Frequently Asked Questions

We've launched a new theme for the CALI site so some of the screenshots in the FAQs are out of date. We're working on getting new screenshots in place.

 

Question about how to use a CALI resource or service? We have an answer! But if you don't find it here, please don't hesitate to contact us at feedback@cali.org!

Registration is very easy and should take about 2 minutes.    Before you get started you need two things: (1) Your school’s authorization code and (2) an email address.  Yep, that’s it!

Okay, to start you will go to www.cali.org.  In the top right hand side of the page, there is a link to register. (Shown below.)  Click that or alternatively you can just go right to www.cali.org/register.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That will take you to the registration page.  It looks like this:

Fill out the fields with red aterisks in the form to create your account.

Some things to keep in mind when creating an account:

  1. Make sure your authorization code is accepted by the site.  You’ll know it is when you are asked to pick a graduating class date.  You may have to click outside of the box to get the process started.  It usually takes just a few seconds, but during the back to school rush, sometimes it may take up to a minute.
  2. You can use any valid email address you have access to. You do not need to use your law school email address.
  3. Use a valid email address.  We generally don’t email students unless it is a site maintenance emergency, but if you forget your password, the system sends out an email for you to reset it.

That’s pretty much it.  Register once and then for the rest of your law school career you can use CALI lessons as often as you like.  If you have any questions or issues, please don’t hesitate to contact us!  We are here to help you get through law school.

The registration process is the same for all users. The authorization code provides the differing levels of access on the CALI site. To register:

  1. There is a link titled "register" in the menu bar on the top of the website.
  2. Fill out the form provided. You will need to chose a username, password and provide an email address.
  3. You will also need to provide the CALI Authorization Code for your institution. If you do not have the code, your institution's Authorization Code contact can be found on this list. CALI is unable to provide authorization codes over the phone or via email. You will have to get it from your school representative. They are also sometimes kept in the library or on school intranets.
  4. After typing in the Authorization Code, be sure to hit enter or click the cursor away from the box, as this will initiate the authorization process. Make sure you have a Faculty Authorization Code. This will allow you to use special Faculty Tools on the CALI.
  5. Fill out the rest of the form and click the "create a new account" button at the bottom of the webpage.

CALI Lessons are a great tool for students throughout the semester - not just as finals crunch time! We encourage members to give students their authorization codes in the beginning of the school year so that they can immediately use CALI. CALI member schools may give admitted students the CALI authorization code and access to CALI Lessons prior to the start of class if the student has given the school a tuition deposit.

No problem.  Please email feedback@cali.org and we can fix your account.  Be sure to include your username or email address in the message.

Authorization Codes are unique alphanumeric codes sent to every CALI member school and organization.  They are only used during the creation of the user account.   After that account is created, you never need to use or remember the authorization code again!  You'll use your self-created username and password to log into CALI after you create your account.


There are two different authorization codes for each school - one for faculty and one for students.  The CALI website has special faculty-only features, including answers to CALI lessons.  Therefore, only faculty should use the Faculty Authorization Code.


CALI is unable to give out your institution's authorization code over the phone or email.    We have a list of contacts that are authorized to hand out the code.  Alternatively, check with your library...they usually have the code available.

It's easy to edit/change your name on your CALI Account, just follow these steps:

  • Log into CALI with your username and password.  The spot to do this is on the dark blue bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on "My Account" to go to your CALI account information.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • Scroll down the page to find entries for "First Name", "Middle Name", and "Last Name" and edit those as you wish
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

Because CALI's password retrieval email is automated, many email systems will mistakenly classify them as junk mail or spam.

Check your spam or trash folders.  It may be in there.

If it's not there and it's been at least 15 minutes, it may be that your email system blocked the email entirely.  This is becoming common with .edu addresses.

If after 15 minutes and there is no email, please send an email to feedback@CALI.org.  Include your email address and a new email address that you would like to use for your account.  We will swap out the old email and replace it with the new one so that you can get emails.

Here's how to change your password on your CALI account:
  • Log into CALI with your username and password. The spot to do this is on the blue bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on your name (if using mouse with pointer) or touch your name (if using tablet or smartphone). This will take you to a page with your CALI profile page.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • Enter your current password. This is required to change your password in the next steps
  • There will be two boxes for password. Type in your new password and then confirm it. Note: The website will tell you how strong your password is, but the only requirement is that it is six characters long.
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

CALI has an automated password retrieval system that will send you an email.  It will contain a link to a page on the CALI website where you will be able to reset your email.  This link will expire after a day and will only be good for your account.  If you do not use it, nothing will happen.

Please note: These emails are sometimes marked as spam and are either sent to your junk mail folder or blocked completely.  If you have not received an email in 15 minutes, please email feedback@cali.org to have your password manually reset.

Here's how to change your username on your CALI account:

  • Log into CALI with your username and password. The spot to do this is on the dark blue menu bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on your name in the top menu. This will take you to a page with your account details.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • There will be a box with your username.  Enter your new username. Please do not use your email address as your username.
  • Enter your current password so the system knows it's you
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

It's easy to edit/change your name on your CALI Account, just follow these steps:

  • Log into CALI with your username and password.  The spot to do this is on the dark blue bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on "My Account" to go to your CALI account information.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • Scroll down the page to find entries for "First Name", "Middle Name", and "Last Name" and edit those as you wish
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

If you are logged in and can't run lessons, it is likely that you created the account prior to 2012 when we allowed for guest accounts. You will need to create a new account using an authorization code from your institution. We maintain a list of authorization code contacts on the website or you can always check in the library.


If you used to be able to run lessons, and now you cannot, it is entirely possible that you have two CALI accounts, one with an authorization code and one without.  If there's ever any confusion, contact webmaster@CALI.org and we can find your account(s).

Yes you can.

A working email address must be associated with your CALI account.  While we don't send out many emails to our users, the ones we do are very important for your continued use of CALI.  But most importantly, if you've forgotten your password, the only way to retrieve it is to have a working email associated with your CALI account.

Here's how to change your email address on your CALI account:

  • Log into CALI with your username and password.  The spot to do this is on the dark blue menu bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on your name in the top menu. This will take you to a page with your account details.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • There will be an entry for your email address.  Delete your current address and add in the one you wish to use.  At this time, hotmail.com email addresses are not permitted.
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".
There could be several reasons why you are having difficulties logging into CALI.
  1. Make sure you are using the correct username. If you are not sure, use the password reset function. The automated email that you will receive is address to your username.
  2. Try an alternate browser and make sure the browsers you use are updated.
  3. Make sure your browser is set to accept cookies.
  4. Clear your browser's cookies.
If none of those work, try to log in on another device. Remember - CALI lessons are compatible with tablets and smart phones. If you are able to log in there, that means there is an issue with your computer and we are going to be unable to help you. If you are unable to log in on the new device or computer, please contact feedback@cali.org and we check your account for issues.

There are two possibilities.

  1. Your browser needs to accept cookies in order to access certain CALI resources and especially to run CALI lessons. Make sure your browser is set to accept cookies from cali.org. We only use cookies to track you permissions to access certain CALI resources like CALI Lessons. If you're browser is set to accept cookies, read on.
  2. Your browser is holding onto cookies with incorrect information. This is very common when you've recently changed passwords. In this case, log out of CALI, clear the cookies of your browser and then re-login with your correct credentials.

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.
I'm working on a CALI Lesson and it locked up or kicked me out or I'm seeing a blank page. What should I do?

 

 

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.

Only the student or CALI will be able to see the score, with two exceptions:


  • The first exception is when the student explicitly indicates that they want to submit the score for review by a faculty member. This would be in conjunction with the LessonLink and/or AutoPublish services. You can learn more about these in their respective FAQs.
  • The second exception is that CALI will use the scores as a way to improve its lessons without revealing any personal detail about the student. When used in aggregate, scores can be used by CALI to determine if there are improvements to be made to a CALI lessons. The aggregate scores of all students who take a lesson may be shared with the lesson's author to see if there are ways to refine or improve the lesson for future students.

CALI Lessons are best suited to interactive questions that engage and challenge students to learn and to think about the material.

One technique to account for different levels of student learning, different learning styles, and to provide more teaching opportunities, is to create branching questions. Branching questions also allow use of interactive questions to replicate the Socratic questioning style used in the law school classroom. Branching questions can appear at any point in a Lesson and make it more individualized for students.  For example, branching questions can be used to address specific strengths and weaknesses that each student brings to the Lesson. Any one Lesson may contain one or more question models.

CALI has identified five models of question formats: (1) Nintendo-ing, (2) Expert mode; (3) Novice Mode; (4) Stick to your response; and (5) Fill out your knowledge/Remedial branch. All of these formats are useful in interactive materials.

 

A Lesson utilizing questions in a basic building block format is the most common, and the most linear, style of question. Here, regardless of the student's answer, the student progresses to the next question. CALI has dubbed this style of questioning "Nintendo-ing," since the student simply clicks through the Lesson in a linear manner. This question style is very useful for review material, or places where we want to drill students on their understanding of concepts underlying any issue.

