Frequently Asked Questions

Access to CALI Lessons (and certain other materials) is limited to faculty, students and staff of CALI's member organizations. If you fall into this category, you'll need to create an account on CALI's website before you can continue. To create an account, you'll need two things:

1. A CALI Authorization Code from your school or organization.  A list of CALI representatives that have the code is available on the CALI website.  Alternatively, they are usually available in the library.
2. An email address.  Any email address will work provided it's not a Hotmail address, which we've had to ban due to spammer activity.

During registration, you will be asked to create a username and password for your CALI account.  This is what you'll use to log into CALI from then on.

Yes.  Scores are automatically saved when you take a CALI lesson.  To resume:

1. Log into the CALI website.
2. Hover over "CALI Dashboard" so that the drop down menu appears.
3. Click on "My Lesson Runs."  This will take you to a page that will list all of your CALI lesson activity.
4. Click on "resume" for the lesson you would like to resume. It will return you to the spot you were at when you quit the lesson.

If you're working on a CALI Lesson and it appears to freeze or kick you out or otherwise impede your progress it is very important that you do not refresh or reload your browser window. Refreshing or reloading your browser window will break the Lesson Viewer and prevent your work from being saved properly. If you appear stuck in a Lesson try the following:

1. Click on the next entry in the Lesson's Table of Contents. This is especially helpful if you find yourself looking at an apparently blank page with nothing but the contents menu on the left.
2. Verify that the Lesson was started properly and data is being saved. To check, open a new browser tab (do not close the open Lesson window or tab) and go to https://www.cali.org/mylessonruns. On the Lesson Runs page you should see information for the Lesson that you're working on. If you see information for the Lesson that you're stuck in then it is safe to exit the open Lesson and use the resume feature to pick up where you left off.
3. Exit the Lesson using the Exit icon in the upper left of the Lesson Viewer. You can always use the Exit icon in the upper left of the Lesson Viewer (it looks like a door) to leave the Lesson. Once you exit you are taken to your Lesson Runs page at https://www.cali.org/mylessonruns. Form there you can use the Resume feature to renter the Lesson at the point where you exited.

If you're interested in more information about how things work with the Lesson Viewer please read on...

Generally speaking Lessons don't kick students out or freeze up, indeed they are designed to prevent loss of data. When a Lesson is started the complete contents of the Lesson and the CALI Viewer are loaded into the browser like a large single web page. Score data is sent back to our server as the Lesson progresses but the Viewer is designed to display an alert if it cannot connect to the network or our server. There are situations in some Lessons where students are presented with an intentional blank page and it is unclear how to proceed or a student may happen upon a bug in a Lesson that makes forward progress difficult. In any situation where a student feels as if they've been kicked out of a Lesson or the Lesson has frozen, the best option is to exit the Lesson using the icon in the upper right of the Lesson Viewer and then use the resume link on their My Lesson Runs page to reenter the Lesson where they left off. 

Lesson scores can be lost if the student refreshes or reloads a browser window with an open Lesson. There is nothing we can do to stop this beyond warning people not to do it and always use the exit icon to leave a Lesson. We also cannot account for all of the possible variations in browser and operating system sest ups that may potentially interfere with the proper operation of the Lesson Viewer including but not limited to settings for cookies, javascript, and pop ups.

The most likely reason for this error message is that you are not logged into the CALI website.  All CALI Lessons, LessonLinks and Autopublished lessons can only be viewed by those that are logged in.  If you do not yet have a CALI username and password, please view the FAQ on how to obtain those.

At the top of the webpage is the drop down to log in.  After logging into the CALI website hit refresh.  If that does not work, close the page and refollow the link you were given.  Do not try to search for the lesson by title, as the link may be to an Autopublished lesson or a LessonLink.  Those require access by a specific URL in order for your performance to be recorded.

A CALI LessonLink Lesson will appear exactly like a regular CALI Lesson. That's because it is one!  It just have a special URL that allows your professor to track your score and performance. There are a few ways to tell if you are taking one.

1. When you are running a CALI Lesson look for the LessonLink logo and your professor's name in the upper left of the Lesson viewer.
2. You are sent to a CALI Courses page with several lessons listed. It will have "courses" in the URL and the CALI Lessons listed will have "LessonLink" in their URL.
3. The URL of the CALI Lesson that your professor gives to you has the word LessonLink in it.
4. When you view your "My Lesson Runs" dashboard, your professor's name will appear in the "professor" column. If it's a regular CALI Lesson, this column will be blank.

If you are not seeing any of these indicators then you are not using a LessonLink and you should contact your professor to get the correct information.

With so many lessons - over 1,000 in 48+ subjects! - students may have trouble finding the lessons that apply to them. Luckily, we have several ways to aid students in their search for the right CALI Lessons.

• Search: use cali.org's search bar (top right) to search CALI lesson names and descriptions. Please note: CALI's website search covers a LOT of material, so you may have to refine your search several times to find an appropriate lesson.
• By topic: browse lessons sorted by topic, listed in alphabetical order. Some subjects' full list of lessons are very long, so don't forget about your browser's find function (CTRL + F or CMD + F) to search the page for keywords.
• By author: many of our law professors and librarians write multiple lessons for us. You may even see your professor!
• By subject outline: matches subtopics traditionally covered in certain subjects with corresponding CALI Lessons.
• New lessons list: look here or subscribe to the new CALI Lessons RSS feed to see the newest CALI Lessons.
• Updated lessons list: this lists the most recently updated lessons, also with an RSS feed.

Note: if you are a faculty member reviewing lessons for use in your course, we have some other tips for you in deciding which lesson to assign, please see this FAQ.

There are 2 parts to the LessonLink-It feature. First is the faculty side. This new feature does not change the creation/editing/cloning of LessonLinks at all. It simply adds a new View LessonLink-It Course Number button to the LessonLink dashboard on the faculty LessonLink page. Clicking the button opens a new page that shows the LessonLink-It course number along with some instruction on how and why to use it. Teachers get the number and pass it along to a student who ran a Lesson but didn't follow the LessonLink that the teacher provided.

The student side provides a form available from a Lesson run's saved score view to enter the LessonLink-It course number from the teacher. Once entered the course number is verified to make sure the LessonLink set exists and includes the Lesson that the student ran. Once verified the LessonRun record is updated to include the courseid and the results of the run are visible to the teacher. It is a one way change, once it is entered it cannot be taken away.