Tried to log in on Tuesday and tonight. to be told the login creditials are incorrect. 3 seperate cadets tried, I checked thier username and password. I tried to log in with my own, same issue.
Any ideas?
I cant find anything saying the server is down or anything?
Dont know but sounds like it, I had the same issue last night none of the cadets accounts or mine worked.
who knows mayby they have finaly decided to bin it 
We had this on monday night with various staff and cadets trying and failing to get on. Ultifail strikes again!
Atleast I know it isn’t just us. So frustrating when you have cadets waiting to sit exams and you keep having to say ‘no sorry ultilearn is down’. Oh well, keep trying! 
Wasn’t working for me either this morning but we have used it exclusively for two years without major issues other than the crashing. I reset my password and it worked straight away so maybe try that!
We had the same problem on Tuesday, were sent a work around by our WTO, however we were also unable to log into SharePoint for the 2nd consecutive Tuesday during Parade hours…
Anyone would think by comments here and comments I’ve heard in person from staff, that the ACO didn’t exist and / or function before Ultilearn.
So, at the moment, its a bit crap. There’s two ways in my opinion you can deal with this:
You then spend your “whining time” thinking up new and different ways of delivering the syllabus, or planning trips out, why not take the cadets to an aircraft museum?
In my opinion we have too little time on squadron to worry. Yes things take a bit longer and yes its a pain in our rear ends, but bleating about it won’t solve anything, positive action will.
Understatement of the bloody century!
Understatement of the bloody century![/quote]
If I started to rant about it - I’d be ignoring my own advice!
in our Wing we have been told to log EVERY problem in an attempt to bombard HQAC with evidence there are issues. apparently only 4-5% of problems are being logged (how this number is known is a mystery, given a problem needs to be logged ot be recorded…) and so if strong indication is offered that problems are occuring then they’ll find it harder to ignore…
I don’t disagree with the idea that issues should be logged, just the criticism gets a bit much, and I feel almost wastes time that would be better spent delivering extra training to the cadets.
No I am not a member of the bader Dev team before anyone asks!
Just noticed that we seem to have a general Sqn log in. Is this a new thing?
[quote=“5432golf” post=3872]Anyone would think by comments here and comments I’ve heard in person from staff, that the ACO didn’t exist and / or function before Ultilearn.
So, at the moment, its a bit crap. There’s two ways in my opinion you can deal with this:
You then spend your “whining time” thinking up new and different ways of delivering the syllabus, or planning trips out, why not take the cadets to an aircraft museum?
In my opinion we have too little time on squadron to worry. Yes things take a bit longer and yes its a pain in our rear ends, but bleating about it won’t solve anything, positive action will.[/quote]
Whilst in principle I agree, it’s not always that easy. The nearest air museum to us is quite a way away, and obviously not practical for a parade night activity. Going to a museum can only do so much to teach the subjects anyway, it isn’t useless for principles of flight but looking at a spitfire only goes so far when trying to explain how it flies!
I think part of the issue people have is that:
a) it was forced upon us without anyone testing to see if it worked for what we need it to.
b) the roll-out was half-hearted and took far too long, as such a lot of the material is already out of date. c) I’m told it was poorly managed too, and those that gave their time to help deliver it were not happy with the end results, so much so that one person I know asked for their name to be removed from the content (which didn’t happen!).
d) The RAF didn’t provide what they said they would.
e) The commandant herself was told “there are some teething problems” by her own staff - who also failed to tell her there is a replacement being worked on. It was only when she got out and about that she found out how hated it really is, and then someone told her about the replacement! (she also said that one CI wrote an email direct to the CAS to complain about it, which made for an interesting “copying in the CAS in the reply” she had to do!)
f) Some of the content really requires you to know it first. If you can’t access the content as the instructor, you’ve got no chance of delivering things like Adv Radio and Radar because it gets quite physicsy! It’s all very well saying “make up your own lessons”, but without that starting point it is actually very hard to do so!
Overall, it is a shambles. I feel sorry for the helpdesk who have to try and appease us with the thousands of problems created by Ultilearn, and then they get complaints that other requests aren’t dealt with because they’re so busy fixing the ones we’ve already logged!
Nope, it’s been there from the start.
[quote=“pEp” post=3887]
The RAF didn’t provide what they said they would.[/quote]
So far as I can see it seems that the RAF (or at least the guys actually tasked with creating lessons) were really not given enough information to do so. Little to no guidance on the level to aim at, few specific learning outcomes to cover…
I know two guys who were told ‘create lessons on pneumatics and hydraulics for the ATC’ and nothing more.
It’s no wonder nothing arrived. I certainly wouldn’t waste my time trying to create a lesson when I’ve got no idea who it’s aimed at, what their current level of knowledge is, whether I’m expected to just touch the surface or go into detail, or what specific learning outcomes they’ll be tested against at the end of it.