 

 

In the "Expert" mode questions are still presented in a linear fashion. However, when students answer a particular question correctly, they skip ahead in the Lesson. Thus, students who correctly answer a "threshold" question about the material are not bored by a review of the initial concepts or basic materials. Instead, they can move directly to the more challenging questions. Consequently, in "Expert" mode students' progress can be individualized to match their skills and understanding of the material. Moreover, based on the method of naming pages, students do not necessarily know that they have skipped ahead, or conversely been taken the slow route through the Lesson. This style also allows for the student to have a different experience with the Lesson the second or third time he works through the material.

As you can see, this style of questioning can be used to replicate the style of teaching you might use in the classroom. In a typical classroom you might ask students a question to gage their general understanding of the material. Based on the class' response you will either move forward with the material (the "Expert" mode) or re-examine some of the more basic material.

 

 

The "Novice" mode is related in theory and structure to the "Expert" mode. Here too students move through the Lesson in an individualized fashion. In contrast to the "Expert" mode though, students who answer a threshold question incorrectly are directed to a remedial branch where the exact root of their misunderstanding or their deficiencies can be explored. For example, suppose students have a common misconception about joint tenancy. A question in the Lesson can ask them about this topic. Students answering with the common misconception can be directed to a tutorial designed to correct their mistaken understanding. Students who understand the misconception and answer the question correctly progress through the Lesson without having to do any of the extra questions. And, as with any other question model, based on the method of naming pages, students may not know that they have been diverted to refresher or more basic material.

 

"Stick to your response" emulates a technique faculty often use in the classroom of introducing possibly conflicting material, or additional facts, into students' analysis. In this question model a student who selects the correct response to the question will branch to an additional line of questioning that can inquire whether the student took factor 'X' into consideration when selecting his answer. As a result, a student's response can be challenged and analyzed. Here too, faculty can address misconceptions, gray areas of the law, or weaknesses in students' analysis. Finally, like any of the other question models, "Stick to your response" can be combined with other question formats. For example, students who select the correct response would branch to a series of questions that are directed to a higher level of analysis and that explore a more difficult concept. In contrast, students who select the wrong response would branch to a series of "Remedial" questions designed to reinforce the underlying theories and basic concepts of the problem.

 

The final question model combines features of the previous four models and adds something new. Like the "Novice" mode, students who answer incorrectly branch to a series of questions designed to work on their fundamental knowledge of the material. And while students giving the correct answer branch to a series of questions like the "stick to your response" model, here students are not pressed to defend their response. Instead, the student's knowledge and understanding is expanded by questions that delve deeper into the material.

 

No, at this time CALI Lesson scores cannot be deleted by students or CALI staff.

CALI Lesson scores remain available for the life of a CALI account.


Scores from the current semester can be viewed on a student's "My Lesson Runs" page. Previous semester lesson scores will be found in chronological order on this page under the "Past Lesson Runs" tab.

CALI Lesson scores are saved automatically, even if you don't remember to click the "Exit & Resume Later" link at the top of the page within each CALI Lesson." However, they will not be reported unless you click the "finalize my score" button.

Generally speaking, faculty are unable to view student performance on CALI Lessons. There are three exceptions:

  1. Students provide the faculty member with a printed or digital version of the certificate that appears at the end of Lessons. This will provide only the score for the Lesson.
  2. The faculty member creates a LessonLink and can view the scores and question by question performance directly via the "Current LessonLinks" tab for LessonLinks created that semester, provided that they are logged in with the faculty account that created the LessonLink.
  3. The faculty member creates a QuizWright quiz or uses CALI Author to create a self-published lesson and can view student scores and question by question performance via the "My CALI Library" link from the CALI Dashboard menu.

For information please visit the FAQs on LessonLink, QuizWright, and self-published lessons.

 

 

Strictly speaking, you can't change the score of a lesson once you have answered all the questions. You can change answers, but the original score will remain.

If you have not finalized a lesson and still have questions to answer, you can resume and finish the CALI Lesson. This will change the final score of the lesson. You are also able to take CALI Lessons as many times as you wish.

Please note: if you are taking a LessonLink CALI Lesson or an AutoPublished Lesson, your professor will be able to see multiple lesson runs. For more information on resuming a lesson, LessonLink or AutoPublish, please see their respective questions in the FAQs.

Generally speaking, only the student knows which CALI Lessons a student has taken and what their score was. However, if a faculty member would like to use CALI Lessons for formative or summative assessment, they have a few options to find student scores.


  1. They can have students submit a lesson certificate that shows their completion and performance on a CALI Lesson. Each certificate lists the students' name, when they finalized the lesson, how many questions were attempted and how many they answered correctly.
  2. If you use LessonLink, you will be able to view the scores and question-by-question performance of your students on a CALI Lesson.
No. Any time after you complete a CALI Lesson, you can retrieve and print your certificate.
  1. After logging into CALI, go to your "Lesson Runs" page by following the link from the "CALI Dashboard" dropdown.
  2. Click on the highlighted percentage score of the lesson that you want a certificate for.
  3. You will be taken to the "Detailed Score Report" for the lesson.
  4. At the top of the score report, there will be a link to "print certificate."
  5. From there you can print the certificate or take a screen shot that can be emailed.

There are two ways to print your CALI Lesson certificate.


  1. After you have completed every page in a lesson or clicked the "complete the lesson" link in the lesson's table of content, you will be taken to the final page of the lesson. This is the certificate. At the bottom there is a button that says, "Print this score." Click to print.
  2. On the same page as in the instruction above, there is a button that says, "Finalize this score." Click this and your score will be finalized. It also means that you will not be able to resume the lesson. At any time you may go to either your "Current Lesson Runs" (for lessons that you have taken this semester) or "Past Lesson Runs" for all other lessons. Click on the percentage score for the lesson you would like a certificate for. This will take you to a detailed score report. There will be a link to "Print Certificate."

If your professor is using LessonLink and you correctly followed the special URL your professor provided to you, your professor will see your scores by viewing their LessonLink Dashboard. You won't have to do anything. However, if you did not use the URL that your professor gave to you, they will not be able to see your score.

If your professor is not using LessonLink or you did not use the URL that they provided, you can still show that you've taken a CALI Lesson by printing off the CALI Lesson Certificate. Please view the FAQ on printing CALI Lesson Certificates for complete instructions on how to print or save them.

LessonLink is a feature of the CALI website that allows faculty members to assign CALI Lessons, QuizWright quizzes, and CALI Author self-published lessons to their students.  When students work on one of these CALI resources via a LessonLink, the faculty can track student performance, view grades, and access detailed analytics.

LessonLink creates a unique URL that teachers provide to students. Once students begin work on a CALI Lesson or other resource uisng a LessonLink teachers have access to the students' work at varying level of detail. There is a basic grade report that shows how students did on on a particular Lesson or Lessons. Grade reports can be viewed online or downloaded as a spreadsheet. For a more detailed review there is an analytics view of student performance that shows how students did with the Lesson and offers question by question comparions across all the students in your class.

When using LessonLink there are some things to keep in mind:

  • Grades and performance data for LessonLinks are only visible online to the faculty member who creates the LessonLink. In a co-teaching situation grade information will need to be downloaded as a spreadsheet and shared among colleagues.
  •  Anyone with a CALI account and the LessonLink can run the lesson - it is not unique to a particular law school. The lesson performance of anyone who follows the LessonLink URL (and only those people) will be viewable by the faculty member who created the LessonLink.
  • Faculty members may create an unlimited number of LessonLinks.  You should create new LessonLinks each semester so as to seperate the data.  Only the faculty who creates the LessonLink will be able to view the results.
  • LessonLinks do not prevent students from running a CALI Lesson directly. If a student runs an assigned Lesson directly from the Lesson page there is no way to convert that into a LessonLink.

Creating a LessonLink is very easy! The whole process takes about five minutes.


  1. Make sure you are logged into CALI with a Faculty account.
  2. Go to the LessonLink page on the CALI website.
  3. Click the button to "Create New LessonLinks".
  4. Enter your course name. This can be anything you would like.
  5. Pick the semester in which students will be using the LessonLinks, not when you are making it.
  6. Select the CALI topic area which best describes your course. If you are teaching a class that covers more than one legal subject area, don't worry! You can back later and select another topic.
  7. A list of all the CALI Lessons tagged with that subject will appear. You can then check the box next to the lessons that you would like to create LessonLinks for.
  8. Click "Create LessonLinks" at the bottom of the page.
  9. At this point you will be taken to a page that is titled with the name of the course you entered in Step 4 above. This page will have all the LessonLinks you have created.



