NLN Materials

URLs are long and liable to human error. Check for the following:

• If you copied and pasted the URL, ensure you used the whole URL
• If sending via an email, it is common for long URLs to be wrapped across lines. This can mean that when the link is clicked, the browser tries to use only the bit on that line, rather than the whole URL.

Each of the four major headings in the NLN Materials grid:

• ACL
• Basic and Key Skills
• Subjects
• Vocational

expands, when clicked, to reveal a list of subject areas.

Buttons on the right display the corresponding level of the Learning Objects for each subject area. The level indicators represent National Qualifications Framework (NQF) levels from Entry Level 1 (E1) to Level 4 (L4).

Click on one of the level buttons to browse to a list of Learning Objects corresponding to the subject area and level you want to find.

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

Collections let you group together one or more Learning Objects which you can then make available to your learners. Collections are designed to be generic and flexible - what you do with them is entirely up to you. You can create as many as you like, and edit them at any time. Some of the possible uses of collections include:

• As an easy way to "bookmark" and easily return to the Learning Objects you are interested in.
• To share such selections with colleagues within your organisation, or with anyone in the site.
• To share such selections with colleagues within your organisation, or with anyone in the site.
• To share Learning Objects with your students online
• To download Learning Objects for distribution on CD/DVD/Intranets/Virtual Learning Environments.

To make a new collection, first ensure you are logged in, then click the "collections" link at the left of any page. Click on the "create new" link shown, and fill in a title and (optionally) a description. Once that is done, the collection should appear within the collections box.

The title of any collection in the list can be clicked at any time to visit the collection page. Here you can edit the title, description and other fields, and edit the contents of the collection. You can also download the collection, delete it, or make a copy of it.

You can add Learning Objects to a collection at any time. From the home page, click one of the buttons within the materials table. You will then be presented

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

Click on the "Download this Collection" link in the collection page and follow the instructions.

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

• Create a collection containing all the required materials.
• Click the title of the collection in the list to visit the collection page. Here you can click the "Edit collection contents" button to re-order or rename the contents.
• When the collection is complete, click "Download this collection". Select "CD or DVD delivery" as your target platform and follow the instructions to download the resultant zip file to your computer.
• Unzip the contents of the file into a new folder on your computer.
• Copy the entire contents of the new folder to your CD drive (typically D: drive) or USB chip (typically E:drive). The files go.exe and Autorun.inf should be at the root of the drive - not within any sub-folders.
• The resultant CD or USB should now auto-run when inserted into any drive

If auto-run is switched off or does start automatically, go to My Computer, click on the CD or USB drive (typically D: and E: drive respectively) and click on the go.exe file with the gray Xtensis logo.

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

Firstly create a collection containing all the materials you wish to import. Then, from the collection page click "download this collection". When given the choice of target platform, select "Moodle", and follow the instructions shown to download the collection as a zip file.

The file you download contains the whole collection. Within it, there is one zip file per Learning Object. These are the Scorm Packages that Moodle needs. There are two alternative processes for getting the LOs into Moodle:

Process 1:

This is the easiest method as it only involves one upload, especially if you want to import all the LOs in a collection to Moodle. However, it involves an upload of the entire collection at once, and some Moodle systems have restrictions on the size of any single file upload.

• Using the Files section in Moodle, click upload and select the collection zip. (If this doesn't work, Process 2 must be used.)
• Once uploaded, use the Files section in Moodle to unzip it. This should leave you with lots of zips on Moodle – one for each Scorm Package. (The collection zip file can then be deleted from Moodle if you wish.)
• Within a course editing page, create a new Scorm, and point Moodle to one of those zips. Repeat this step for all the other LOs in the collection you want to use.

Process 2:

This method involves smaller uploads, but more of them.

• Unzip the collection zip locally. This should leave you with lots of local zips – these are the Scorm Packages.
• Use the Files section in Moodle to upload each of the package zips you require.
• Within a course editing page, create a new Scorm, and point Moodle to one of those zips. Repeat this step for all the other LOs in the collection you want to import.

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

Each collection has a title, an optional description, a list of contents, and its own learner URL Such URLs always begin with http://go.nln.ac.uk/

You can give this URL to your learners so that they can access the collection themselves.

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

You can edit the contents, title, description and other parameters of the collection by clicking on the edit button and entering details in the appropriate forms (or checking the appropriate boxes) to Rename Learning Objects to remove unwanted Learning Objects and change the order of Learning Objects in the collections.

When you have finished editing, press the Submit Changes button.

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

You can determine who else can see your collection.

