Students and instructors need to have labs running all day during class and may need access to labs outside of class hours to complete all exercises. Currently, if the lab timer expires, they lose all the progress they've completed and the lab starts over. Students will not always remember to save or see the notification and have the chance to save the lab before this happens, and losing all their work is not acceptable. An autosave needs to be in place.
| Who would most benefit from this idea? | Lab Learners or Exam-takers |
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What is the problem you are trying to solve?
Prevent labs from cancelling/expiring/resetting when lab timer runs out. |
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Thanks for taking some time to send along this suggestion! Our Product Group has given this an initial review... we love it. We cannot yet commit to a specific timeframe, but we've assigned this as "Likely to Implement," so stay tuned to this thread for updates over the next few weeks or months.
If you have additional context or would like to generate more demand, feel free to edit your original post and/or invite your peers to upvote your Idea.
We used to be able to extend the timer on our own, without writing in. Not sure why Skillable decides to remove the feature.
Penny, the product team is further in discussion of how to best address this scenario. When a final decision is made this idea will be updated.
@Penny, this is still in review with the Product Team. The status will automatically update as this idea moves forward in the development cycle.
@Eric - has there been any additional attention to this? Thanks.
@Penny, thanks for adding more clarity here. This greatly assists in trying to see the workflow and where the users issues are.
Eric,
The scenario I am primarily addressing is this:
Student has launched lab and the lab timer expires.
Student did not respond to the notification to extend the lab time, so the lab cancels and all progress is lost/removed.
It is my understanding (from your tech support info) that labs are handled in the following ways:
1. If the student is actively using the environment and does not choose to extend their time, the lab will not save automatically but will cancel, resetting the environment.
2. The student has stepped away. The labs today, have enabled to auto-save when the last activity received was over 60 minutes or the last sync was 15 minutes ago. To clarify, the activity would be actual user input. The sync would be dependent upon factors like the browser window being open. If a user had worked actively in the lab with 59 minutes remaining, left the browser window open, and did not choose to extend their time, the lab would not auto-save. It is also important to note, that if the time remaining, left only 5 minutes, the auto-save feature would not engage as well.
In each of these scenarios, students would lose any lab work they've completed. In any circumstance, if there is an opportunity for students to lose lab progress right in the middle of a class, this is a major problem.
Just to point out that there are options to autosave on inactivity that are setup on the Advanced tab of the Lab Profile. You will see the settings located in the Save/Cancel Options section of the document: Create a Lab Profile.
Below is the User Case that I think you are posing?
User Case:
user launches lab during class
user leaves class at end of day (does not save lab themself)
user logs in later at night to continue the lab instance from the day to only find that the lab has already exceeded it's time and closed
would like the system to automatically save after x min of inactivity
Please respond with another comment if this will address your idea or if it does not please indicate if the settings do not address your desired workflow and how your User Case may differ then above.
Students work on labs after hours, or step away during class, where they do not see the extended time notification. If they step away for lunch/meeting and come back to a "Step 1" screen on a Wednesday or Thursday of a class that uses one lab instance they have essentially lost everything they have worked on.
If an instructor keeps a lab instance open for a MOC class and the lab ends during lecture the instructor is unable to demo when necessary.