Once you've created a set of LessonLinks here are some ponts to consider


  • There is an option to edit or add LessonLinks this course's list of LessonLinks. Just look for the add/edit link.
  • You should also receive an email with the URLs of your course page and LessonLinks. If the email doesn't show up in a few minutes please check your spam/junk folder.
  • The URL of the course page or the URLs of each individual LessonLink can be shared with your students via email, your school's LMS (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, TWEN,etc) or any other means of communication.
  • Using the course page or the individual LessonLinks depends on whether you wish to allow the students to view all of the LessonLinks at once or if you prefer to make them available on a more structured basis.
  • To view student scores and performance, go to your "Current LessonLinks" dashboard. From there you can click the "details" button to view more information.
  • While you can put a LessonLink URL into a Microsoft Word document, but students won't be able to Ctrl-Click to follow the link.  This is a limitation of Word and not LessonLink. Converting to PDF is your best option. This article explains all the gory details.

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.

On the left hand side of every CALI Lesson page there is a box called "Teaching Guide".   Here's a brief overview of what they are:


  1. Mapper is the term CALI uses to denote a map - similar to a subway route map - that represents all the pages in a CALI lesson, choices students could make and the paths the lesson might follow. Some CALI lessons are rather complex in structure and include Socratic dialogues with the student where the student's choice decides the next question in the lesson.
  2. LessonText is a special feature that permits faculty to see an entire CALI lesson as a single text document. The lesson's text is displayed as a webpage and can be printed for viewing in a comfy chair or copied into a word processing document.
  3. LessonLink is a CALI Tool that allows you to view your students' performance on this CALI Lesson. For more information about LessonLink, read its FAQs and instructions.
  4. Download is what you click to download the lesson and all associated images in the CALI Author software format.  You will need to first download CALI Author.

Yes! The following features are available to faculty. Please note: you must be logged into CALI with a faculty account in order to view them.


  1. LessonText: This provides all of the content of the CALI Lesson - questions, answer and images - in a single webpage. It makes printing and reviewing a lesson much easier.
  2. LessonLink: This tool provides a special URL to an existing CALI Lesson. When students use that to take the lesson, faculty can view their performance via their LessonLink Dashboard.
  3. AutoPublish: This is a tool within the CALI Author software (which powers CALI Lessons) that allows faculty to edit existing lessons or write their own educational materials and publish it on the CALI website. AutoPublished lessons have the same score tracking ability as LessonLink lessons.
  4. Mapper: The lesson Mapper gives a graphical view of a lesson and allows you to see the various branches that some of our CALI Lessons have.

CALI Lessons are best suited to interactive questions that engage and challenge students to learn and to think about the material.

One technique to account for different levels of student learning, different learning styles, and to provide more teaching opportunities, is to create branching questions. Branching questions also allow use of interactive questions to replicate the Socratic questioning style used in the law school classroom. Branching questions can appear at any point in a Lesson and make it more individualized for students.  For example, branching questions can be used to address specific strengths and weaknesses that each student brings to the Lesson. Any one Lesson may contain one or more question models.

CALI has identified five models of question formats: (1) Nintendo-ing, (2) Expert mode; (3) Novice Mode; (4) Stick to your response; and (5) Fill out your knowledge/Remedial branch. All of these formats are useful in interactive materials.

 

A Lesson utilizing questions in a basic building block format is the most common, and the most linear, style of question. Here, regardless of the student's answer, the student progresses to the next question. CALI has dubbed this style of questioning "Nintendo-ing," since the student simply clicks through the Lesson in a linear manner. This question style is very useful for review material, or places where we want to drill students on their understanding of concepts underlying any issue.

 

 

In the "Expert" mode questions are still presented in a linear fashion. However, when students answer a particular question correctly, they skip ahead in the Lesson. Thus, students who correctly answer a "threshold" question about the material are not bored by a review of the initial concepts or basic materials. Instead, they can move directly to the more challenging questions. Consequently, in "Expert" mode students' progress can be individualized to match their skills and understanding of the material. Moreover, based on the method of naming pages, students do not necessarily know that they have skipped ahead, or conversely been taken the slow route through the Lesson. This style also allows for the student to have a different experience with the Lesson the second or third time he works through the material.

As you can see, this style of questioning can be used to replicate the style of teaching you might use in the classroom. In a typical classroom you might ask students a question to gage their general understanding of the material. Based on the class' response you will either move forward with the material (the "Expert" mode) or re-examine some of the more basic material.

 

 

The "Novice" mode is related in theory and structure to the "Expert" mode. Here too students move through the Lesson in an individualized fashion. In contrast to the "Expert" mode though, students who answer a threshold question incorrectly are directed to a remedial branch where the exact root of their misunderstanding or their deficiencies can be explored. For example, suppose students have a common misconception about joint tenancy. A question in the Lesson can ask them about this topic. Students answering with the common misconception can be directed to a tutorial designed to correct their mistaken understanding. Students who understand the misconception and answer the question correctly progress through the Lesson without having to do any of the extra questions. And, as with any other question model, based on the method of naming pages, students may not know that they have been diverted to refresher or more basic material.

 

"Stick to your response" emulates a technique faculty often use in the classroom of introducing possibly conflicting material, or additional facts, into students' analysis. In this question model a student who selects the correct response to the question will branch to an additional line of questioning that can inquire whether the student took factor 'X' into consideration when selecting his answer. As a result, a student's response can be challenged and analyzed. Here too, faculty can address misconceptions, gray areas of the law, or weaknesses in students' analysis. Finally, like any of the other question models, "Stick to your response" can be combined with other question formats. For example, students who select the correct response would branch to a series of questions that are directed to a higher level of analysis and that explore a more difficult concept. In contrast, students who select the wrong response would branch to a series of "Remedial" questions designed to reinforce the underlying theories and basic concepts of the problem.

 

The final question model combines features of the previous four models and adds something new. Like the "Novice" mode, students who answer incorrectly branch to a series of questions designed to work on their fundamental knowledge of the material. And while students giving the correct answer branch to a series of questions like the "stick to your response" model, here students are not pressed to defend their response. Instead, the student's knowledge and understanding is expanded by questions that delve deeper into the material.

 

Yes, we allow (and encourage!) faculty to edit or modify existing CALI Lessons to better suit their pedagogical needs. It's just another of the many benefits we provide our members. To edit CALI Lessons, faculty will need to download and install the CALI Author software. As with any software or tool, there is a slight learning curve with using it, but for the most part, if you can use a word processor and webpages, you can use CALI Author. Of course, we are always happy to provide training or tips on using it. After editing, the new lessons can be republished to the CALI website via the AutoPublish feature. Don't worry - you're not going to replace the existing lesson! The edited lesson appears on a separate place on the website only discoverable by those whom you give the URL to. As an added benefit, AutoPublished lessons have score and performance tracking capabilities.

With so many lessons, faculty and staff may have trouble finding lessons that are relevant to their students . Luckily, we have tools to aid in your search to assign or suggest appropriate 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.

Once you find a lesson, you most like would want to review its content. If you would like to review, you can, of course run the lesson as if you were a student. But there are a couple of faculty-only features to aid in your review of a lesson, and you may find these features more convenient than reviewing the student version:

  • Lesson Text - a full text version of the lesson that includes all questions, answers, and feedback contained within in the lesson; all on one web page. LessonText is easy to print and suitable for reading in your favorite comfy chair.
  • Mapper - a visual presentation of a lesson's structure showing branches and right/wrong choices.

Once you find a lesson, you most like would want to review its content. If you would like to review, you can, of course run the lesson as if you were a student. But there are a couple of faculty-only features to aid in your review of a lesson, and you may find these features more convenient than reviewing the student version:

  • Lesson Text - a full text version of the lesson that includes all questions, answers, and feedback contained within in the lesson; all on one web page. LessonText is easy to print and suitable for reading in your favorite comfy chair. The link to the LessonText appears on the informational page of each lesson.
  • Mapper - a visual presentation of a lesson's structure showing branches an d right/wrong choices. This allows you to see the various paths a student may take through a lesson.

To locate the LessonText for a particular lesson:

  1. Log into CALI's website with your faculty account.
  2. Select the lesson you wish to see in LessonText format. You can select the lesson by browsing by subject area, casebook, or author.
  3. Click "Faculty View". This will take you to the LessonText of the lesson.

Yes! You can easily post a link directly to a CALI Lesson, LessonLink, CALI Author self-published lesson, or QuizWright Quiz in Learning Management Systems (LMS) like TWEN, Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, etc. There are two tips to make sure this works correctly:

  1. Suggest students log into CALI before following the link to the CALI Lesson. They can always log in when the arrive, but they may get an access denied error for LessonLinks and Self-Published CALI Lessons and become confused.
  2. Set your link to open in a new webpage, completely outside of your LMS.

At present, you cannot automatically transfer scores from CALI Lessons into your LMS. 

Just like any link, you can post a link directly to a single CALI Lesson to direct your students to it. Just click on the lesson name in the list of lessons, copy the URL from your browser, and then paste that URL wherever you like. Just like this: /lesson/815 But - and this is very important - in many classroom management systems the links will not work correctly unless you set the link to the CALI lesson to open in a new window. Oftentimes a LMS' default is to open links within the LMS or with a LMS wrapper around the external link. CALI lessons don't react well to that. So when you're using TWEN, Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, or any LMS, always double-check your own CALI link and ensure the link opens in a completely new and clean window. NOT within the LMS.

