Tag Archives: mahara

Like being in a candy store

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Yesterday was ANZAC Day in New Zealand and it was flanked by two Mahara-related events for me:

  1. MUG (Mahara User Group) online meeting at 6 a.m.
  2. Eportfolios in focus webinar at 10 p.m.

For both I was asked to give a presentation on new features in Mahara 1.5 which we released last week. The time slot available in the MUG meeting was a short one whereas I had 45 minutes altogether in the evening webinar to present some new features and also answer questions of users.

So many things to try

So many things to try

While preparing both presentations, I was very torn between a number of features that I wanted to highlight as there are so many that are really cool. So it was like “I want this and this and this and this” like a child in a candy store. Fortunately, all the features I presented are built into Mahara by default. It’s just that I had to make a tough selection for the presentations.

Mahara 1.5: The future is here

I was happy to have had the opportunity to talk about some new features and share my enthusiasm for this new version of the open source ePortfolio system Mahara with others.

Both were recorded. Once the link to the Eportfolios in focus webinar is available, I’ll post it.

New in Mahara 1.5: A selection

If you want to find out about these and many other new features in Mahara 1.5, you can for example:

Mahara user manual on Launchpad

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… or a new project on Launchpad was born.

On Friday, 20 April 2012, after the release of Mahara 1.5 had been out of the way successfully, we started to have another look at offering the Mahara user manual for translators to work with. I will write more on producing the manual at a later point.

Sphinx, the software we use for the documentation, allows for internationalization. It is also quite easy to generate the translation files. All you need is a one-line command in which to specify the source and the output directory:

$ sphinx-build -b gettext source potfiles

It took a couple of minutes until all files were processed and pot files generated that translators need. That was the easy part. What we haven’t found out yet is what to do with screenshots that should also be translated. The Sphinx documentation doesn’t mention them at all and my post in the Sphinx discussion group hasn’t resulted in any replies so far. Probably, because Sphinx is most often used for code documentation and the code examples wouldn’t need to be translated. ;-)

Focusing on the actual text for the moment, my colleague Richard, who also works on the Mahara project, convinced me that it would be the best to use the POT files, even if we haven’t figured out the screenshot translations yet, instead of the translators working with the original files and translating those. The latter would basically mean that the English translation would be forked as anything can be changed in it. Whereas if the pot files are used, updates can be made more easily and the translators are spared most of the code and really only see the strings.

In order not to confuse the documentation translations with the actual Mahara translations, we set up a new project on Launchpad and called it Mahara user manual. ;-) Richard helped me with the initial setup linking one of our existing Mahara groups and thus making some default settings which got us off the ground more quickly. In the beginning, we only set up Launchpad for the translations, but while playing around with the setup, I also activated additional features. I continued the setup yesterday and now the Mahara user manual project has:

  • bug and feature tracker
  • space for questions
  • translations ready to go
  • downloadable files
  • announcements
  • milestones and releases
Mahara user manual overview page on Launchpad

Mahara user manual overview page on Launchpad

(The screenshot says that the project was created on 19 April 2012, but that’s UTC and not NZ time. ;-) So It really was on 20 April 2012.)

I also officially released the 2 existing versions of the manual: 1.4 and 1.5. I can still update the manual whenever I have time, push my changes to the server and update the documentation to Read the Docs, the service where we publish the manual. But in case some people do want to work with the PDF or Epub versions, I might put those files up for download in intervals. Of course, they can always be accessed on the download page for the manual on Read the Docs. Furthermore, this gives me a snapshot of the manual at these times.

There are still a few things that need to be looked into. Chief among them:

  • integration of localized screenshots
  • automatic creation of the POT files
  • setting up the localized directories and the translation export to git

Still a bit of work, but we are getting there.

If you are a user of the Mahara manual and find things:

  • that you would like to see added
  • that are missing
  • that are incorrect
  • that are explained too difficult
  • that need another screenshot

… or anything else you’d like to say, please head over to the Launchpad page and leave a bug or wishlist report or ask a question.

