Avoid LMS timeout

[Gregg]

We have a client that uses multiple LMSs and several do not send a warning that the system is about to timeout (after about 30 minutes idle) and that they will lose data. Is it possible to keep the session alive by using a specific setting? Sending a periodic message - pinging the LMS?

[Gregg]

I received some info from another source. Does anyone have experience sucessfully implementing these ideas?

Hi Greg, interesting question.

I'm not an expert on this, but I think you will need to hook into one of Lectora's 'predefined' LMS events to send your data and keep the session alive. For example Lectora commuinicates with the LMS after every page change, when an assessment is completed or lesson status is changed. In other words when any changes are made to any of the predefined AICC values allowed within Lectora, or when changing location.

This would leave 2 obvious options:-

1. Artifically use one of the AICC values you might not be using - tricky to do without messing up the course / LMS / tracking logic unless for example you arent using an assessment, in which case you could simply send a score of '0' back to the LMS every so 20 or 30 minutes. Pretty sure this will work, but obviously if you do have an assessment this could be tricky to work around - you'd have to be able to read the actual AICC score from the LMS into Lectora (never tried this myself) save it as a separete variable and send it back periodically.

1. Use the page location functionality. One suggestion would be to call an action to reload the page every 30 minutes or so after it has first loaded, though I've not tried this and I would be cautious about using about setting up a repeating 'run action group' action since from my experience you can too easily get into an infinite loop scenario. If you were simply using this to delay the timeout rather than keep the session open indefinitely then this would obviously not be an issue.

Tim Dyer

[EDT]

Is this an AICC or SCORM course? If it is a SCORM course, you could try using an LMSCommit() function and see if that prevents the LMS from timing out. The action would be as follows:

Go to
Web Address
url would be javascript:LMSCommit();

Not sure if that would prevent your LMS from timing out but you could certainly try it.

For an AICC or SCORM course, you could try the other suggestion that was mentioned in your post of refreshing the page. Just place the action to go to a blank page and on that blank page have the following action:

On show
Go to
Back

This will take the user right back to the page they were just directed away from.

[Gregg]

Thanks EDT, I do have a SCORM 1.2 course and it does have a scored assessment (need 80% to pass).

I don't understand how we would send the actions from an idle course. What do I use to create an action that is triggered every 25 minutes or so?

[EDT]

You could use the timer action. So you would set it up as:

On: Timer
Go to
Web Address
for the url enter: javascript:LMSCommit();

This action will trigger every time the timer value you enter is reached.

[Gregg]

I see - Thanks

We will set-up a test to see what happens. Are there any possible side effects like interferring with test scores if the message is sent while they are actively taking the assessment rather than idle?

[EDT]

With this action, there shouldn't be. If you were randomizing a test and using the other option with the go to back action, then you would run into issues.

[Gregg]

Great - thanks again

[richardsy]

I assume that this might hold true for SCORm 2.4?