Signs that your LMS link will be problematic:

  • Looking in your LMS link's properties or settings, you see that the option to "open link in new window" (or similar) is not checked or selected.
  • You follow your link and it opens with the frame of your LMS around it.
  • Your LMS or college logo is visible after following the CALI lesson link.
  • The URL in the window starts with anything other than our website's: https://www.cali.org.
CALI Author is the software that powers CALI Lessons. Faculty at CALI member schools may use it to edit existing CALI Lessons or create their own learning objects.

CALI Lessons scores only viewable by the student and in aggregate by CALI for purposes of research and improvement of CALI lessons. When faculty view scores, it is only after students have explicitly given their permission with full disclosure. If you have any concerns, please contact us directly for further discussion.

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.

For citing a CALI lesson in bluebook format, you should generally follow rule 18.2.2. Here’s an example:


  • Wayne Schiess, Punctuation and Grammar Basics for Law Students, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (September 12, 2014), http://www.cali.org/lesson/585

With ALWD, you will follow rule 40.0 and its subdivisions. Here’s the same lesson in ALWD format:


Yes, however only faculty may download CALI Lessons to their computer. Using our AutoPublish feature, you can then republish the lesson with any edits that you choose to make.

Clicking that link will not save the CALI Lesson to your web browser. Instead, we provide users with a way of saving links to CALI Lessons in one place - the Bookmarks dashboard. This is a way to keep track of CALI Lessons that you may want to take, not just ones that you have taken, without searching through our library of over 1,000 CALI Lessons. You can always remove a CALI Lesson bookmark at any time.

CALI Lessons are generally designed so that students can run them without supplemental materials. However, several Civil Procedure exercises encourage users to read parts of the Roger C. Park and Douglas D. McFarland book called Computer-Aided Exercises on Civil Procedure (7th ed. 2014) (eLangdell Press). This book is available for free in several formats from CALI's eLangdell Press.

CALI Lessons are interactive tutorials designed to help law students improve their knowledge of legal concepts through a process of presenting a concept and then immediately testing them on it. Studies have shown that this is one of the most effective way to learn and retain knowledge.

CALI currently has over 1,000 tutorials in over 40 legal subjects. All CALI lessons are written and peer reviewed by faculty at CALI member schools. They can be used for assessment by faculty or for student self-study.

CALI Lessons are absolutely free for students and faculty at CALI member schools to use. However, you must register on the CALI website. Please see your CALI representative to get the authorization code needed to register.

eLangdell (11)

eLangdell® Press is our free and open book imprint. What do we mean by open? Open means we publish eLangdell® books under a Creative Commons license so you can rearrange and remix them to your way of teaching. It also means no DRM and any eReader, smartphone, tablet or computer will be able to use them. You and your students can download our books absolutely free of charge and keep them forever. They even come in print!

Let's say you want...

  •     a version of the eBook file that is printable and most resembles print, with static page numbering, and you do not want to edit its content. PDF
  • to read the eBook on your iPad, Nook, or nearly any non-Kindle device. ePub (ePubs even work on "your computer with a number of free software)
  •  to read the eBook on your Kindle. Mobi
  •  an easy way to edit or customize the content of the file for redistribution to students, or for other non-commercial uses. Word

 

We recommend the .epub version. But first, you'll need to install a compatible software like Nook's desktop apps or even the Firefox extension EPUBreader.

More .epub-compatible software options, some of which also read .mobis, can be found in Wikipedia's .epub software listing. Look around and experiment with different options. Find which one works best for you.

This varies greatly depending on which device you use. Do some searching around the web for how to transfer the file to your specific device and you'll likely find videos and how-tos. Don't hesitate to contact us if you're having issues with the transfer.

We've found that a few Windows machines take our .epubs and, inexplicably, rename the .epub file extension .zip. None of our ebook files should come to you in .zip format. If you're seeing a .zip file, it's an error.

The easiest way to fix this is by renaming your file from XXXX.zip back to XXXX.epub. Then make sure you open the .epub file with an epub-compatible software or device.

There's an few options.


  • If you have a tablet or smartphone and you are connected to the Internet, clicking on the link to the .epub should automatically open it.  You may need to install an epub reader app if you haven't already. There are many free ones to choose from.   If your device is not connected to the internet, follow the manufacturers' instructions on transfering files.
  • If you are using a desktop or laptop computer and don't need offline access, there are several free browser extensions for firefox and chrome that allow you to read the book within the browser.
  • If you are using a desktop or laptop and need or prefer offline access, download the book to your computer and then use an ebook manager tool like Calibre to read the book.
  • If you have a Kindle, you can use Calibre to transform the book into a PDF or .mobi format for viewing on your Kindle.

A .mobi, like an .epub, is a file extension designed especially for ebooks; but mostly for the Amazon Kindle.

You can read .mobi files on your PC or Mac with certain software; but we usually recommend using the .epub version in most instances unless you're transferring your book to a Kindle.

An .epub file is a type of file designed especially for ebooks and ereaders. It's most notably the format of choice for iBooks, iPads, iPhones, and Apple devices. Epub files do not work on Kindles. For that you'll need the .mobi.

All of our casebooks and casebook chapters are written by law professors at CALI member schools. They are reviewed by a committee of other faculty members before publication. CALI staff also reviews for spelling, punctuation and other editing issues. If you find a mistake, please let us know!

With so many lessons, faculty and staff may have trouble finding lessons that are relevant to their students . Luckily, we have tools to aid in your search to assign or suggest appropriate 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.

Once you find a lesson, you most like would want to review its content. If you would like to review, you can, of course run the lesson as if you were a student. But there are a couple of faculty-only features to aid in your review of a lesson, and you may find these features more convenient than reviewing the student version:

  • Lesson Text - a full text version of the lesson that includes all questions, answers, and feedback contained within in the lesson; all on one web page. LessonText is easy to print and suitable for reading in your favorite comfy chair.
  • Mapper - a visual presentation of a lesson's structure showing branches and right/wrong choices.

Yes! The following features are available to faculty. Please note: you must be logged into CALI with a faculty account in order to view them.


  1. LessonText: This provides all of the content of the CALI Lesson - questions, answer and images - in a single webpage. It makes printing and reviewing a lesson much easier.
  2. LessonLink: This tool provides a special URL to an existing CALI Lesson. When students use that to take the lesson, faculty can view their performance via their LessonLink Dashboard.
  3. AutoPublish: This is a tool within the CALI Author software (which powers CALI Lessons) that allows faculty to edit existing lessons or write their own educational materials and publish it on the CALI website. AutoPublished lessons have the same score tracking ability as LessonLink lessons.
  4. Mapper: The lesson Mapper gives a graphical view of a lesson and allows you to see the various branches that some of our CALI Lessons have.

On the left hand side of every CALI Lesson page there is a box called "Teaching Guide".   Here's a brief overview of what they are:


  1. Mapper is the term CALI uses to denote a map - similar to a subway route map - that represents all the pages in a CALI lesson, choices students could make and the paths the lesson might follow. Some CALI lessons are rather complex in structure and include Socratic dialogues with the student where the student's choice decides the next question in the lesson.
  2. LessonText is a special feature that permits faculty to see an entire CALI lesson as a single text document. The lesson's text is displayed as a webpage and can be printed for viewing in a comfy chair or copied into a word processing document.
  3. LessonLink is a CALI Tool that allows you to view your students' performance on this CALI Lesson. For more information about LessonLink, read its FAQs and instructions.
  4. Download is what you click to download the lesson and all associated images in the CALI Author software format.  You will need to first download CALI Author.

LessonText is a special feature that permits faculty to see an entire CALI lesson as a single webpage that can be printed for viewing in a comfy chair or copied into a word processing document. LessonText is designed to help teachers see "inside" CALI Lessons to help them evaluate a Lesson. To locate the LessonText for a particular lesson:

  1. Log into CALI's website with your faculty account.
  2. Select the lesson you wish to see in LessonText format. You can select the lesson by browsing by subject area, casebook, or author.
  3. Click "Faculty View". This will take you to the LessonText of the lesson.

Once you find a lesson, you most like would want to review its content. If you would like to review, you can, of course run the lesson as if you were a student. But there are a couple of faculty-only features to aid in your review of a lesson, and you may find these features more convenient than reviewing the student version:

  • Lesson Text - a full text version of the lesson that includes all questions, answers, and feedback contained within in the lesson; all on one web page. LessonText is easy to print and suitable for reading in your favorite comfy chair. The link to the LessonText appears on the informational page of each lesson.
  • Mapper - a visual presentation of a lesson's structure showing branches an d right/wrong choices. This allows you to see the various paths a student may take through a lesson.

To locate the LessonText for a particular lesson:

  1. Log into CALI's website with your faculty account.
  2. Select the lesson you wish to see in LessonText format. You can select the lesson by browsing by subject area, casebook, or author.
  3. Click "Faculty View". This will take you to the LessonText of the lesson.

