One page per course, not per session

Somebody enrolling wants to know what the course is, who teaches it, what it costs, and when it runs. All of that belongs on one page, with the dates listed on it.

Publishing each session as its own event gives you eight thin pages competing with each other in search, none of which explains the course, and a prospective student who has to work out that they belong together. It also makes “sold out” a decision you have to record eight times.

Model it as a rule with an end

Eight Thursdays from a start date is FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=TH;COUNT=8. One entry, one page, eight dates, a definite finish. Change the count for a six-week course. Add a cancelled date for the week that falls in half term.

If your sessions are not evenly spaced — three Saturdays chosen around a venue's availability — the calendar format handles that too, with explicit dates attached to the event rather than a pattern. Worth checking your plugin supports it, because plenty only offer regular repeats.

Cohorts

The same course running in spring and autumn is two entries, not one with two rules. They have different dates, different capacity, and probably different prices, and somebody enrolling needs to choose between them clearly.

Keep the shared description in one place if your site allows it, but let each cohort be a thing that can be full, cancelled or moved on its own.

The timezone question

For an in-person course, use the venue's timezone and label it. Nobody travelling to a classroom needs a conversion.

For an online course, students are elsewhere, and this is one of the few cases where showing the visitor's own time is genuinely helpful — as long as you show both. “18:30 CET (17:30 your time)” removes the doubt; a silent conversion creates it, because the reader cannot tell which one they are looking at.

Be careful in the fortnights when different countries change their clocks on different days. A course that is “always 17:30 in London” is not always the same time in New York, and those two weeks are when students miss a session.

Let students subscribe

When somebody enrols, give them a subscription link or an .ics with the whole series in it. Eight sessions in their calendar with reminders is worth more to attendance than any number of reminder emails, and it costs you one link.