I want to take an online course, but I don’t know if I have the necessary skills?

The good news is that you almost certainly already have the necessary skills. The most important skills are that you can navigate the Internet, use email and have basic word processor skills. Of course, some courses may require a little more, but in these cases you will receive support from your teacher in learning the skills you need.

I’ve forgotten my password or username, how can I get back into my courses?

Our Moodle system has a mechanism for recovering your username and resetting your password. To use it go here (you will need to know and be able to access the email account associated with your account). Do not create a second account as it may be deleted; it is better to take the time to recover your original account. If the above link doesn’t help, please contact us (details at the bottom of this page) and we will happily help you get back into your old account.

Can I access my courses at any time?

Yes, certainly. We do our best to make sure that you can access your courses when you need to. Outages are generally short and happen at weekends. These are required to make sure that we can continue to provide the highest quality of service.

Can I use Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, or any other Internet browser?

We recommend that you use Firefox or Google Chrome as these browsers are better at displaying our site and are less likely to deviate from the Internet standards on which our site relies.

What are the system requirements for accessing NCDE content?

To do an NCDE course you will need a computer with:

• Firefox or Google Chrome
• Full Flash and Java support
• Office suite (LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, OpenOffice)
• The ability to play audio and video files (VLC)

These browsers are freely available and there are free software packages which meet the other requirements too, such as LibreOffice, OpenOffice and VLC. Unfortunately, we cannot support students using iOS devices (Apple hand-held devices, such as iPad, iPod and iPhone) as these do not have full versions of Firefox or Google Chrome, and Flash is officially not supported by Apple. NCDES doesn’t provide students with technical support for their computer or the aforementioned software.

What file types can NCDE handle?

While NCDE has the technical capacity to handle a very large variety of file types, for student work we require that the students only use the following formats for submitted work unless clearly requested or permitted to do otherwise by a member of the NCDES staff:

For documents:

• Microsoft Word (.doc or .rtf only)
• Portable Document Format (.pdf)

For presentations and similar:

• Microsoft Powerpoint (.ppt)
• Portable Document Format (.pdf)

For video:

• Audio Video Interleave (.avi)
• MPEG (.mpg)

For audio:

• MP3 (.mp3)
• Wave for very short clips (.wav)
• WMA (.wma)

For images:

• JPEG (.jpg)
• PNG (.png)

How do I go about reporting an issue with an NCDE course or the NCDE website?

The most important thing is to provide as much information as possible. We recommend taking a screen shot of the problem, describe how you found the problem and how it is affecting you. If you need help taking a screen shot, have a look here. Include the full browser application window in the screen shot. In the case of Moodle and course related issues, email this information to your teacher. Otherwise, email the information to clerical@ncdes.ca.