ePortfolios have been round for a while now but interest in them has really exploded over the last 24 months. ePortfolio’s are more than just a repository. They are a place for reflection and their audience may vary from peers to mentors to teacher to external visitors with a wide range interests including possible employers.
Now while the audience element of portfolio’s is really a policy decision that an institution decides on, the above list shows that the needs can vary greatly. In my specific environment I am needing a way to allow students to store finished work and reflections in a repository that will operate for the entire duration of their time with us. A place where students and teachers alike can see the growth in their knowledge and skills over time.
The issue I have with using Moodle for this is that I reset the moodle install each year to allow for courses to be re-initialised for the next student groups. Unless the student has downloaded their work manually (there is no built in function to allow for a student to bulk download) then the work is lost. So where do we go from here.
The answer, I believe, might be Mahara. Mahara is an open source ePortfolio system being designed from the ground up to work with Moodle. It is no surprise that the developers for this project are Catalyst who in the past have added large chunks of code to the Moodle core as well.
The best way to describe Mahara I guess is to use the blurb from the official site.
Mahara is a fully featured open source electronic portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online communities. Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to demonstrate their life-long learning, skills and development over time to selected audiences.
Meaning ‘think’ or ‘thought’ in Te Reo Māori, the name reflects the project’s dedication to creating a user-centred life-long learning and development application as well as the belief that technology solutions cannot be developed outside the considerations of pedagogy and policy.
Work on Mahara has been going for about a year now an today finally saw the milestone of a formal 1.0 release. It has been a long and sometimes difficult road, but what has been delivered is a fully functional, customisable and pedagogically sound ePortfolio system with a fantastic price point…FREE! The system allows the student to store finished works in this system which will then stay with them for their entire scholastic career.
The Moodle integration is currently done through a block but this is only a temporary measure. Moodle 2.0 should include an eportfolio API that tools like Mahara will be able to take advantage of that will allow for items to be added to the portfolio straight from the assignment or forum (or nearly any other activity)
For further information on this exciting project make sure you ckeck out the following links
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This post is tagged education, eportfolio, Moodle, pedagogy, portfolio
5 Comments
I have a friend who has set up a Mahara instance with SSO and moodle. It works very well. It always surprises me when I just move right over to Mahara (I keep expecting another login box!)
Mahara has a spiffy interface, and I am pretty impressed with it from a user view. I haven’t seen the back end yet.
I have used ELGG for awhile, so I need to do a better comparison. I have not had the opportunity to see how the social networking works in Mahara.
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I like the sound of this. Think we need to check it out… the idea that students can work in Moodle but carry across their work to a more permanent storage area which they manage themselves seems like the ideal arrangement.
thanks for the heads up about it.
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ULCC has recently undertaken an e-Portfolio assessment, and have chosen to use Mahara to incorporate into our Personalisation developments with Individual Learning Plans, etc.
We found their system much nicer to use than the others, and better useability than OU’s. The evaluation site, which has been completed, is still open and anyone can create themselves an account if you want to play around and try Mahara for yourself. ULCC will soon be releasing this as an e-Portfolio service which can be used with either Moodle or Blackboard systems.
best wishes, and keep up the good work.
Philip Butler
Senior e-Learning Adviser
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