Understanding Session Timeouts

Owned by Luc Richard
Last updated: Dec 02, 2021
2 min read

For security reasons, the learning environment will log users out if it doesn't detect any activity for a 2 hour period. If you are logged out, any work in progress (that you never saved) will be lost. If for example you've been working on the same web page for over 2 hours and haven't saved it, or you are completing a very long quiz but left in the middle of it to go grab lunch and never saved your answers, the system will discard your work.

To prevent this from happening, the system will prompt you approximately 20 minutes before the expiration of your 2-hour session if you want to extend your session. 

In order to make sure you do NOT lose any work that is in progress, we recommend that you (a) save your work if you know you will be leaving your computer for a long period of time or (b) click on the "Extend session" button (as per the screenshot below) to extend your current session.



Important Notes

  • The 2 hour timeout means "2 hours of inactivity". If you click on any "Save" button or move from page to page, the 2-hour timer resets itself to 0.

  • Some pages, or elements of pages, automatically get saved after a short period of time (e.g. 2 minutes). That being said, you should still save your work in progress once in a while and not rely on these auto-save capabilities if you know you will be stepping away from your computer for an extended period of time..