Choose from:

• Private - only the original creator can ever see the collection
• Provider - any other practitioner accounts within your provider can also see the collection
• Public - anyone can view the collection

Collection visibility does not affect whether learners can view a collection. Any collection they access using the collection's URL will be available, regardless of its visibility setting in the interface for practitioners. Visibility only controls access to view the collection by practitioners. Only the original creator of the collection can ever edit it.

This is more comprehensively covered in the User Guide, which can be found in the Support section of the home page.

Use the description field to enter a summary of the collection suitable for display to learners. When you share the collections with learners - either by distributing its Learner URL, or downloading and sharing it on CD/DVD - this text will be shown to learners as an introduction. The pedagogy description, on the other hand, will not be shown to users, and can be used to store your own information, such as educational objectives. If you choose to share the collection with other practitioners (by setting the "visibility" property) the pedagogy description field can be a good place to share useful information about the collection.

Note that both fields are optional, so how you use them is really up to you!

A "cache" is a store of copies of web-pages your browser holds on your local machine. To improve performance, your browser will often use an old copy of a web-page rather than requesting the latest version from the website. Normally this works fine, but in some occasions - when we update the site your browser still may be displaying an old version of a page. Clearing the cache forces the browser to see the latest version of a page on the site, and is often a good way to solve problems you experience.

The procedure is quite simple, but depends on what browser you are using. If you don't know what version you are using, hold down your keyboard's "Alt" key, and press H and then A.

• Internet Explorer 7 (on Windows):
  1. Open the Tools menu. (If you cannot see the menu bar, hold down the Alt key on your keyboard to show menus.)
  2. From the menu, choose Delete Browsing History.
  3. From the options available, click the Delete Files button - within the Temporary Internet Files section.
  4. Click Close. Then restart your browser and revisit the search page to try again.
• Internet Explorer 6 (on Windows):
  1. Open the Tools menu and choose Internet Options...
  2. Make sure you are looking at the General page. Within the Temporary Internet Files box, click the Delete Files.. button.
  3. Click OK in the new window. (There's no need to check "Delete all offline content".)
  4. Close the Internet Options window. Then restart your browser and visit the search page to try again.
• Firefox:
  1. Open the Tools menu and choose "Clear Private Data"
  2. Ensure "Cache" is checked. Uncheck all other options. Click the "Clear Private Data Now" button.
  3. Now restart your browser and visit the search page to try again.

For other browsers, please see the browser's help documentation.

Check that any pop-up blocker you have installed is not preventing the new window from opening. If possible, add "www.nln.ac.uk" and "go.nln.ac.uk" to the list of allowed sites. Note that if you are distributing collection URLs to learners with similarly configured computers, they may experience the same issue.

A separate facility to download the entire library will be available soon.

Please see the contact page for further support options.

If you were registered with the previous "Content Access Tool" (which is no longer available), you should have received an e-mail advising you of the new service and providing instructions on how to register. If not, the information is repeated below:

Since the new service is run by a different provider, existing user accounts cannot automatically be transferred to the new service, due to the Data Protection Act. You will therefore need to set up a new account on the new service. Registration is straightforward and will only take a couple of minutes: click on the "New User?" link. You will then be guided through the registration process.

The materials are available free to all staff at authorized organizations under licence from the LSC. Please carefully read the terms of the licence and the site privacy policy while registering.

Once registered, the best way to become familiar with the new service is to consult the User Guide.

You will have received an e-mail advising you of the new service and providing instructions on how to register.

Since the new service is run by a different provider, existing user accounts cannot automatically be transferred to the new service, due to the Data Protection Act. You will therefore need to set up a new account on the new service. Registration is straightforward and will only take a couple of minutes. To do this, click on the "New User?" link where you will be guided through the registration process.

The materials are available free to all staff at authorized organizations under licence from the LSC. Please carefully read the terms of the license and the site privacy policy while registering.

Note that the new service takes a different approach to learner access from LearnTrain. The new service does not hold any individual learner accounts, though access for learners can easily be provided. To do this, you may create any number of "collections" - similar to LearnTrain’s "folders". Once created, rather than using LearnTrain’s internal messaging system to share them, you can take the Learner URL (the internet address) of the collection and give this to learners (by regular email, adding it to your organisation’s intranet or VLE, etc.) Alternatively, you may download a collection for easy distribution on CD/DVD or your intranet/VLE. Note that as this will be a new account, your existing folders will not be preserved.

Once registered, the best way to become familiar with the new service is to consult the User Guide.

You do not have to do anything. Your existing account will continue to be valid.

