Students course registration: what improvements?

The way students understand the course system and go through the course registration process should be improved.

Here is a start of analysis before we code. You comments and suggestions are welcome.

From the home page, a newbie will probably click
- the "Courses & Exams" button in the header, or
- "Java & OO Fundamentals" in the middle left list below the search field.

Topic Page

When you click "Java & OO Fundamentals", the user comes on the topic page:
http://www.blackbeltfactory.com/ui/#topic/JavaOOFundamentals

It's not clear to me what I should do in which situation. The main part of the page should be:

The leaders would still be listed
The text explaining what is OO & Java Fundamentals would not be central anymore.

I would also add the courses overview picture (with links between courses) as it is in the TopicList page
http://www.blackbeltfactory.com/ui/#topicList/
but with a circle over the concerned topic.

TopicList page

Alternatively, if I click the "Course & Exams" button from the home page (header), I get this:
http://www.blackbeltfactory.com/ui/#topicList/

As a newbier, I see the obvious "Start Here" red label. If I click the main text ("Java & OO Fundamentals", not course - workshop - exam) beside the label, I fall on the topic page described above.

The list and the diagram give me a clear idea of what to expect on BlackBeltFactory.

I would not change anything on that page.

Course page

http://www.blackbeltfactory.com/ui/#course/javaoofundamentalscourse

If I fall on the course page without going though the topic page (is that easy?), how can I know that I can skip the course and go straight for the exam?

The 2 grey boxes in the top right corner (workshop and exam) are there to remind that.
Maybe should they be replaced with two big buttons?

The list of students should be shortened, but it will automatically be shorter when we'll automatically cancel the registration of inactive students (developped, deployed this week-end).

I click the "Access Course Content" button because
- I'm curious
- Instinctively, I'm not trying to meet anybody (coach).

I get the "How to get access to ... course" dialog box.

This dialog box has a few things to be improved. The important for our matter are:
- explain the other way to register a course: select a coach (instead of waiting for coached to apply)
- if the course is potentially free (depending on the coach), decrease the emphasis of point 5 ("Pay").

Then, what do you think should happen?

I think that the student should choose the coach himself per default, because it is more intuitive. Perhaps the profile page should contain more information that helps the student to choose a coach as for instance: language, time zone, reachability, preferred time etc. If the student choose the coach per default the process will be faster because he don't have to wait for the coaches to apply. Maybe a search functionality with options (language, timezone etc.) would help to choose a coach, too. I think it is suboptimal that two personal profile pages are accessible at the moment. And the two pages do not have exactly the same information on it. For instance on the new profile page the total sum of knowledge points is missing.

I believe that many newbies are not aware that they can take the exam without the course. Maybe the "Java & OO Fundamentals" page should be divided into three vertically parts: course, workshop and exam. At the moment the three parts may appear like a list that should be completed from top to the bottom.