Allow events to have multiple sessions

The organization I work for is using CiviEvent to coordinate and orchestrate our workshops and trainings as well as more traditional events and we'd love to be able to have events run over more than one occurrence. I know of another eight similar organizations who are using CiviEvent in this way and are running into the same problem.

An example would be a class that starts on 5/21 and runs for eight sessions every Tuesday and Thursday. Another, less logical example is another class that's help three Wednesdays in a row, then on two Saturdays in a row and three more Wednesdays in a row.

The current workaround we are working with is to create additional events that don't allow user registration and then adding registrants to those events on a rolling basis.