The help centre holds step-by-step guides for every part of the portal. It lives at /help/knowledge-base and is public: anyone can read it without signing in. Signed in, it opens on the guides for your role first.
Opening the help centre
| You are… | Where the link is |
|---|---|
| A student | The ? button in the top bar, Help centre in the account menu, or Help centre under Need help? at the bottom of the menu. |
| A teacher | Help centre in the teacher portal menu. |
| A campus | Help centre in the campus menu. |
| An affiliate partner | Help centre in the partner menu, or the ? button in the top bar. |
| An employer | The ? button in the Hiring panel's top bar, or Help in its menu. |
| School staff | Help centre in your account menu (next to My profile). |
| Not signed in | Open /help/knowledge-base directly, or follow a help link from the NSDP website. Every guide except staff-only ones opens without an account. |
The top bar shows the NSDP logo, a search box and Back to portal, so you can return to where you work at any time.
Switching between help centres
At the top of the help centre, Choose a help centre lets anyone switch between the Students, Instructors, Campuses and Affiliate partners help centres. Your own is marked You and opens first. Switching is handy when you want to know how another part of NSDP works, for example a student thinking of becoming an instructor, or a partner explaining the campus journey to an institute. Search and topics follow the help centre you picked, and the choice is kept in the address as ?as=student, ?as=teacher, ?as=campus or ?as=affiliate, so a link can open a chosen help centre. Without a choice, a visitor who is not signed in starts in the Students help centre.
Info icons and Learn more links
Every page of the instructor, campus and affiliate panels has a Learn more button next to its title that opens the guide for that page. Many labels and headings also have a small ⓘ icon. Hover over it (or tap it on a phone) for a one- or two-sentence explanation. The underlined Learn more link opens the matching section of a guide here, scrolls to it and highlights it for a moment. A "You came from …" note with a Back to … button then takes you to the page you came from.
Searching
- The front page has one large search box in the middle. Type a few words — the name of a page, a button, or the exact message you saw. Results update as you type.
- Under the box, Popular offers common searches to try.
- Results can point to a whole guide or straight to one section inside it.
- Use the arrow keys and Enter to pick a result without the mouse.
- No results? Try a shorter or different word (for example "payout" instead of "withdraw money").
Browsing by topic
The front page starts with four figures: how many guides and topics there are for you, how many answers can be linked to, and when a guide was last updated. Start here then lists, in numbered rows, the guides people in your role open first. Browse by topic groups every guide into topics such as Getting started, Account & security, Learning, Live & on-site classes, Teaching, Campus operations, Certificates and Payouts & money; each topic card shows its icon, how many guides it holds for you and its first three guides, and Browse topic opens the full list. Topics with nothing for your role are hidden. How a process moves, start to finish shows the main processes as step-by-step maps, and Recently updated lists the newest guides.
Reading a guide
- The strip under the title shows who the guide is for, how long it takes to read, how many sections it has and when it was updated, with Copy link and Print.
- The list on the left has every guide in the same topic, numbered, so you can move between them.
- On this page lists the guide's sections and how much you have read; select one to jump to it. It follows you as you scroll.
- Sections are numbered. Every section heading has a small link button that copies a direct link to that section (it confirms with "Link copied") — handy when you want to send someone to exactly the right place.
- Steps are numbered in order; a green button on a step opens the screen or the guide it talks about.
- Questions in the FAQ open when you select them (the plus turns into a cross).
- The previous and next guide in the same topic, and related guides, are listed at the end.
- The Print button gives a clean page without the menus, with every FAQ answer opened.
What you see first
| You are… | Opens on… |
|---|---|
| A student | The Student help centre |
| A teacher | The Instructor help centre (with campus-teacher guides) |
| A campus | The Campus help centre |
| An affiliate partner | The Affiliate partner help centre |
| School staff | Everything, so you can support any user, with a preview of each help centre |
Can I use the help centre without signing in?
Yes. Every guide except those written only for school staff is public. Signing in just opens the guides for your role first.
A Learn more link opened the top of a guide, not a section.
The section may have been renamed or moved. Use On this page to find it.
The guide doesn't answer my question.
See Getting help for who to contact.