Help Videos: When using a browser

To create an account on the CABI Academy, visit the site address: academy.cabi.org

In the top-right corner, click on the Log in link. And if you already have an account, this is where you enter your details.

To create a new account, there is either a link that appears, or further down there is a button. When you click on Create a new account, it will take you to a form to fill in.

The information has been populated as shown. Enter your first name, last name, email address. Choose your password and country and then at the bottom you have to select some information about yourself: age range, gender and your role. So, with the role there are a lot of different options. If your role isn't listed, you can choose ‘Other’ and you can then enter the information. Once you've done that, you click on Create my new account.

You will then be sent an email that contains a link. If you click on that link, it will bring you to a screen where it recognises and confirms your registration. Then click on Continue.

There are a series of code of conducts and policies that you have to read and agree to. There is the Learner Code of Conduct, so you would read through that and agree. There is a bit about marketing that you can choose if you want to agree or not. And then there are the Terms and Conditions, which you read through and then you agree. So once you've agreed to all of the policies or terms and conditions, it will then bring you into the site and you will be logged in with your new account.

This video is a general orientation around the CABI Academy. Once you are logged in to the CABI Academy, most of the controls are accessed from the black banner across the top. The left-hand icon will take you back to the home page which is what you are viewing at the moment.

The next link across is My Learning, so this will recognise who you are and what courses you are enrolled on to. At the top there will be an information block about yourself.

If any of the About You information has a red exclamation mark next to it, it means that it needs to be updated. So click on the Edit profile and you can update the missing information and then click on Update profile. It will take a short period of time for the exclamation mark to disappear, but it will disappear within about 5 to 10 minutes. If you scroll down slightly, it will then show you the courses that you have accessed recently and then underneath that there is a list of all of the courses onto which you are enrolled. There is another video ‘Navigation within a Course’ that explains how this page is managed in more detail.

In the black banner at the top, there is an option for All Learning and this is broken down into categories and most of the courses will appear under one of the top three: Farmer Advisory; Evidence Policy and Research; or Training materials.

For example, if you go to Farmer Advisory, this one has been then broken down into four further categories. So, if you go into Plant Health and Pest Management, it will show all of the courses that are listed under that category. So you'll see a picture of the course, the title, some key information, and if you click on the link, it will take you to that course.

If you're already enrolled, it will take you in. If you're not enrolled and if you need to pay for the course, it will take you to the payment screen. If you don't need to pay for the course, then it will take you into the course.

At the top, there is a Help option. There's a link for some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), a Contact Us form, and then there will be links to the Help Videos.

Going across to the right-hand side there is a magnifying glass icon. This will allow you to search across the site. So if you just type in any terms it will find any items to which you have access, or you are enrolled, and it will return links to those items.

The next icon across is a bell icon. This will show you any notifications, so if an email is sent to you, it will usually also appear here as a notification. And then finally you have your avatar. If you've uploaded a picture of yourself, it will show you your picture. If not, it will show you the initials of your name. If you click on that, there are various options that appear in the dropdown.

The Profile option will allow you to view your profile and from there you can also edit it. There are Language settings where you can choose a different language, if English is not your preferred language. Marketing preferences will allow you to either opt in or out of any marketing emails that come from CABI Academy. And then you've got Preferences, which will change things like notifications and other behaviours, and finally an option to Log out.

Some of the courses within CABI Academy will be chargeable to some people. So if you try and access a course and you get to a screen like this and it tells you that the cost is a certain number of pounds, then that means that you are expected to pay for the course.

To pay for the course you just need to scroll down. There's a Pay to enrol button, you click on that. The payment will go through something called ‘Stripe’, that's a widely used payment mechanism. So you click on Proceed and that will open up the Stripe checkout pane. So it will give you the cost here.

You fill in your card information, expiry date and your CVC code. You give your name and postcode and then you click on the Pay button and it will then take the payment and enrol you onto the course.

When you are inside a course, there are different ways that you can navigate around. Most people will come into the course and access the first item. In this case, it's titled Start here. If you read the content on that page, it then gives you a link in the bottom-right corner which will take you to the next item in the course. In this case, a page called About this course. And if you view that particular item, when you get to the bottom, you can either use the previous link which will take you to the item before. Or you can use the next link which will take you to the next item in the list.

Most people will navigate through a course in a linear way by starting with the first item and then using the link at the bottom-right corner to go to the next item.

