teaching, the instructor can actually be the "intruder" until she or he proves to be worthy of acceptance by the cohort.