Help Videos: Using the Mobile App

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.

One of the advantages of the CABI Academy is that it can be accessed via an app that allows you to download content to access it offline. The app is called Moodle, which is the software that the platform is built upon.

To get to the app, go into the CABI Academy and go down to the bottom. There is a green button that will allow you to get access, click on: Get the mobile app for offline access.

• If you are using an Apple device, an iPhone or an iPad, you go to the App Store.
• If you're using an Android based device, you access it in the Google play store.

You install the Moodle app as you would any other app on your device.

Once you've downloaded and installed the app, the easiest way to get into it is if have access to another device. You can then log into the CABI Academy on that other device. If you then go to your avatar in the top-right corner, and then your Profile. Somewhere in there is a block for the mobile app. If you click on View QR code, it will give you a QR code. You can then scan that with the device that you want to use. It will automatically open the app, locate the CABI Academy and log you in with your username and password. And then you're straight in and ready to go.

If that doesn't work, or you've only got one device, what you can do is open the Moodle app. It will look something like this. Type in the address of the site, which is academy.cabi.org

It will then bring up a screen where it asks for your username. Now in fact, it's not just your username, you can put your e-mail address in. And then your password. Once you've done that you can then click on the button to Log in.

Once you have logged in, you can go to a course that you want to download, so that it is available when you are offline. When you are in the course, there is a down-arrow inside a cloud. If you click on that, it will download the course. You can then access it when you're offline.

With quiz attempts or forum activities, these are not going to work fully while you are offline, but you will still be able to interact with them. Then when you next come back and you access the app when you have got an Internet connection, it will resynchronize with your main account. So for example, your quiz scores or your past attempts will get passed back to the main system which then allows you to earn things like certificates.

Once you've accessed it via the app and you have logged in, the page is set up with two tabs.

The left-hand tab is the Site home, this is the front page of the site. And probably the most useful item on there is this Explore all learning button which will take you to a page with a list of all of the available courses. 

The right-hand tab is My learning, this is the same as the My learning area on the desktop. It will have a bit of information about yourself and then if you scroll down, you've got your recently accessed courses and then further down you'll have a list of all of your courses and you can search using the search box if necessary. So they are the two tabs at the top.

At the very bottom of the site, you've got a row of icons. The left-hand icon takes you to your My learning page, so you can go back to there at any point when you see that icon. The next icon is for My courses, so that will just take you to the list of courses on which you are enrolled. The bell icon is for notifications. So, if you've been sent an email, it will appear in here as well. And then you've got a search option. So they are the four icons that are visible at the bottom.

Then if you go up to your avatar, in the top-right corner, there are a few other options. For example, the ability to Log out. Or to Switch account, if you happen to be accessing multiple different sites through the same mobile app.

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.

Once you are inside the course within the mobile app, the easiest way to navigate through the course is to go into one of the items, and then at the bottom, there are links that will take you to either the previous activity or the next activity. So if you click on those, it will allow you to work your way through the course in a linear way.

If you want to go back to the main course page, there is a back arrow that appears in the top-left corner and you can then navigate your way up and down the course. If you want to go to a different section, you might have these buttons appearing at the bottom so you can jump to the different sections. 

You also have the course index. This appears as a grey icon in the bottom-right corner. If you open that, it will show you the structure of the entire course. And you can collapse or open any of the sections. You can click on an item to go straight to that item. To close the course index, click on the cross and you'll be back where you were before.

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 type within the CABI Academy is the forum activity, which allows you to have conversations with other people on the course that you are on. In the mobile app, this will be represented by this speech bubble icon, and if you click on that activity it will allow you to go into it.

When you first go in, at the top there will be a light grey box which will have some instructions. Usually this will start off condensed and you have to click on the down arrow to expand it so that you can read the full information.

If you want to start a new conversation, click on the plus icon in the bottom-right corner. Then you can give it a subject and then type text into the message box. There are some basic formatting tools at the bottom if you want them. Then you Post to forum.

If you want to view other discussions within the forum, if you scroll down you'll see a list of the discussions at the bottom. And you've got an option of how you sort. The green text will be the subject of each of the discussions and if you click on the arrow icon, it will take you into that discussion. You have the option of replying if you wish. You can click on Reply and you can type in a message and then you can post to respond to that forum activity.

A widely used activity within the CABI Academy is the multi-page activity, and the icon is a backward Z icon as shown. When you go into the activity, there might be some instructions in the grey box at the top or there may not. It depends on the activity. Click on Start in order to start the activity.

There will be a mixture of pages of information, videos, images, etc. And then at the bottom there are either questions or buttons that will take you to different pages within the activity. This is a matching question, so you can choose your answers, and then Submit.

It then gives feedback as to whether it is correct or incorrect. In this case, because it's incorrect, there is the option to try again, so you can go back to the question or you can ignore it and go on to the next one.

This is a similar question type. And again, if you get it wrong, you can choose to go on to the next question. This time there is a different type of question, so with this one you have to select two correct answers, so choose two out of the three boxes and click on Submit.

In this case, it’s the correct answer, so you can Continue. At the end of the activity, it will give a summary of how you’ve done and once you’ve read that, click on the back arrow and it will take you back to the course, where you came from.

Quiz activities may be included in a course as part of the main teaching, or within the final assessment that leads to your certificate. When you go into a quiz item, it has some information at the top. It may be initially collapsed, so click on the down arrow, if you want to see the rest of the information. 

Once you are ready to either start the quiz or re-attempt the quiz, there will be a button at the bottom.

If you are re-attempting a quiz, because this quiz has a time limit, it will give a warning about this. You can then Start attempt. It will bring up the questions and then you can choose which you think is the correct option. Then you can move on to the next one - and you work your way through the quiz to answer all of the questions.

When you get to the last question within the quiz, the button changes from Next to Submit. When you click on Submit, it will give a summary of each of the options. Make sure you've answered each question. You then have to click on Submit all and finish. It gives you a warning and you have to click on Submit again.

Once your submission has been accepted, you will get a review screen. It lists what your scores are and whether you've achieved the pass score. You can re-attempt the quiz if you wish to retake it.

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.