Mapper is a pictorial representation - similar to a subway map - of a lesson's contents. Faculty use Mapper for a variety of reasons. Some faculty like to see the extent (number of questions, amount of branching in a lesson) of a lesson before reviewing it themselves or assigning it to their students. Mapper can also be printed out for use in class, or even open on the faculty member's computer screen during class. This allows faculty to know the "right" path through a lesson's Socratic dialogue. As the class debates a choice in open class, the professor can guide students through the lesson knowing places (1) where the lesson may loopback to the original question, or (2) take the students through a series of related followup questions often designed to challenge the students initial response or to fill-in knowledge the students may be lacking. Of course, these same reasons for using Mapper are applicable for any lessons worked through by students during a professor's office hours. Mapper's benefit is faculty can use it to guide students through a particular sequence of questions.

Yes, however only faculty may download CALI Lessons to their computer. Using our AutoPublish feature, you can then republish the lesson with any edits that you choose to make.

Yes, we allow (and encourage!) faculty to edit or modify existing CALI Lessons to better suit their pedagogical needs. It's just another of the many benefits we provide our members. To edit CALI Lessons, faculty will need to download and install the CALI Author software. As with any software or tool, there is a slight learning curve with using it, but for the most part, if you can use a word processor and webpages, you can use CALI Author. Of course, we are always happy to provide training or tips on using it. After editing, the new lessons can be republished to the CALI website via the AutoPublish feature. Don't worry - you're not going to replace the existing lesson! The edited lesson appears on a separate place on the website only discoverable by those whom you give the URL to. As an added benefit, AutoPublished lessons have score and performance tracking capabilities.

Yes! You can easily post a link directly to a CALI Lesson, LessonLink, CALI Author self-published lesson, or QuizWright Quiz in Learning Management Systems (LMS) like TWEN, Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, etc. There are two tips to make sure this works correctly:

  1. Suggest students log into CALI before following the link to the CALI Lesson. They can always log in when the arrive, but they may get an access denied error for LessonLinks and Self-Published CALI Lessons and become confused.
  2. Set your link to open in a new webpage, completely outside of your LMS.

At present, you cannot automatically transfer scores from CALI Lessons into your LMS. 

Just like any link, you can post a link directly to a single CALI Lesson to direct your students to it. Just click on the lesson name in the list of lessons, copy the URL from your browser, and then paste that URL wherever you like. Just like this: /lesson/815 But - and this is very important - in many classroom management systems the links will not work correctly unless you set the link to the CALI lesson to open in a new window. Oftentimes a LMS' default is to open links within the LMS or with a LMS wrapper around the external link. CALI lessons don't react well to that. So when you're using TWEN, Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, or any LMS, always double-check your own CALI link and ensure the link opens in a completely new and clean window. NOT within the LMS.

Signs that your LMS link will be problematic:

  • Looking in your LMS link's properties or settings, you see that the option to "open link in new window" (or similar) is not checked or selected.
  • You follow your link and it opens with the frame of your LMS around it.
  • Your LMS or college logo is visible after following the CALI lesson link.
  • The URL in the window starts with anything other than our website's: https://www.cali.org.

The registration process is the same for all users. The authorization code provides the differing levels of access on the CALI site. To register:

  1. There is a link titled "register" in the menu bar on the top of the website.
  2. Fill out the form provided. You will need to chose a username, password and provide an email address.
  3. You will also need to provide the CALI Authorization Code for your institution. If you do not have the code, your institution's Authorization Code contact can be found on this list. CALI is unable to provide authorization codes over the phone or via email. You will have to get it from your school representative. They are also sometimes kept in the library or on school intranets.
  4. After typing in the Authorization Code, be sure to hit enter or click the cursor away from the box, as this will initiate the authorization process. Make sure you have a Faculty Authorization Code. This will allow you to use special Faculty Tools on the CALI.
  5. Fill out the rest of the form and click the "create a new account" button at the bottom of the webpage.

No problem.  Please email feedback@cali.org and we can fix your account.  Be sure to include your username or email address in the message.

LessonLink (14)

LessonLink is a feature of the CALI website that allows faculty members to assign CALI Lessons, QuizWright quizzes, and CALI Author self-published lessons to their students.  When students work on one of these CALI resources via a LessonLink, the faculty can track student performance, view grades, and access detailed analytics.

LessonLink creates a unique URL that teachers provide to students. Once students begin work on a CALI Lesson or other resource uisng a LessonLink teachers have access to the students' work at varying level of detail. There is a basic grade report that shows how students did on on a particular Lesson or Lessons. Grade reports can be viewed online or downloaded as a spreadsheet. For a more detailed review there is an analytics view of student performance that shows how students did with the Lesson and offers question by question comparions across all the students in your class.

When using LessonLink there are some things to keep in mind:

  • Grades and performance data for LessonLinks are only visible online to the faculty member who creates the LessonLink. In a co-teaching situation grade information will need to be downloaded as a spreadsheet and shared among colleagues.
  •  Anyone with a CALI account and the LessonLink can run the lesson - it is not unique to a particular law school. The lesson performance of anyone who follows the LessonLink URL (and only those people) will be viewable by the faculty member who created the LessonLink.
  • Faculty members may create an unlimited number of LessonLinks.  You should create new LessonLinks each semester so as to seperate the data.  Only the faculty who creates the LessonLink will be able to view the results.
  • LessonLinks do not prevent students from running a CALI Lesson directly. If a student runs an assigned Lesson directly from the Lesson page there is no way to convert that into a LessonLink.

While faculty members could always use CALI Lessons, QuizWright quizzes, or CALI Author self-published lessons to provide self-paced learning opportunities or formative or summative assessment and then collect completion certificates as evidence of completed work, LessonLink provides faculty with the ability to assign Lessons and provides teachers with information about:

  • who took a lesson
  • how many times they took it
  • when they took it
  • what their grade was, and
  • how they performed on a question by question basis

Creating a LessonLink is very easy! The whole process takes about five minutes.


  1. Make sure you are logged into CALI with a Faculty account.
  2. Go to the LessonLink page on the CALI website.
  3. Click the button to "Create New LessonLinks".
  4. Enter your course name. This can be anything you would like.
  5. Pick the semester in which students will be using the LessonLinks, not when you are making it.
  6. Select the CALI topic area which best describes your course. If you are teaching a class that covers more than one legal subject area, don't worry! You can back later and select another topic.
  7. A list of all the CALI Lessons tagged with that subject will appear. You can then check the box next to the lessons that you would like to create LessonLinks for.
  8. Click "Create LessonLinks" at the bottom of the page.
  9. At this point you will be taken to a page that is titled with the name of the course you entered in Step 4 above. This page will have all the LessonLinks you have created.



Once you've created a set of LessonLinks here are some ponts to consider


  • There is an option to edit or add LessonLinks this course's list of LessonLinks. Just look for the add/edit link.
  • You should also receive an email with the URLs of your course page and LessonLinks. If the email doesn't show up in a few minutes please check your spam/junk folder.
  • The URL of the course page or the URLs of each individual LessonLink can be shared with your students via email, your school's LMS (Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, TWEN,etc) or any other means of communication.
  • Using the course page or the individual LessonLinks depends on whether you wish to allow the students to view all of the LessonLinks at once or if you prefer to make them available on a more structured basis.
  • To view student scores and performance, go to your "Current LessonLinks" dashboard. From there you can click the "details" button to view more information.
  • While you can put a LessonLink URL into a Microsoft Word document, but students won't be able to Ctrl-Click to follow the link.  This is a limitation of Word and not LessonLink. Converting to PDF is your best option. This article explains all the gory details.

When you're creating a set of LessonLinks for a course selecting a topic just generates a list of CALI Lesson titles. Deciding which Lessons to add to the course using those titles lists is a bit daunting. To help with the decision about whether or not to add a Lesson to the course you can click on the info link next to each title to see a pop-up window with the full description, approximate completion time, and author for the Lesson. This data should make adding Lessons to a course a bit easier.

Yes, once you've created a set of LessonLinks for a course you can edit the details of the LessonLink set and add or remove Lessons from the LessonLink set.

To get started just look for the Edit/Add LessonLinks button on your LessonLink pages under the title of your course.

Click on the the button to open the LessonLink edit form.

With this form you can edit the name of the course, edit or add a website for the course, remove Lessons from the list of links by clearing the checks, or add more Lessons by selecting a topic from the drop down.

Once you're down with your edits, just hit the submit button at the bottom and your LessonLinks will be updated.

 

You can copy or clone a set of LessonLinks for use in another course, section. or semester by logging in to the CALI website and visiting your LessonLink pages. You'll find buttons for cloning LessonLinks on the current and archive LessonLink pages.

Cloning is simple, just click the clone button for the LessonLinks you want to copy. The button will take you to a page that lets you change the Course Name, select the semester that the LessonLinks will be used, and add or remove Lessons from the course. Once you're ready just hit the submit button and your new set of LessonLinks will be created. Information about your new LessonLinks will be on the current LessonLinks page and you should receive an email with the list of LessonLinks.