If at any point you wish to return to the main course page, at the very top, you've got what is called a ‘breadcrumb trail’. It tells you are in an item called Assessment and certification. If you go back one level, that would take you to the topic, Welcome to the course. Then there is the link: Reducing Pesticide Risk, which is the name of the course, you can go back to the course page - and it takes you back to where you started.

Some people will just come in and work their way down and access items from here. And what you'll notice at the moment all of the items are visible, but if you choose the Collapse all option it will condense the course into the topics and you can then expand or collapse the topics as you wish.

Another way of navigating, is on the left-hand side, is something the course Index. If it's not visible you click on this icon here, and it will expand and this will show you all of the items in the course. And this will scroll independently of the main page and it allows you to jump straight to a particular item. You can also expand and collapse items within here by clicking on the down arrow that appears next to an item and it will allow you to collapse or expand.

Next to each item, there will be a circle. If the circle has a black border and a white middle, it means that that item has not yet been completed. If it has a green filled circle, it means that the item has been done. So you can see which items you have or haven't completed, as you work your way through the course.

The My Learning page within the CABI Academy, used to be known as the dashboard. At the top of the page there is some information about yourself. It states your current time zone, your preferred language and then information About you. And you have the option to Edit your profile if any of that information needs to be changed.

There is a list of your recently accessed courses, so the ones you were in most recently will appear on the left, scrolling across to the right. And then beneath that, is the area which will show all of the courses that you are enrolled on.

If you're only enrolled on a few, then it is quite easy to work your way around here, but if you are enrolled onto lots of courses it's worth working with this a little bit. At the moment, I have mine set to display as Card, but I can change that to List. It shows the items vertically rather than going across. It's personal preference and you can flick between the two.

If you want to search for a course you can just type in part of the course name and it will then narrow the courses down to only include the ones that contain whatever you've typed in, so that's very useful.

Each course has a three dot icon. If you click on it, you will see the option to Star the course which is the same as marking it as a favourite. You can then change the filter to only show your starred courses. So if you are enrolled on lots of courses, but there's only three or four that you want to get too quickly, you can ‘star’ those courses. Then you can filter for Starred. And you change it back to All which then lists of all your courses.

By default, when your account is created on the CABI Academy, it will have English as the preferred language. However, CABI Academy does support certain other languages and some courses have actually been translated into those languages.

So at the moment, the language is set to English, but if you want to change this, go to your avatar in the top-right corner and go down to Language settings. In the dropdown box it gives a list of the languages that CABI Academy supports. You choose the language you want and Save changes.

It will now have translated some of the site into that particular language. And if you go back to the course that you were in, you'll notice that the content within the course has also been translated into that language. Not all courses are translated into all languages, but some of them are translated into some languages - and some of the things like the names of the buttons and the links at the top may be translated into the chosen language, as well.

If you change your language here, it will also pick that up if you use the mobile app as well.

When you are working through a course on the CABI Academy, you will come across different types of activity or resource within the course. If an item has a blue icon, as shown here, this is called ‘a page’. It will include a mixture of text, images and possibly videos. 

You will also see green icons. These green icons are generally things where you will ‘do’ something. Pages are shown as blue icons, where you will be reading and viewing and green icons mean that you will be doing something. 

The icon that looks like a letter Z, is a multi-page activity and this will sometimes take you through a scenario or ask you questions. So you've got some information and you answer some questions. It might have more than one page - and it will take you through a particular situation or scenario.

There are also Forums. These have a green speech bubble icon. With a forum, you can Add a discussion topic and you can have a conversation with other people.

There is an icon that looks like an arrow that splits. This is for a poll that asks you to share an opinion, and then you'll be able to see the responses of other people once you've given your response.

There are questionnaires which will either be used as part of the confidence checks or at the end of the course. These will be a series of questions that you need to answer and then submit.

There is the quiz which will usually be used at the end of the course, but you may find that they are used as you go through the course as well. And again, this will be a series of questions, but with these there will be right and wrong answers and it will tell you if you've got them right or wrong. And you'll sometimes have a pass score that you need to achieve. 

And then finally, there is the certificate icon which is black. So once you have completed a course, you will be able to download your certificate to show that you have completed a course. 

There are other activity types, but these are the main ones that are used in most of the courses.

A widely used activity within the CABI Academy is the forum activity and it's where you can have a conversation with other people on the same course as you.