Your account is already registered on the system so you do not need to do anything further. However you will be asked to agree to the terms of the LSC Licence to use the NLN Materials, and to agree to the site’s new privacy policy.

The new site offers all the functionality of the old, but with several new ways to perform familiar tasks. The service has been updated in the following ways:

1. the new site is now completely integrated into the www.nln.ac.uk site, with a new modern look and feel, and significantly faster response times
2. a new powerful and integrated search and browse facility to find appropriate materials, including live text search, and sorting of search results. Learning Objects can now be added to collections without leaving the search result page
3. as with the old site, you can add LOs to your collections at any time, though how you do this is slightly different. On the previous site, this was done by the use of a drop-down box below search results. On the new site, your collections are listed on every page (while logged in) by expanding the "Collections" link on the left of the page. While viewing search results, simply select any number of LOs and click the + button next to any collection. You can also add individual LOs by visiting their pages and again clicking the + button. Clicking the title of the collection in the list allows you to visit that collection page, wherever you are in the site
4. edit your collections of materials in new ways, including renaming and reordering of the Learning Objects within a collection, or make a copy of other people’s collections for your own use, or make a copy of your own. The ability to add your own content to collections is soon to be added.
5. previously only NLN Materials Coordinators could export collections. This role has now gone, and anyone may directly download collections for easy import into virtual learning environments (VLEs) such as Moodle, or immediate use on CD, DVD or Intranets
6. note that collection URLs have changed. When the new site went live (lat October 2007), any editing of existing collections must be done on the new site. The old collection URLs (starting with http://go.xtensis.co.uk...) will work fine for now, but should be replaced by new ones (starting http://go.nln.ac.uk...). Only when the new collection URLs are used will learners see any changes you have made since the transition to the new site. In other words, although all collections have been copied to the old site, the old collection URLs will still point to the old copies of the collections. Collection URLs should be updated as soon as possible and we do not guarantee they will be available indefinitely. Note that collection URLs pointing to the new site show a different page format to the old site, but the learner page otherwise functions the same.
7. the “practitioner password” is now known as an “organisation password”. It serves the same role, and has the same value, and is required by new users when they register. Learners do not need a password. New functionality enables new users to request the password from colleagues, and a new value within your profile enables you to state whether you are prepared to receive e-mails from colleagues within your organization who have either forgotten or need access to your organisation password.

You will have received an e-mail advising you of the new service and providing instructions on how to register.

Since the new service is run by a different provider, existing user accounts cannot automatically be transferred to the new service, due to the Data Protection Act. You will therefore need to set up a new account on the new service. Registration is straightforward and will only take a couple of minutes:To do this, click on the “New User?” link underneath the log-in box at www.nln.ac.uk where you will be guided through the registration process.

The materials are available free to all staff at authorized organizations under license licence from the LSC. Please carefully read the terms of the license licence and the site privacy policy while registering.

Note that the new service takes a different approach to learner access from LearnTrain. The new service does not hold any individual learner accounts, though access for learners can easily be provided. To do this, you may create any number of “collections” - similar to LearnTrain’s “folders”. Once created, rather than using LearnTrain’s internal messaging system to share them, you can take the unique URL (the internet address) of the collection and give this to learners (by regular email, adding it to your organisation’s intranet or VLE, etc.) Alternatively, you may download a collection for easy distribution on CD/DVD or your intranet/VLE. Note that as this will be a new account, your existing folders will not be preserved.

Once registered, the best way to become familiar with the new service is to consult the User Guide. This is available from the options within the “Support” section of the home page.

You do not have to do anything. Your existing account will continue to be valid.

Your account is already registered on the system so you do not need to do anything further. However you will be asked to agree to the terms of the LSC Licence to use the NLN Materials, and to agree to the site’s new privacy policy.

The new site offers all the functionality of the old, but with several new ways to perform familiar tasks. The service has been updated in the following ways:

1. the new site is now completely integrated into the www.nln.ac.uk site, with a new modern look and feel, and significantly faster response times
2. a new powerful and integrated search and browse facility to find appropriate materials, including live text search, and sorting of search results. Learning Objects can now be added to collections without leaving the search result page
3. edit your collections of materials in new ways, including renaming and reordering of the Learning Objects within a collection, or make a copy of other people’s collections for your own use.
4. previously only “NLN Materials Coordinators” could export collections. This role has now gone, and anyone may directly download collections for easy import into virtual learning environments (VLEs) such as Moodle, or immediate use on CD, DVD or Intranets
5. the “practitioner password” is now known as an “organisation password”. It serves the same role, and is required by new users when they register. Learners do not need a password. New functionality enables new users to request the password from colleagues, and a new value within your profile enables you to state whether you are prepared to receive e-mails from colleagues within your organization who have either forgotten or need access to your organisation password.