 

You should create new LessonLinks every semester. At the end of a semester you'll notice that links for the semester move to the archive tab, so it's a good idea to create a new set of LessonLinks every semester.

  1. Even if you are still using it, the LessonLink is filed in the semester that it was created.
  2. All student answers are cumulative for the life of the LessonLink. The purpose of LessonLinks is to view student performance, either on an individual or class basis. The results from every student that has ever taken the lesson will remain in the dataset on your LessonLink dashboard, making it difficult to find specific students and skewing aggregate results.

Besides, it takes less than five minutes to create a LessonLink! View the instructions for complete details.

I want to use a CALI Lesson in class to see student answers, reviewing the answers live in class and optionally posting results on a screen in the classroom. How can I do that?

CALI LessonLive is a feature that extends CALI LessonLink to allow teachers to use CALI Lessons and Self-Published Lessons live in the classroom and instantly get results as students work through the Lesson. When used with QuizWright Quizzes or CALI Author and Self-Published Lessons law teachers at CALI member schools can create assessments for real-time use in the classroom. LessonLive provides robust analytics and reporting to teachers to help them assess the work of their class. The analytics and reporting available through LessonLive is also available for LessonLink runs using the analytics features.

The video below provides an in-depth introduction to using LessonLive.


A CALI Course page is a single page that contains all of the LessonLinks a teachers creates for a course.  During the initial LessonLink creation process, a faculty member enters a course name for the set of  LessonLinks being created. Faculty members have the option of sharing the URL of this course page with students or sharing each LessonLink URL separately. The course page provides the teacher who created the LessonLinks with a small dashboard area the provides buttons to access student grades, add or edit the LessonLinks, and clone the LessonLinks to use in another course.

 

Generally speaking, only the student knows which CALI Lessons a student has taken and what their score was. However, if a faculty member would like to use CALI Lessons for formative or summative assessment, they have a few options to find student scores.


  1. They can have students submit a lesson certificate that shows their completion and performance on a CALI Lesson. Each certificate lists the students' name, when they finalized the lesson, how many questions were attempted and how many they answered correctly.
  2. If you use LessonLink, you will be able to view the scores and question-by-question performance of your students on a CALI Lesson.

Generally speaking, faculty are unable to view student performance on CALI Lessons. There are three exceptions:

  1. Students provide the faculty member with a printed or digital version of the certificate that appears at the end of Lessons. This will provide only the score for the Lesson.
  2. The faculty member creates a LessonLink and can view the scores and question by question performance directly via the "Current LessonLinks" tab for LessonLinks created that semester, provided that they are logged in with the faculty account that created the LessonLink.
  3. The faculty member creates a QuizWright quiz or uses CALI Author to create a self-published lesson and can view student scores and question by question performance via the "My CALI Library" link from the CALI Dashboard menu.

For information please visit the FAQs on LessonLink, QuizWright, and self-published lessons.

 

 

LessonsLinks used in a Microsoft Word document may not work as expected and we recommend that you do not distribute them that way. When you use the <CTRL><Click> feature in Word the info that is sent to the web browser besides the link causes the web server to ignore any cookies that are set and that makes our site think that the students are not logged in. If they are not really logged they get the login form and can run the Lesson. If they are logged in to CALI, they get an error. This is known issue when linking to access controlled websites from inside of Word documents.


Students should be able to copy and paste the link from the Word document to the browser without any problem. We recommend providing students with the link to the list of LessonLinks that is created with each set of LessonLinks or posting the links on a CALI Classcaster course blog.

If your professor is using LessonLink and you correctly followed the special URL your professor provided to you, your professor will see your scores by viewing their LessonLink Dashboard. You won't have to do anything. However, if you did not use the URL that your professor gave to you, they will not be able to see your score.

If your professor is not using LessonLink or you did not use the URL that they provided, you can still show that you've taken a CALI Lesson by printing off the CALI Lesson Certificate. Please view the FAQ on printing CALI Lesson Certificates for complete instructions on how to print or save them.

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.

QuizWright (3)

CALI QuizWright is a tool for creating and publishing formative assessments for your class. QuizWright gives law faculty a web-based platform to create and manage personal question banks and quizzes for their students. Using CALI Publisher, LessonLive, and LessonLink, QuizWright quizzes can be delivered to students and taken in real time in the classroom or assigned as homework using the familiar CALI Lesson Viewer.

The FAQs below should answer most of your questions about QuizWright. If not, email Elmer at emasters+qw@cali.org

Use QuizWright at https://www.cali.org/quizwright

This is a brief outline of how to use QuizWright to create and publish a quiz or other formative assessment. 

  1. Visit the CALI website at https://www.cali.org/ and log in using your CALI account.
  2. From the "CALI Dashboard" menu near the top of the page select "QuizWright".
  3. This will take you directly to the QuizWright homepage, no need to login again.
  4. Click the "Add a question" button to jump right in and begin creating your own personal question bank.
  5. On the "Quiz Questions" page select the question type you'd like to create. The choices are "True/False", "Yes/No", or "Multiple Choice".
  6. On the "Quiz Question" page enter your question, the correct answer, and, for MC questions, up to 3 incorrect choices.
    • Note that the choices will be presented to your students in a random fashion for each question.
  7. You can optionally add feedback that will be displayed when a student answers a question. The feedback is displayed no matter the answer a student chooses.
  8. When you're done with the question you can keep adding questions or create a new quiz
    • Note that you need to click one of the buttons to save the question you are working on. If you leave the page or click another link the question data on the page will be lost.
  9. Once you've added all of the questions you want for now hit the "Prepare the Quiz" button.
  10. The "Quiz Questions" page now displays a listing of questions that haven't been added to any quizzes yet. For a full list of your questions select "All" in the "Filter Questions" section.
  11. Select the questions you would like to add to the new quiz and hit the "Add to new Quiz" button.
  12. On the "Quiz Information" page fill out the form and hit "Save Quiz".
  13. That brings you to the "Quiz Details" page. From here you can
    • "Publish Quiz" to the CALI website using CALI Publisher
    • "Change Questions" to re-order your quiz questions
    • "Edit Description" to change the details of your quiz
    • "Publish Later" to save the quiz for later
  14. Hit "Publish Later" to save the quiz.
  15. Before publishing a quiz to the CALI website, click on "My Profile" in the left hand menu. Complete this form with your information that will be added to each quiz you publish.
  16. Use "My Quizzes" in the left hand menu to get to a list of your saved and published quizzes.
  17. From the "My Quizzes" listing you can
    • reorder, and remove questions from a quiz
    • get the quiz details with links for publishing the Lesson
    • review and edit the quiz's description
    • preview the quiz as your students will see it

Following these steps will help you build a personal question bank and prepare quizzes for your students. For information on how to give a QuizWright quiz to your students see https://www.cali.org/faq/16762.

Once you've created some questions and bundled them into a quiz the next step is to publish the quiz and give it to your students. Using CALI Publisher, LessonLive, and LessonLink, QuizWright quizzes can be delivered to students and taken in real time in the classroom or assigned as homework using the familiar CALI Lesson Viewer.


This How To covers the use of CALI Publisher and LessonLive to publish and track quizzes for your students.


Please note that your students will need to log in to the CALI website in order to take QuizWright quizzes.


How to publish a QuizWright quiz to CALI Publisher


  1. Visit the CALI website at https://www.cali.org/ and log in using your CALI account.
  2. From the "CALI Dashboard" menu near the top of the page select "QuizWright".
  3. This will take you directly to the QuizWright homepage, no need to login again.
  4. Click the "List my quizzes" button or the "My Quizzes" menu link to open the list of your quizzes
  5. Click the "Details" link in the "Publish" column of the quiz you want to publish
  6. Click the "Publish Quiz" button on the "Quiz Details" page to start the Publisher process in a new tab/window on the CALI website.
    1. Note that you may see a message about pop-ups or new windows being blocked for the CALI website. If you get this message please follow your browser's instructions to allow pop-ups from the CALI website.

  7. If you're not logged in to the CALI wesbite, you may see an "Access Denied" message. Don't panic! Just login with your faculty account using the login boxes and you'll be fine.
  8. Next you'll see the QuizWright quiz as published on the CALI website, no need to do anything else.
  9. Check your email. You should have a message from the CALI webmaster with the link that allows you and your students to take your QuizWright quiz. Send that link along to your students by email, through your website, TWEN page, Blackboard, etc. or as with CALI LessonLink


How to use LessonLive to give a QuizWright quiz in real time


  1. Make sure your students have CALI accounts and can log in to the CALI website before starting the quiz. The quiz will run fine on mobile devices as well as laptop computers but students need to be logged in on the CALI website to take the quiz.
  2. Once everyone is logged in have your class follow the link to the quiz page. This was emailed to you in the step 8 above.
  3. Students should click on the "Start this Faculty Published Quiz" button to take the quiz.
  4. When you click on the the "Start this Faculty Published Quiz" button LessonLive will engage and you will be able to track students results on the quiz in real time.


For more information about LessonLive please check the FAQ.


