Built to connect

MCP endpoint Live

NTLSN runs a public Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. MCP is an open, JSON-RPC 2.0-based protocol for connecting AI assistants and other clients to external tools and data sources. Our server is read-only, requires no authentication, holds no state about you, and fails closed. It exposes three tools:

• upcoming_events — curated sector events, with an optional university filter and a result limit.
• search_archive — search over the rescued ALTC/OLT teaching-scholarship archive: 1,431 works, 1994–2025.
• universities — the 42 Australian universities whose learning-and-teaching team pages are indexed in the network directory.

Endpoint:

Try it from a terminal:

# List the available tools
curl -s https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list"}'

# Call one: the next three sector events
curl -s https://ntlsn.com/.netlify/functions/mcp \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Accept: application/json, text/event-stream" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"upcoming_events","arguments":{"limit":3}}}'

Any MCP-capable client can point at this URL as a remote server. A fuller walkthrough, including client configuration, is on the MCP page — full walkthrough →.

MCP is an open protocol originally developed by Anthropic. NTLSN is independent of, and not affiliated with or endorsed by, Anthropic.

The data behind the commons Live

NTLSN publishes the datasets that power this site as plain JSON files at stable URLs. They are served with open CORS headers, so any page, script, or notebook can fetch them directly — no key, no sign-up, no registration. What this site reads, you can read.

LiveBoth files below are in production and power pages on this site today.

1. Curated sector events

A hand-curated calendar of learning and teaching events across Australian higher education — conferences, symposia, webinars, workshops, showcases, and themed weeks. The file holds 94 curated sector events, 53 of them verified against the organiser's page as of 5 July 2026; every record carries a verified flag. New entries enter as verified: false and are flipped to true only after a maintainer has checked the listing against the organiser's page — so you can filter on trust rather than take our word for it.

A static iCalendar snapshot of the dataset is also published at https://ntlsn.com/events.ics, and an RSS feed of upcoming events at https://ntlsn.com/feed.xml — both are static snapshots of the dataset, not live feeds.

Field dictionary

The maintainer-side data dictionary, validation rules, and contribution checklist live at https://ntlsn.com/DATA.md.

2. ALTC/OLT archive — metadata index (1994–2025)

A metadata index of 1,431 records from Australia's national learning and teaching grant and fellowship programs — the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC), the Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT), and related schemes — spanning 1994 to 2025. Each record carries a title, the lead author where one was recorded, the year, and a link to the full public record at ltr.edu.au.

This file is an index, not the works themselves. The reports and resources it points to belong to their authors and institutions; every record links back to its source so that credit and access stay where they should. The file is a single 276 KB array with four compact keys and no pagination.

Field dictionary

NTLSN is independent of, and not affiliated with, ltr.edu.au or the Australian Government bodies that ran the ALTC and OLT programs. Inclusion in this index is a matter of public record, not an endorsement by NTLSN or by those bodies.

Using the data

Both files are ordinary JSON over HTTPS with open CORS, so they work from a browser, a notebook, or the command line:

// In any web page or browser console
const events = await fetch('https://ntlsn.com/data/events.json').then(r => r.json());
const upcoming = events.filter(e => e.verified && e.date >= '2026-07-05');

# From the command line
curl -s https://ntlsn.com/data/events.json | python3 -c "import json,sys; d=json.load(sys.stdin); print(len(d), 'events')"

The same data also sits behind the NTLSN MCP endpoint documented above: the JSON files are the raw layer; the MCP tools (upcoming_events, search_archive, universities) are the queryable layer. Use whichever suits your tooling.

Licence and attribution

In the meantime: you are welcome to read, query, cite, and link to both files. If you intend to redistribute them or build a service on them, please write to hello@ntlsn.com first.

If these datasets contribute to your work, please cite NTLSN and link back to this page. Suggested forms:

NTLSN. (2026). Curated Australian higher-education learning and teaching events [Data set]. https://ntlsn.com/data/events.json

NTLSN. (2026). ALTC/OLT learning and teaching archive — metadata index (1994–2025) [Data set]. https://ntlsn.com/data/ltr.json

Machine-readable descriptions

This page embeds a schema.org Dataset description of each file (JSON-LD, in the page source), which makes both datasets eligible for indexing by dataset search services such as Google Dataset Search. NTLSN is independent of, and not affiliated with, Google or schema.org; the markup follows the open schema.org vocabulary so that any indexer can use it.

SCORM export Live

The self-paced learning modules on this site export as SCORM 1.2 packages, generated entirely in the browser. A staff member can assemble a module and import the package into any SCORM 1.2-conformant learning management system without NTLSN being involved in, or aware of, the import.

SCORM is maintained by the ADL Initiative. NTLSN is independent of, and not affiliated with or endorsed by, the ADL Initiative. "SCORM 1.2 package" describes the export format; no formal conformance certification is claimed.

The client-side pattern: open scholarly APIs Live

The research tools on this site — the conference, open-access and journal finders, the ORCID-personalised pages, the SoTL profile tools — run in your browser and call open scholarly APIs directly: OpenAlex, DOAJ, and the ORCID public API. No NTLSN server sits between your browser and those services. We do not proxy, log, or store the queries.

What this means for an IT team: the entire network footprint of the free commons is ntlsn.com plus a short, published allowlist of open scholarly APIs, enforced by the site's own Content-Security-Policy header. There is no hidden telemetry endpoint to discover later.

OpenAlex is a service of OurResearch; DOAJ is the Directory of Open Access Journals; ORCID is ORCID, Inc. NTLSN is independent of, and not affiliated with or endorsed by, any of them.

Open Badges 3.0 portable recognition In design

Recognition earned through the commons should be a credential the scholar holds, not a row in a database we hold. We are prototyping issuance and verification of portable credentials against the 1EdTech Open Badges 3.0 specification, which is built on the W3C Verifiable Credentials model. Nothing is issued today, and no conformance certification is claimed or implied.

A machine-readable recognition crosswalk, modelled on CASE In design

The recognition crosswalk in design — mapping AAUT citation criteria, the Professional Standards Framework, HERDSA Fellowship criteria and the ACODE benchmarks against one another — is being modelled on 1EdTech's CASE approach to publishing frameworks in machine-readable form, so that institutions can consume the mapping rather than re-key it. It is not yet published as a CASE package, and no conformance is claimed.

Open Badges, CASE and LTI are specifications of 1EdTech (formerly IMS Global). AAUT is administered by the Australian Government; the Professional Standards Framework by Advance HE; the Fellowship scheme by HERDSA; the benchmarks by ACODE. NTLSN is independent of, and not affiliated with or endorsed by, any of these organisations; naming a framework here is a statement of design intent, not certification.

LTI 1.3 Staged

LTI 1.3 launch into the commons from an institutional LMS is staged for the first institutional contract, delivered through middleware rather than through changes to the free site. We do not describe this site as "LTI-ready": LTI is only meaningfully claimed when a real deployment is configured against a real LMS tenancy, and that happens per contract, with the institution's own keys.

Single sign-on via AAF (OpenID Connect) Staged

Single sign-on through the Australian Access Federation, using OpenID Connect, is staged for the first institutional contract. It exists so an institution can give staff a signed-in experience on its own terms. The free commons itself will remain usable without any login — that is a design commitment, not a temporary state.

The Australian Access Federation is an independent organisation; NTLSN is independent of, and not affiliated with or endorsed by, the AAF.