Please see the contact page for further support options.

If you are an existing user you will have received an e-mail advising you how to register.

If you did not receive an e-mail or no longer have access to it or if you are new user, go to the New User? link on the Log-in box on the home page of www.nln.ac.uk and follow the registration process.

Note that if you are an existing ACL account holder, your account is already registered on the system so you do not need to re-register. However you will be asked to agree to the terms of the LSC Licence to use the NLN Materials, and to agree to the site’s new privacy policy.

The following sectors are currently authorised to use the NLN Materials:

• British Further Education (FE)
• English and Welsh Adult and Community Learning (ACL)
• English and Welsh Work-based Learning (WBL)
• English and Welsh Schools
• Offender Learning Institutions
• Specialist Colleges

If you are from an organisation from these sectors, then you will be able to register by selecting from the list of organisations that will appear during the registration process. Please see the User Guide for more details. If your organisation is among the authorised sectors, but you cannot find it within the registration wizard, please see this question.

Note: if you have a pre-existing ACL account, you do not need to re-register as your details will be valid on the new system.

Please first see the previous question to ensure your organisation is within a sector/country currently covered by the service.

If you cannot find your organisation, first try selecting more sectors on the first page of the registration wizard. For example, if you work at an FE college that also offers work-based learning services, you may need to check FE as well as Work-based Learning in the list. Note you can check as many sectors as you wish, though this may result in quite a long list.

Note the organisation list is ordered alphabetically, disregarding any prefixes such as "The" or "HMP". If your organisation is commonly referred to using an acronym, check for this as well as the full name.

Finally, if your organisation was renamed in the last couple of years, check for the old name. Similarly, if the organisation used to be covered by a different RSC region, check the old region.

If your organisation is not listed, please contact the help desk to let us know. Please also contact us if you find your organisation listed incorrectly - such as using an old name or an incorrect region. In such cases please feel free to proceed with registration - there's no need to wait for us to correct the error before registering. However, if you find your organisation listed twice, please let us know and wait for us to reply before registering.

There are two main ways to obtain your organisation password:

• By asking a colleague who is already registered
• Automatically as part of the registration process. See the link "I do not know my organisation password" on Step 4 of the registration wizard.

Note: Remember that the Organisation Password is just used to approve registration (Step 4 of the Process), and is unrelated to the individual password you can choose for yourself and enter on the last page of the registration wizard (see Step 5), and which you subsequently use to log-in.

Use the "Forgot password?" link in the Log-in box on any page

No. The system does not hold any individual learner accounts, though access for learners can easily be provided.

To do this, you may create any number of “collections”. Once created, you can take the unique URL (the internet address) of the collection and give this to learners (by regular email, adding it to your organisation’s intranet or VLE, etc.)

Alternatively, you may download a collection for easy distribution on CD/DVD or your intranet/VLE. Note that as this will be a new account, your existing folders will not be preserved.

It is not usually necessary for students to register at all, though there is no limitation against this.

Most practitioners find it more useful to create one or more collections and then give the Learner URL of the collections to students - who then do not need to register or log-in.

This is comprehensively covered in the user guide (available within the support box on the home page).

Please see the privacy policy here. The policy states that your information will not be disclosed to third parties except when required by law, or the operation of the service is transferred to another party.

Please see the contact page for further support options.

There are some features of the site that are undergoing final testing before being integrated into the live site. These include:

• Edit my profile - this page will allow you to change your log-in password, name, and preferences, and will appear soon within the support box.
• Download collections - this function is is now available.
• View shared collections - this function is undergoing final testing and will be available soon. When available, the page will be accessible from a link just above the list of collections.
• Selections of Learning Objects don't stay selected - and boxes on the home page don't stay open - when I return to a page - this facility will be added soon.

The following batches of NLN Materials were not available at the launch of the new site, but were surfaced on Friday 26th October.

• Construction (Level 3)
• Maths (Level 2)
• Health and Social Care (Level 2)
• Health and Safety (Level 2)

The following batches were added on the 10th November.

• Care Skills (listed as Level 2 - though should be Level 4. This will be corrected soon.)
• Wider Key Skills (Levels 1-3)

The following batch was added on the 21st November.

• Horticulture (Level 2, within the subject "Geography and Environmental Studies")

If you do not see any of these batches in search results, please try clearing your browser's cache. Please see this question for details on how to do that.