How to add a QuizWright quiz to LessonLink


  1. Go to your LessonLink dashboard by collowing the "LessonLink" link in your "CALI Dashboard" dropdown menu.
  2. Either create a new set of LessonLinks or edit an existing course.
  3. From the "Select a topic" list pick "Your CALI Library Resources" (it's at the bottom of the list)
  4. From the list of resources that appears check the quiz or quizzes you'd like to add 
  5. Click submit to create the LessonLink(s). You should receive an email with cutom trackable LessonLinks to give your students.


For more information about LessonLink please check the FAQ


You will always have access to the results of your QuizWright quizzes through the "My CALI Library" link in your "CALI Dashboard" dropdown menu.

Yes! The CALI website is mobile responsive so students can take QW quizzes on their phones or other mobile devices.

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 lessonss 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 Deb Quentel (dquentel@cali.org) for more information.

Built on the Open Textbook and Pressbooks plugins for Wordpress, CALI Lawbooks provides a robust platform that allows members of the CALI community to create their own law books including casebooks, textbooks, supplements, teaching guides, hornbooks, and monographs. The system uses an easy to learn browser-based editor for writing, allows for drag and drop organization of material and chapters, provides a fully functional web version of the book, and exports to a number of popular formats including PDF, EPUB, and MOBI.

  1. Make sure you have a valid CALI account.
  1. Visit http://lawbooks.cali.org, scroll to the bottom and log in with your CALI account information.
  1. Once logged in you are taken to your Lawbooks profile page. From here you can create your new book or manage existing books.
  1. Before getting started take a few minutes to review the info on the profile page and add any additional information you'd like.
  1. In the upper left under My Catalog select Add a New Book to create a new book.  
  1. Fill out the form to create a new book. 
  1. For the site domain, keep it short, letters and numbers, no spaces or special characters. We recommend something like lastnametopic to keep it simple and easy to type.
  1. For site title feel free to use the full title of the book.
  1. Set the privacy option to no while you are working on the book. You'll be able to change this later.
  1. Hit the create site button to create the new book.
  1. Your book is created and you are taken to the dashboard for the book, all ready for you to start adding content.
  1. In the new book's dashboard click on Appearance and set the active theme to Open Textbooks if it isn't already set. Using the Open Textbook theme activates a number of useful features in Lawbooks.
  1. Click on Text to open the Organize page and delete the sample content that was created
  1. This will reduce confusion later
Once you've created a book we recommend that you take a few minutes to provide some basic information about the book by completing a couple of the settings pages. Adding this meta data to the book now will make it easy for people to find later.
Let's start with Book info:
  1. Select Book info from the left hand menu.
  1. Edit or add information about your book as you see fit. Fields include:
  1. variations of the title
  1. Author name(s)
  1. Publisher info
  1. Copyright & Licensing
  1. You should select a Creative Commons license for your work. The Lawbooks platform is about open, so we like to host works that are freely available to the law school community.
  1. Additional book and catalog information
  1. Once you're done adding info, hit the save button at the top right.
 
CALI Lawbooks allows you to collaborate with people in various rolls while writing your book. The editor, author, contributor roles allow you to add people to help it the various aspects of creating your work. The subscriber role lets people in to read and comment on the work even if it has not been published yet. 
To add a collaborator to your book follow these steps:
  1. Make sure the person has an active CALI account. This is important since the system uses CALI accounts for log ins.
  1. Have the person visit lawbooks.cali.org and login. This gets them into the Lawbooks system so you can add them to your book.
  1. Make sure you have the email address associated with the account you are going to add to your site.
  1. Login to your book and go to the dashboard.
  1. Select "Users" and "Add New" from the left hand menu.
  1. Under  "Add Existing User" enter the person email address that is associated with their CALI account, select the role you would like them to have and click the button.
  1. This sends an email to your new collaborator. They should click on the link in the email to activate the Lawbooks account. 
  1. Note the email may end up in a spam folder, so if it doesn't show up in a few minutes, make sure they check there.
 
 
 
 
Classcaster® is a course website, blogging and podcasting system that provides an exciting and engaging way to interact with students and communities. In addition to blogging tools, a Classcaster® site provides options for recording and posting podcasts, lectures, interviews, and class summaries as well as sharing documents and files.

InstaPoll (6)

InstaPoll is an open, online tool for professors to easily create in-class student polls on the fly. Think of it as a virtual clicker that can be used with laptops, tablets, smart phones...anything with a web browser! Instapoll is completely free for everyone and there is no special equipment needed.

To create an InstaPoll:

  1. Go to https://instapoll.cali.org
  2. Click on the ‘Create a Poll’ button
  3. If you do not want students to be able to change their answers, uncheck the box next to “Students may change their answer.”
  4. Announce the Poll number to the students or audience. (The Poll# appears both in the upper right hand corner of the screen and below the virtual clicker.)
  5. Verbally provide the question and answer choices to the students and ask the students to answer by selecting the choice on the Poll Page.
  6. Results will appear on the faculty member’s screen in the form of a bar graph.
  7. To clear the results in order to ask another question, click ‘Reset.’

No. You can use the same Instapoll for consecutive questions. This can be done in two ways:

  1. If you leave the “Students may change their answer” box checked, the students can change their answers for the new question and the poll results will automatically update.
  2. If you unchecked the “Students may change their answer” button, click the ‘Reset’ button in order to clear the answers to the previous question. This will start the poll with a blank slate.

No. Neither the question asker nor the answerers need to be logged into the CALI website. This means you can use InstaPoll with guest speakers who aren't CALI members or in situations, such as conference presentations, that have non-CALI members in attendance. It also means that if a student has forgotten their CALI login information, this won't delay the polling process. Basically, you can use InstaPoll anywhere there is a web connection!

No. The answers on Instapoll are anonymous. It is impossible to tell if a student has answered a question or which answer they provided.

No. An InstaPoll cannot be reopened after its webpage has been closed. You will need to create a new poll and provide that new number to the audience/class.

CALIcon (1)

CALIcon is the only conference where law faculty, law librarians and IT professionals gather to discuss latest innovations in legal education and technology. Attendees from CALI member schools and conference speakers get discounted registration.

The “CALI award” is given to the student with the highest grade in a class, as determined by the professor or registrar. Awardees receive a printed certificate and a permanent URL VirtualAward that they can link to from their online resumés or biographies. Over 100 law schools participate in the CALI Excellence for the Future Award program. It is a free service available to any CALI member law school that wishes to participate.

The Software


A2J Author® is a software tool developed by CALI and the Center for Access to Justice & Technology at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law to deliver greater access to justice for self-represented litigants by enabling lawyers and law students to rapidly build user-friendly web-based document assembly tools called A2J Guided Interviews®. These A2J Guided Interviews allow users to complete court documents by presenting a series of easy-to-understand questions while graphics virtually lead users along the path to the courthouse, where these documents can be filed. A2J Author ® is currently used in more than 42 states, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, Australia, and Canada. More than 1,000 A2J Guided Interviews are actively used on the national server, Law Help Interactive, and CALI's own a2j.org. These A2J Guided Interviews have been used by self-represented litigants more than 7,000,000 times since 2005. These A2J Guided Interviews help self-represented litigants in a wide variety of legal matters including filing for divorce, getting protection orders, answering debt collection suits, and modifying child support orders. The latest version of A2J Author version is mobile responsive, accessible, and user friendly for end users and those automating the forms. An internal document assembly tool, called the A2J Document Assembly Tool (A2J DAT), allows for complete PDF document assembly packages entirely within A2J Author. 



A2J Author in the Classroom


In partnership with IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, CALI® developed a model program for CALI® member schools that integrates A2J Author® into law school courses. Piloted in the Spring of 2013 as the A2J Course Project, A2J Author has now been taught in over 25 law school courses and clinics. Sample syllabi, course materials, software training exercises, and technical support are available to CALI member schools free of charge.  For more information, visit https://www.a2jauthor.org/content/law-school-courses.



To Learn More About A2J Author


A2J Author Website


A2J.org (CALI's hosting site for A2J Guided Interviews)


A2J Author YouTube Channel


A2J Author Authoring Guide (Software Manual)


A2J Author Sample Exercises (practice exercises to help you learn to automate forms using A2J Author)


A2J Author Law School Courses


 

It's easy to edit/change your name on your CALI Account, just follow these steps:

  • Log into CALI with your username and password.  The spot to do this is on the dark blue bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on "My Account" to go to your CALI account information.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • Scroll down the page to find entries for "First Name", "Middle Name", and "Last Name" and edit those as you wish
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

Yes you can.

A working email address must be associated with your CALI account.  While we don't send out many emails to our users, the ones we do are very important for your continued use of CALI.  But most importantly, if you've forgotten your password, the only way to retrieve it is to have a working email associated with your CALI account.

Here's how to change your email address on your CALI account:

  • Log into CALI with your username and password.  The spot to do this is on the dark blue menu bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on your name in the top menu. This will take you to a page with your account details.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • There will be an entry for your email address.  Delete your current address and add in the one you wish to use.  At this time, hotmail.com email addresses are not permitted.
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

Because CALI's password retrieval email is automated, many email systems will mistakenly classify them as junk mail or spam.

