How flexible is my time commitment on BlueDot’s courses?

By Li-Lian Ang (Published on May 22, 2024)

Most people apply to our courses alongside a full-time commitment or while moving between opportunities. We’ve gotten a lot of questions like:

I’m not sure what my schedule will be like. Is there flexibility with the discussion times?
What if I can’t consistently make it to one block of time each week?
Will the times work for me, given that I am in a particular timezone or shifting time zones during the course?

In this article, we’ll answer these questions and explain what your time commitment on the course looks like to help set expectations for the course.

We’ll set up your weekly discussion session based on your time availability

Once you are accepted on the course (yay!), we’ll ask for your time availability for the duration of the course to give us a sense of when we can schedule your sessions.

We have an algorithm which works out the overlap between:

You
5-7 other people with a similar level of knowledge and skills on the topic
A facilitator who is more knowledgeable than your cohort on the topic

Once we send you this weekly meeting time, you also have the option to switch to a cohort meeting at a different time. We have participants and facilitators worldwide, so finding a time shouldn’t be an issue!

You’ll spend 2-3 hours asynchronously preparing for your sessions.

You can decide when in the week you'll do this, whether it's at a fixed time each week or whenever you can find 20 minute blocks of time to spare. In total, it will take 2-3 hours to complete the readings and exercises before each discussion session.

We update the materials each week based on feedback from the previous session. The final version of the preparation materials will be ready at least a week before your meeting, so you have sufficient time to prepare.

You can switch to another session if you can’t make it to your original session.

We understand that life happens, and you might not be able to make the same block of time every week. You can switch to any available sessions throughout the week using our cohort-switching app. Depending on the size of the course, there are 10-30 cohorts you could switch to.

Here's a preview of our cohort switching app:

We schedule sessions between Sunday and Saturday. So, for example, if you can’t make it to your original session 2 on Wednesday, the cohort running the latest session 2 that week will be on Saturday. You are also welcome to switch as many times as you like and to submit a manual request to us so we can help you find a time that best suits you, perhaps with another group of participants which still matches your knowledge and skill level.

We're committed to working with you to make sure you can engage with the course, in spite of any curveballs life throws at you.