I need some general guidance for a language institute setup

So, I have been reading documentation and flooding the forum with a lot of questions which made me understand better gibbon. Still I don’t have it completely figured out and might need a bit guidance since I need to have it all set and ready to go by march (That’s right, coming March).
So here’s my scenario: We have 3 main levels: A, B, C. Each of those has sublevels, for instance A1-1, A1-2, A2, B3, C3. Some of this have two different timetables (If I didn’t get the concept wrong). I know this may sound a bit vague or wide, but I bet you guys with more experience than me or, the admins will understand my questions.

So, I would take the following steps (and I would like to create a roadmap for others in similar scenarios than me, from this post and the answers)

  • Create at less the current school year and both two terms we use.
  • In my special case, define saturday as common day, since we do have courses on Sat. That's done in School Admin / Manage days of Week. We should also define the times of opening, and close.
  • Set special days (holidays, right?)
  • We only do one language courses, so departments don't apply, but otherwise, set departments for each language.
  • Since we don't have a defined room for each course, spaces won't apply for us, but otherwise, set the spaces
  • At this point, I don't understand the concept of rollgroups. What's this?
  • Now, we create users and from People / Staff we set their roles, like Teachers, support, admins.
  • Now we need to do the timetabling setup and here's where I seem to not be quite clear.
  • We first define the timetables, I understand here we define one timetable for each course and time. So for instance, let's say that for A1-1 I have two different... how do you call it? hours?: Tue and Thu 16:30; Mon and Wed 21:00. I shoud ten create a timetable or A1-1 on Mon and Wed, and one more for A1-1 Tue and Thu. Is that right?
  • Then I go to Courses and Classes Management and create the different Courses. So, here is where I should create the different courses, right? Like A1-1, A1-2, A2, B1... I should also be creating separate courses for intensive courses, if I have any.
  • Next comes "Classes". I can manage hem from within each Course editing. But I don't get this concept either. What are Classes? Maybe in this scenario I don't need this?
  • The next step should be, if I am not wrong, Manage Columns, here I first add a column and then, I can edit it. Here's my next doubt: So, here I should add different "times" for each different time schema ? For instance, if each day has a different schema because different courses of different levels are given, I should create one column (schema) for day? Or is this more like, I should use this feature for defining each course (A1-1, B2, A2, C3, A1 Intensive...) times/hours?
I will leave here by now and once I have this corrected with everyone's feedback and my own experience, I will continue with a couple more. Hope we can build a clear roadmap together!

Javiers,
I’m trying to setup Gibbon for a language/training center, and I should admit that Gibbon looks promising. But as you said, it’s difficult to setup and run, especially for newcomers.
Hope someone will have a clear senario on how to achieve this.
Yours,

Hi! I was thinking I would give live to this post :D. If anyone can bring a bit of light to any of these steps, it would be a great contribution. Thanks!

javiers, I think the difficulty here is that the original post is very long, and involves a lot of thinking to work our what is being asked, and compose answers. The better bet might be to break it down into more specific questions, which are more likely to get answers.

Oh, I see. I just thought I could build a full tutorial out of the answers I collect. But that does make snese. I will create separate posts. Thanks!

Javiers, the tutorial might well be possible once the answers are collected, but I think the collection is done separately. I do appreciate the sentiment to build up something useful for others : )