Frequently Asked Questions

Self-publsihed lessons use a feature within the CALI Author software that allows faculty members to create their own lessons, quizzes or study aids.  It also provides the opportunity for editing existing CALI lessons. This could be done to change the length of a lesson or to add in jurisdictional differences, for example.

All Self-Published Lessons appear on the CALI website and have the same style as "Official" CALI Lessons.  However, only those people with the URL of the AutoPublished Lesson will be able to find and use it.  It will not appear in search results of the CALI website nor will edited lessons replace the "Official" version.

CALI Lessons and Self-Published Lessons look a lot alike - after all, they reside on the same website and are created with the same software. They will also both show up in a student's "My Lesson Runs" dashboard. However, there are some important differences between the two:

• CALI does not review the content of Self-Published Lessons, nor do we modify or update them. Self-published lessons are purely the creation of your professor and, thus, CALI makes no gaurantees about self-published lesson content.
• Self-published lessons are not publicly visible at cali.org, unlike regular CALI Lessons available to all authorized users through the CALI Library of Lessons. Only users who have been given the URL to an self-published lesson have access to that lesson.
• Self-published lessons have a special SPL logo in the upper-left, in place of the CALI Lesson logo found on regular CALI Lessons.

Self-published lessons allow faculty at CALI member schools to edit and customize CALI Lessons or create their own lessons and quizzes from scratch using CALI Author. A self-published lesson is published to the CALI website to make it visible to anyone who has the link to it. Self-published lessons on the CALI website provide scoring and performance information for all student who work on the lesson..

Some notes:

• You must have a CALI faculty/staff account to self-publish lessons from CALI Author.
• Only registered CALI users can work on self-published lessons published on the CALI website.
• If you wish to leave a CALI Lesson as it is, considered using LessonLink. This will give you all the same scoring and performance options.

Self-publishing a lesson;

Lessons you create with CALI Author can be published to the CALI website and made available for your students. Self-published lessons do not become part of the publicly-available library of CALI lessons and are only available to whom you provide the URL.

• Once you have completed your lesson, publish your lesson from your Lesson Library. From your open lesson, go to File in the upper left corner and choose Save & Exit to Lessons Home. From there, enter your Lesson Library.
• Find your lesson in the list and select the arrow icon for Publish my lesson on www.cali.org. (Hovering over the icons will reveal their functions.)
• Choosing to publish will take you directly to the lesson where you can run the lesson or copy the lesson URL that you can provide to students so they can log in to the site and run it. You will also receive an email with the lesson URL from webmaster@cali.org with the subject “[CALI] About Your Self Published Lesson.”
• Once you have published your lesson, a new option to Run my published lesson on www.cali.org that looks like a play button will appear in your CALI Author Lesson Library for that lesson.

Tip: If you publish your lesson then make additional edits, you will need to re-publish for the changes to take effect on the published version. From your Lesson Library, choose the arrow icon to Update my published lesson on www.cali.org. 

Yes, yes you can!

1. Make sure you are logged into CALI with the faculty account that published the self-published lesson.
2. Select "My CALI Library" from the CALI Dashboard menu.
3. Go to your list of Self-published lessons.
4. FInd the lesson title you'd like details on and click on "Results" for basic scores or "Analytics" to get a more detailed break down of student performance. You can also download a spreadsheet of basics scores.
5. On the "Results" page, clicking on the percentage score of a student will open a page with more details of how the student did.
6. The "Analytics" page provides you with more indepth analyisis of how students performed as a group across the entirety of the lesson.

Yes, simply login with your faculty account then:

1. Select "My CALI Library" from the CALI Dashboard menu.
2. Go to your list of Self-published lessons.
3. Select the title of the lesson you want to delete or hide.
4. This will take you to the page for the lesson.
5. Clcik on the edit tab to make changes to cover page for the lesson.
6. If you wish to hide the lesson, scroll down to the bottom of the page under "Publishing Options" and uncheck "published" and then click save.
7. If you wish to completely delete the lesson, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the "delete" button.

Please note that while this hides or deletes your self-published lesson on the CALI website the lesson continues to exist in your CALI Author library.

No. Access to many resources hosted on the CALI website, including self-published lessons, require the user to be logged into the CALI website. Only individuals associated with CALI Member schools and organizations are able to do this.

Self-publsihed lessons are the sole creation and responsibility of their author.  You can tell you are taking an self-published lesson by the "Self Publsihed" logo in the upper left corner of the lesson.

CALI does not review self-published lessons nor do we make any guarantees about their quality or content.  If you have any questions about the material, please contact the author of the self-published lesson.

It does happen, although they will be subject to the same editorial and review processes before becoming an official CALI Lesson. Please contact Sara Smith (ssmith @ cali dot org) for more information.