Lessons on “pneumatics and hydraulics” could very easily be 6 week in-depth engineering course module…or it could be a half hour session with some basic pictures and practical experiments blowing through straws.
The Jet Proplsion powerpoints are a good example…If you don’t understand jet engines to a high standard then you simply can’t jump in and use it to deliver. You need to know exactly what to tell the cadets in relation to the slide they’re seeing.
Clearly a good instructor should not deliver a lesson unless they know the subject anyway.
We’ve all seen the results of bad instructors delivering lessons by ‘reading the slides/book’ of subjects they don’t know…they are almost invariably poor.
The only options are:
A. Hope that every Squadron has suitably knowledgeable staff,
B. Share instructors around units or organise joint lessons,
C. Train instructors in the subjects they’d like to teach.
C is clearly the most preferable.
We held off adopting Ultilearn for as long as possible down our way and thanks to ACC I’d already seen the presentations.
I banged on about this very point at our Wing SNCO training days a number of times before we made the switch by no one really seemed to “get it”.
My point was that with only limited Ground Instructor courses offered by the Corps we really needed to address the problem locally.
Eventually that seems to be happening. There’s recently been an ‘adult staff radio training day’ which is exactly the sort of thing needed.
We’ve got a good pool of knowledge within the wings, we really need to be passing it on.
Absolutely.
The correct order should have been:
With regards to Mr imagineers example of jet prop, I’ve just started work on a friendlier version as I work close to this field.
Any input is gratefully received…timescale or no timescale, whatever SME thought using a low bypass turbofan last used in the Canberra as a modern example, even given its relatively simple layout…is way beyond my comprehension.
[quote=“5432golf” post=3872]Anyone would think by comments here and comments I’ve heard in person from staff, that the ACO didn’t exist and / or function before Ultilearn.
So, at the moment, its a bit crap. There’s two ways in my opinion you can deal with this:
You then spend your “whining time” thinking up new and different ways of delivering the syllabus, or planning trips out, why not take the cadets to an aircraft museum?
In my opinion we have too little time on squadron to worry. Yes things take a bit longer and yes its a pain in our rear ends, but bleating about it won’t solve anything, positive action will.[/quote]
I wouldn’t say I was moaning about it. Making an enquiry about whether others were experiencing the same issue. Yes there are other activities we can (and do) do. There are other ways of teaching the subject (also done). Ultimately the issue is we are failing the cadets with a broken system. I think the idea is fantastic, it is just a shame it doesn’t work.
I have cadets who age out soon who would like their BTEC but won’t get of unless the system works. We will continue to have back up plans but it doesn’t stop the frustrations.
[quote=“5432golf” post=3872]Anyone would think by comments here and comments I’ve heard in person from staff, that the ACO didn’t exist and / or function before Ultilearn.
So, at the moment, its a bit crap. There’s two ways in my opinion you can deal with this:
We shouldn’t have to organise refresher training if they’d got it right in the first instance.
The new system was mooted in a document from a meeting August 2009 with an implimentation date of September 2010. So far IMO they’ve not yet implimented it. So probably 4+ years since inception it’s not fit for purpose. The cadets have been let down massively by people at the top, out of their depth.
As mentioned this was dumped on us, untried and untested to destruction as with all IT projects in the ACO. I think I said in a different thread and was promptly derided, that if in the business world you tried the ACOs approach you’d be sacked. But the ACO is part of the MoD/public sector and they are not the most renown for delivery or management of any project. The fact the system can’t cope during “working hours” is a school boy error in project management terms. Imagine there you are at work and IT announce a new system is up and running, but as soon as everyone logs on to use it, it doesn’t work. The IT HoD and would be invited to explain to senior board members. But in the context of the ACO our senior board members don’t care as it doesn’t affect them and as they are all part of the same diseased project management mentaility, see not making deadlnes as the norm, whereas most of us are outside the public sector and have higher expectations.
The way this should have been done is keep the old system with all of its faults, until they had trialed the new system, whereby all sqns log in during our “working day” and see what happens. If they had done this and no one had any problems, carry on to full implimentation. If people couldn’t use it in “normal working hours”, as has been the case, carry on with the old, then re-test until it does work. If this doesn’t seem sensible then explain why not.
Frankly we should go back to the old paper system until such time as our new all-singing and dancing system is fit for purpose and we can log on and carry out exams etc etc as we want. I do think the first step is remove all learning material and use it purely as an exam system. I hope whoever thought putting the learning material on there was a good idea has been sacked from that job and given a role more in keeping with their abilities, like filing things and making tea and coffee, but only if it’s from a vending machine.
One of the few things that you and I agree on