Check your spam or trash folders.  It may be in there.

If it's not there and it's been at least 15 minutes, it may be that your email system blocked the email entirely.  This is becoming common with .edu addresses.

If after 15 minutes and there is no email, please send an email to feedback@CALI.org.  Include your email address and a new email address that you would like to use for your account.  We will swap out the old email and replace it with the new one so that you can get emails.

Here's how to change your password on your CALI account:
  • Log into CALI with your username and password. The spot to do this is on the blue bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on your name (if using mouse with pointer) or touch your name (if using tablet or smartphone). This will take you to a page with your CALI profile page.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • Enter your current password. This is required to change your password in the next steps
  • There will be two boxes for password. Type in your new password and then confirm it. Note: The website will tell you how strong your password is, but the only requirement is that it is six characters long.
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

CALI has an automated password retrieval system that will send you an email.  It will contain a link to a page on the CALI website where you will be able to reset your email.  This link will expire after a day and will only be good for your account.  If you do not use it, nothing will happen.

Please note: These emails are sometimes marked as spam and are either sent to your junk mail folder or blocked completely.  If you have not received an email in 15 minutes, please email feedback@cali.org to have your password manually reset.

There could be several reasons why you are having difficulties logging into CALI.
  1. Make sure you are using the correct username. If you are not sure, use the password reset function. The automated email that you will receive is address to your username.
  2. Try an alternate browser and make sure the browsers you use are updated.
  3. Make sure your browser is set to accept cookies.
  4. Clear your browser's cookies.
If none of those work, try to log in on another device. Remember - CALI lessons are compatible with tablets and smart phones. If you are able to log in there, that means there is an issue with your computer and we are going to be unable to help you. If you are unable to log in on the new device or computer, please contact feedback@cali.org and we check your account for issues.

Here's how to change your username on your CALI account:

  • Log into CALI with your username and password. The spot to do this is on the dark blue menu bar on the top of the site.
  • Click on your name in the top menu. This will take you to a page with your account details.
  • Click the edit tab.
  • There will be a box with your username.  Enter your new username. Please do not use your email address as your username.
  • Enter your current password so the system knows it's you
  • Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "save".

There are two possibilities.

  1. Your browser needs to accept cookies in order to access certain CALI resources and especially to run CALI lessons. Make sure your browser is set to accept cookies from cali.org. We only use cookies to track you permissions to access certain CALI resources like CALI Lessons. If you're browser is set to accept cookies, read on.
  2. Your browser is holding onto cookies with incorrect information. This is very common when you've recently changed passwords. In this case, log out of CALI, clear the cookies of your browser and then re-login with your correct credentials.

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.

This is a security feature in Windows. If you see a message similar to this, it is safe to continue by clicking the Run button.

Hardware (2)

Yes! Almost all CALI Lessons work on most popular tablets and smartphones. How It Works: To access lessons with your mobile device you do not need to download an app, but you will need be connected to the internet. Use your device's default internet browser to go to the CALI website, log in and access the lessons just like you would on a desktop or laptop computer. Known Mobile Compatibility Issues: We're aware of, and working on:

  • iPad large font size - iPad shows very large font size. You can use your browser's font size setting to reduce the size to 50%.
  • Drag and drop questions do not function on Android devices. If you encounter a drag and drop question while on an Android device we recommend you exit the lesson and resume it later on a computer so that you can answer the question.
  • Mobile view in Safari does not work on iOS - iPad or iPhone. Lessons still run as normal, but you do not have the option of mobile view at this time.

Help Us Find Mobile Issues! There are a bunch of devices on the market and, unfortunately, it's impossible for our little nonprofit to support and test every scenario. We need your help identifying issues. First, make sure you are using your device's default browser. If you still have a problem, contact us. Thanks!

No, not at all! CALI Lessons are compatible with the Apple operating system.

Software (2)

Faculty members that wish to edit and AutoPublish existing CALI Lessons or write their own will need to use the CALI Author software. This can be downloaded free of charge from the CALI website here.

CALI Author is the software that powers CALI Lessons. Faculty at CALI member schools may use it to edit existing CALI Lessons or create their own learning objects.

Any organization or individual who wishes to learn or teach the law.  Current CALI members include:

  • 97% of American law schools
  • Law schools in countries out side of the United States, including the majority of Canadian Law Schools
  • Undergraduate programs
  • Business Schools
  • Law Firms
  • Non-profit organizations
  • Law Libraries

Here's the complete list of CALI members.

HOW TO BECOME A CALI MEMBER

Current list of CALI Members

If you want to access CALI Lessons for you, your students, and your staff, your organization needs a CALI membership. Follow the links for membership forms:

Membership dues for these organizations are completely free, but you still need to do the paperwork so we can get you access. 

BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP

Faculty, students, staff, and employees of CALI member organizations enjoy exclusive access to the following tools:

  • CALI Lessons - CALI lessons are interactive tutorials written by law professors at  CALI member schools.  They can be used for studying purposes or formative assessment.  Faculty are able to edit lessons to suit their needs and, when using the Lesson Link feature, view students' answers and performance.  We allow unlimited use of CALI lessons by our members and every year we average about a million lesson runs.
  • QuizWright™ -  QuizWright™ helps Faculty track what students are learning. It lets professors write Multiple Choice, True/False, and Yes/No questions as formative assessments for their students that can be run inside or outside the classroom. QuizWright quizzes can be published instantly and privately on the CALI website, where most students already have an account. The faculty can view the results in real-time using online dashboards or download them to Excel for further analysis. With this resource, faculty can create a personal question bank to use with your courses year after year, view student responses in real-time, pull questions from a bank of shared questions taken from CALI Lessons, built on the robust and secure CALI tools like the CALI Lesson Viewer, AutoPublish, and LessonLink.  

  • eLangdell® Press - CALI’s eLangdell® Press publishes free casebooks and book chapters authored by law faculty. All are available under a Creative Commons license so that faculty and students can use and remix the materials to suit their educational needs.  Included in this resource are over 30 publications covering 17 different legal subject areas; it is compatible with all mobile devices and tablets. No-DRM PDF, MSWord, Kindle, and iPad versions of entire books are available. Print versions are available with no markup costs. 

  • CALI Author - CALI Author is the software that powers CALI Lessons.  CALI members have the ability to use this software for any non-commercial purpose.  Examples include training student library workers, HR orientation, or local jurisdiction lessons.
  • CALI Excellence for the Future Awards® - The CALI Excellence for the Future Award is given to the top-scoring student in each course at a law school.  Law schools with multiple sections of the same course can choose to award just one CALI Award or one for each section.  CALI Award winners are given a paper certificate as well as a virtual one that they can post on social media and other web presences.  They are also invited to join the CALI Award Winners group on LinkedIn.  All of these are provided free of charge to the student and the school.
  • Classcaster® - Classcaster is CALI's blogging, podcasting, and website creation tool.  It can be used as a course website, a scholarship repository, or a personal website.  Really, the possibilities are limitless.  You can even post a podcast with just a phone call!
  • A2J Author® - This legal practice software was developed in partnership with the Chicago-Kent Center for Access to Justice and Technology.  It creates guided interviews that can be used for legal form automation, client intake, or e-filing.   It's currently used by legal aid organizations, law school clinics, and courts across the country.  Members may use it for any non-commercial use.
  • Authoring Opportunities - CALI only accepts authoring proposals for CALI Lessons and eLangdell Press books to faculty at CALI member schools.  You will get a publication credit, and CALI provides monetary stipends to authors.
  • Discounted registration to CALI's Conference for Law School Computing, the only conference that brings together law professors, IT professionals, law librarians, and others in the legal technology world.

 

CALI membership is open to schools, organizations and individuals that wish to learn or teach law.


We'd be happy to meet with you, your faculty, or your adminstration about joining CALI - in person, via teleconference or online. And Ronella Norris, our Membership Coordinator, is here to answer all of your questions. Talk to your school's administration and tell them to contact us.


Membership application forms are also available for the following:


Law Schools Outside of the United States

Business Schools

Other Non-JD programs:


  • Paralegal Programs
  • Legal Studies Departments
  • Political Science Programs
  • Criminal Justice Programs
  • Any other academic Undergraduate or Graduate Department that wants to learn the law.

Law Firms

Corporate Law Departments

Government Agencies

Individuals

Legal Aid Organizations

Library Schools

State and County Law Librarians

CALI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and nearly all of our financial support comes from law school membership dues. US law schools pay a flat rate of $8,000/year regardless of size or usage.

We offer deeply discounted membership rates for organizations and individuals that wish to learn or teach the law. These memberships are $250/year.

Legal Aid organizations, library schools, and state and county law libraries are able to join CALI at absolutely no cost. Yes, that's right... FREE.

If you didn't find your answer, please don't hesitate to contact one of the CALI staff members. We'll be happy to help you!

Self-publsihed lessonss 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.