A current limitation of the system is that apostrophes are not allowed in either names or user IDs at the moment. We apologise for this inconvenience. We hope to resolve this very soon.

In the mean time, you could choose a User ID that is not your email address (checking the box to indicate so) and omit the apostrophe when entering your name.

An "edit profile" feature will be available soon, which will let you revert back to the correct details when we've resolved the apostrophe issue.

Important note: A new page has been launched dedicated to using the NLN Materials in Moodle, including how to effectively set up and use a local repository.

This answer has been updated (24/06/08) with our latest information. It previously incorrectly stated that the problem could be resolved by upgrading to the latest version of Moodle. We apologise for any confusion this may have caused.

The IMS repository option allows Moodle users to import and centrally manage multiple packages of content. When you deploy downloaded Learning Objects in your Moodle repository, you may receive the error message "UTF-16 - CANNOT DEPLOY". This is due to a limitation of the Moodle code, which cannot import manifest files (XML files within each package that describe the structure and properties of the package) when they use "UTF-16 encoding". It is not essential to understand what this means - only to note that all packages downloaded from the NLN site before 16th June 2008 used that format. After that date, downloaded packages use UTF-8 encoding, so should not experience this problem.

If you have many packages already downloaded, and do not wish to re-download them, a script is now available which modifies the IMS Repository module, or the MrCute extension, to remove the limitation. These scripts - along with some extra background information - can be found in the "Bugs and Problems" box on MrCute's test and discussion page.

If you are not sure which encoding your downloaded packages have, checking them is pretty simple – open the imsmanifest.xml file within the content package in Notepad and check the first line. UTF-8 packages will have the first line of

<?xml version="1.0"?>

and so should deploy into Moodle with no problems, whereas the problematic UTF-16 packages will have the line

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16" ?>

Last updated 3/9/09 - 12:00

The recently released version of MrCute contains some functionality (most prominently - text searching) that is not yet available to users who download Noodle from the Noodle project page and use it without MrCute v2.

In order to support this 'pre-release' functionality, MrCute v2 installations are currently linking to a development server, rather than the 'live' server that serves the rest of the NLN community. Unfortunately, during this week, this development server has suffered some instability, linked to the development of a different feature. We wholeheartedly apologise to users who have suffered outages of service because of this.

Workaround information - for Moodle admins

In order to workaround this temporary issue, we have redirected the address MrCute v2 uses (http://noodle.nln.ac.uk) from the development server to the live server. This change will take up to 24 hours to propagate around the internet. Although this change will restore stability to the service, it will mean text searching will not be available, including searches initiated through MrCute. Practitioners will still be able to use the categories available from the first page of Noodle to select and add Learning Objects.

This change will be temporary. From early next week, we expect to be able to restore functionality. This will be either by restoring stability to the development server, or migrating the new functionality to the live server so that all Noodle users receive the same experience. Either way, the reversion will be automatic, and no configuration changes will be required.

A small but prominent note will soon be added to the top of the Noodle window pointing to this FAQ.

Note that viewing (by learners) of LOs already added to a Moodle course will have been unaffected by the recent problems, as all those are served by the live server.

Please see the contact page for further support options.

The 6 entry level Learning Objects in the search results for Making Learning Work for You are suitable for all three entry levels (according to the content developer) but the Level column only ever shows one value – in this case entry-level 1. We're considering better ways to present this.

We are currently investigating this issue. The following should be taken as provisional information on this problem.

The problem stems from the stricter security in place within browsers now than when these materials were first developed. When one of the affected Learning Objects are first run on any machine, the Shockwave movie tries to download and install several additional bits of code. If run under a Windows account that is not "administrator level", the download and install will fail, causing the playback to apparently hang.

To resolve this, you must log-in to the computer as an administrator, and then play any one of the affected Learning Objects to give it a chance to fully download and install everything the series needs. After that, that particular machine should play all of them without a problem from then on, whatever account is used. This procedure should be repeated on any computer that needs to play those materials.

We are currently working to confirm this information, and to find a more convenient solution to the issue.

The developers of the materials in this batch incorrectly assumed every learning environment in which the content would be hosted would provide a "forward" button. What this instruction really means is "proceed to the next unit". When playing these learning objects within the NLN site, this is done by clicking the next item in the table of contents list on the left.

This issue affects all Learning Objects developed by Epic for Round 1, including batches covering science, business studies, and health care.

When launched, a line of code within the content attempts to reposition the content to the top-left of the window. In most environments, this partially or completely covers up the table of contents. The issue only occurs when using Internet Explorer - Firefox users will not be affected. We are currently investigating solutions to this issue and will expand on this answer soon.