Can I lose my work in Oncourse if my session times out?

Oncourse has no autosave feature. You can lose your work in Oncourse in some situations, especially when you're typing in a text box or field. Therefore, UITS recommends saving your work often. See below for details.

About the timeout period

The Oncourse server disconnects your session after three hours (four hours for the Original Test and Survey tool) of perceived inactivity. In addition, unexpected network connectivity problems can sometimes occur, particularly if you are connecting wirelessly. If you're taking or creating an assessment, composing text, or otherwise working in the application when the disconnect occurs, you will lose your work and be unable to retrieve it.

The session timer begins from the last time you did one of the following:

• Selecting a tool from the menubar
• Selecting a tab for a site
• Clicking buttons such as Save, Save as Draft, Post, Send, Next, etc. (in most cases)

Composing text, or clicking radio buttons or drop-down lists to select answers or options, will not reset the timer.

How to save your work

Many tools have the option to save your item as a draft; when taking assessments in Tests & Surveys, you can click Save at the bottom of the page at any time. (For more, see Tests & Surveys: Taking an assessment.) Check the appropriate documentation for the tool you're working in for differences between your specific options (e.g., Save vs. Save as Draft).

Note: To prevent losing work, you may prefer to compose long pieces of text outside of Oncourse, where possible, and paste the text into the appropriate fields in Oncourse. However, when using Microsoft Word, be sure to follow the instructions in Pasting from Microsoft Word.

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