Increase Learner Inactivity Timeout for Classroom-Based Training

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Karita Robinson Crossman

The recent introduction of inactivity timeouts for learners is causing significant disruption in our classroom-based training environments, particularly for RTOs delivering short, intensive courses (e.g. 1–3 day programs).

In many cases, students are actively engaged in learning but not interacting with the system—such as reading resources, drafting assessment responses offline, or participating in practical activities. The system is interpreting this as inactivity, resulting in learners being logged out during assessments. This disrupts workflow, impacts learner experience, and increases trainer/admin intervention and support.

Suggested Improvement:

  • Extend the learner inactivity timeout to a minimum of 6 hours, or
  • Allow RTOs to configure inactivity timeout settings based on their delivery model

It would also be beneficial to consult with a range of RTOs to better understand the impact across different training environments.

This change would maintain system security while better supporting real-world training delivery conditions.

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9 comments

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  • Official comment
    Brendan Shand

    Hi all, thanks for all of the feedback in this thread, we really appreciate the extra context and insight!

    We've doubled the inactivity period timeout as a short-term solution, and will long-term look at better handling this within the platform.

    Please continue to share feedback in this thread, and we'll keep you updated with any further developments.

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  • Mason Smith

    We’ve been running into this as well. We’ve had students get timed out of aXcelerate without realising, keep working through their assessment, and then when they hit submit they’re forced to log back in. By that point, everything they’ve entered is gone but somehow the assessment still shows as submitted.

    Super frustrating for students, and it creates a lot of extra follow-up for trainers/admin to sort out.

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  • Brendan Shand

    Thanks for sharing this feedback! We'd like to look into this more to determine the best approach that balances usability with security.

    If you could answer some questions, that would be really helpful:

    1. Roughly how long is the period of inactivity before learners notice they are logged out?
    2. Are learners not being redirected to the account selection screen on log out?
    3. What kinds of assessments require long periods of inactivity within aXcelerate? (Feel free to reach out to our support team with specific examples/links and reference this post.)
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  • Karita Robinson Crossman

    Hi Brendan, thank you so much for responding so quickly! Please see our feedback to your questions below:

    1. Roughly how long is the period of inactivity before learners notice they are logged out? Our process is to assist our students to log in between 7:30am to 8:00am (this can be between 60 - 80 students at a time). We do this step first so that support is on hand as a great number of our students are from trade backgrounds with limited IT skills. Some courses are shorter so assessments will be interacted with earlier in the morning within the 3 hour activity period. For full day courses students may not interact with an assessment until 11am. 
    2. Are learners not being redirected to the account selection screen on log out? Learners are not being redirected to an Account Selection Screen. Instead they are redirected to the main Student Login Screen and are required to input their username and password again. 
    3. What kinds of assessments require long periods of inactivity within aXcelerate? (Feel free to reach out to our support team with specific examples/links and reference this post.) An individual Assessment on it's own does not require long periods of inactivity, however some of our courses (for example our Confined Space Entry course) can have up 10 individual assessments that the students interact with and complete throughout the day. The time outs occur between doing theory tests, to workshop activities, then moving on to complete additional individual assessments (such as risk assessment tasks etc).

    Hopefully this information is helpful!

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  • Martin Jones

    May I add my feedback as an admin user.

    Recently 2 experiences of being confused after time-out were:
    1. I had a period of inactivity but didn't realise I had timed out, yet the last screen I used was still displayed in the browser.
    I returned to that screen, and I searched for a client - it did not find the client, and I was confused. Only after a click or 2 more did the screen reset to the screen showing Admin or other choices, for me to log back in. I repeated the search successfully.
    2. Similarly, I had a period of inactivity and didn't realise I had timed out. After reading my notification email about this issue, I returned to the last displayed Axcelerate "page" selected the Navigation "help" button, chose "Forum" and the system returned a "You do not have permissions" notice. Only after going back to last displayed page (via back button) did the admin option appear to go back in.

    I wasn't seamlessly directed to log-in in these examples.

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  • Helen Arnold

    I have also noticed shorter periods of inactivity have prompted a time-out quicker than usual. I wasn't aware anything had changed. I've experienced similar to Martin above where it was not a seamless direct back to login. 

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  • Ellen Maclaine

    I have also noticed this over the last week, and also wasn't aware of anything having changed. We have had a student contact us to say he has noticed this and has lost answers he was working on, so in the meantime we have advised him to type his answers in a word document and paste them in, so that he doesn't lose his work. 

    I am active in axcelerate most of the day so I'm not sure why I keep getting logged out.

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  • Pip Austin

    Totally agree, there should be a warning that the session is going to time out or has timed out, rather than still showing the screen as normal and not realising until you try to proceed. This should apply to all users across the system. It is catching people out.

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  • Chris Witheridge

    Currently for several of our Assessments at our RTO, we are required to assess students over up to 7 or 8 different units per day, that have accompanying activities, E.G we train the cohort, we then mark the cohort on that one activity, over a 9 hour day, our Assessors are now having to re-log in (through single sign on with an authenticator confirmation already) multiple times which has raised significant frustration across the volume of Assessors we have on sites across the nation,

    We (as the organisation) should be able to determine the time we deem to be acceptable for the purpose of timeout - for us, we heavily use the App, each Learner gets their own device that is theirs for the duration of the course, we already utilise authentication for our Assessors - so forcing our assessors to re-authenticate several times a day, and forcing students to re-log into the system 3 times a day on average is simply a step backwards for us.

    If timeout cadence is a variable for the system, that variable should be a setting for the RTOs individual axcelerate tenancy - not a global setting that was implemented without the input of the users it was intended for.
    If we have our own data and privacy policy and internal practice, we should be capable of determining what acceptable risk is, not having to work around a blanket rule, that's just common sense.

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