This is an Introduce yourself forum, but others may be more topic related. So if you go into the forum, bit of information at the top and if you scroll down you'll see if there have been any previous posts from other people - and you can see the list of the posts. And if you want to reply to any of the posts, you can click on the Discuss this topic option and then you can Reply and it will give you a box where you can type your response and Post to the forum. 

Or you can start your own discussion, click on Add a discussion topic. In the subject you give a very short summary of what the message is about. And in the main message you can type in more information. Once you're ready, you can Post to the forum. Next, you will see a green box that tells you that ‘you have got 30 minutes in which to edit your response’.

Sometimes when people post a forum, they'll post and then realise that they said something they shouldn't. You have 30 minutes in which to make that edit. So if you want, you can go to the Edit option, make your changes and then Save changes. Or you can Delete your response within that 30 minute window. Once that has time has passed, it will be visible to other people and you won't be able to edit or delete your responses.

A widely used activity within the CABI Academy is the multi-page activity and this has a Z-shaped icon.

When you go into the activity, there are pages of information that will either lead to a question or will lead to a decision that you need to make. In this example, there is a question and you can read the information and then answer the question and Submit.

If you get the answer correct, it will tell you it's correct. If you've got it incorrect, it will tell you why it is incorrect.

You can then continue. There is a different question. And in this case, the answer is incorrect, so you can try again. You can keep trying or you can move on to the next question.

You work your way through the activity and eventually you will get to the end. You will get a summary of how you have done. From this screen, you can then move on to the next activity within the course.

Within the CABI Academy you will often see the quiz activity. In particular, at end of a course as the final assessment. In this case, it is the Foundation Assessment.

When you go into the quiz there will be information about how long you've got, how many questions there are and what the pass score is for the quiz. Click on the button to Attempt quiz. Because this quiz has a time limit, a pop-up appears. It tells you what that time limit is, in this case it is two hours. Then can start the attempt when you are ready. There are questions and then various options. So, in this example, you can select one option and then go on to the next page. You then work your way through the quiz, answering the questions.

If you get to a question where you don't know the answer, you can Flag the question and that will act as a reminder to come back to it later on.

On the right-hand side is the quiz navigation. There are twenty boxes, one for each question. The three that have turned grey are the ones that have already been answered. When a question is flagged, there is a red triangle in the corner of the square. If the navigation isn't initially visible. then click on the arrow icon to make it visible.

So, if you just work through you can then go on to the Next question. In this case, rather than it being circles (where you can only tick one option). This particular question allows you to select one or more options (because there are squares, it allows you to choose multiple options).

You can work your way through the quiz, question by question. If you want to jump back to the one that you flagged, at the top-right there is the quiz navigation, where you can click on the number that has got the red triangle. It will then take you back to that particular question, which you can then answer. You work your way through, until all of the boxes have turned grey.

When you get to the final question in the quiz, and you answer it, you'll then have the option to Finish attempt. It will then give you a summary to make sure that you've answered all of the questions. And then it is important to click on the button to Submit all and finish. It will make sure that you want to submit all, so you have to repeat this. It will then give you a summary. So it gives a score 35 out of 100, which means the pass score has not been achieved. The pass score is 80%. So if you want to do it again, click on the Re-attempt quiz button and go through the process again.

If the course has a Practitioner Assessment, it is very similar to the foundation assessment as it is also a quiz, with some information.

There is a scenario which appears at the top with questions that are all related to that one scenario. So you choose the options that you want for each of the questions. Again, a circle means that you can only choose one item. Where you have squares, you can select one or more items.

You work your way down, until you have answered the first set of ten questions. You then click on the next page which takes you to Quiz navigation 2, with the second set of ten questions. Then you will submit and finish exactly the same as before.

In order to access your certificate, you first of all have to earn the certificate.

Within this course there is a section called Assessment and certification. There is a link to the certificate, but you will see that it is currently not available; it is not a ‘live’ link. You can see here what it is that needs to be done to be able to access the certificate. There are two items. In this case it's the assessment and the questionnaire, which are the two items listed. Once these have been completed, this link will become ‘live’.

So, you would need to complete the two activities. When they have been completed, both will be marked as Done. As a result, the certificate can be accessed. When you click on the link, you have the option to View the certificate and it will bring it up in a new tab where you can then save it. It will also send the certificate to you via email.

If, in the future, you want to come back and re-access your certificate, you can either come into the course through this section. Or if you click on your avatar in the top-right corner, and then go to Profile. When you scroll down to a section titled Miscellaneous, within there is a link called My certificates. This lists of all the certificates that have been previously earned. You can then download the certificates.