Hot off the Internet: Mahara 1.5

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A little over 10 months of work on many fronts:

resulted in the release of the open source ePortfolio system Mahara 1.5 this nice New Zealand evening. You can view some highlights from new features and bug fixes as well as contributors and sponsors of this release in the release notes.

It was great working on this release at Catalyst IT. This is the first Mahara release in which I have commits: 3.4% in the grand scheme of the release. I helped out correcting language strings. Not everybody needs to be a developer to be able to contribute to a software project.

But actually, these commits were my smallest contribution. The product that I’m most proud of is the updated user documentation for Mahara 1.4 and the documentation for 1.5. Thus, when we released Mahara 1.5 today we also had a full documentation available. :-)

Although I say “full documentation”, I will update it infrequently correcting things, adding small bits and pieces that are missing, hopefully also putting references to online videos etc. I hope we’ll also figure out how to translate the documentation. The text itself shouldn’t be the issue as Sphinx allows for that, but the screenshots might be trickier.

But right now, I am just happy.

Mahara at MoodleMoot.de 2012

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Last week, the German MoodleMoot 2012 took place in Münster. Sigi Jakob-Kühn organized the session entitled “Mahara-Netzwerk – Austauschworkshop für Akteure und Neugierige”.

I was honored to have been asked by her to give a virtual presentation and be available for Q&A afterwards. Thankfully, Sigi could get a time slot that was not too bad for NZ time. Thus, I could stay for the entire session and learn how Mahara is being used in Germany and in Austria by schools and universities through mini presentations.

This event showed me that I should practice presenting in German more as I stumbled through some of the words and sentences more than I would have wished for. Being used to speaking English all day, I am a bit rusty in German. Following the presentations of members of the audience was much easier. :-)

Mahara 1.5 steht for der Tür

There’s also a recording of my presentation which includes the 2 minutes that I could not be heard in Germany due to Skype losing its connection and me not realizing it as I was in presentation mode.

Oskar-von-Miller Schule Kassel

Claudia Schmidt reported how the Oskar-von-Miller Schule in Kassel uses Mahara. The students keep their electronic portfolio in Mahara and use it as basis for face-to-face discussions with their teachers. They have certain activities to fulfill that they post on their pages.

The students also keep an application portfolio with which they school has had great success (after a great deal of convincing of potential employers to consider them).

Pädagogische Hochschule Wien

Thomas Strasser showcased how his students use Mahara to document their experience of their student teaching for their practical studies. They do not only use one type of portfolio, but depending on the purpose, there are three types that are important:

  • showcase / presentation portfolio
  • reflection portfolio
  • process portfolio

They experiment with a number of ideas from the Mahara 1.4 Cookbook to make the portfolio work more relevant for the students. The portfolio is not seen as assessment portfolio but rather as vehicle for giving constructive feedback and discuss it with peers instead of just with an instructor. They also emphasize social interaction and encourage their students to publish hobbies and special interests on their profile pages for others to discover and connect with them.

Language Center of the University of Leipzig

Kátia Aiko Murata Arend outlined how she uses Mahara with her Portuguese language students. She uses it with her students to collect and reflect on texts for media and text analysis thus keeping all her teaching and learning material in Mahara. The students add to that throughout the semester and are highly motivated using this medium in their studies.

KAMahara in Karlsruhe

Norman Mewes and Sigi provided some examples of how they use Mahara in the school context. KAMahara is a Mahara installation for a project which is used by a number of schools to explore its potential.

Students use the ePortfolio to apply for jobs, for example. They also do not wait to make their pages available to their teachers until they have finished their portfolio, but give them access throughout the development process to invite feedback and improve their showcase portfolio which they are going to use for their job application along the way.

Sigi showed us a couple of examples highlighting students who use Mahara to document and reflect upon their internships in the real world. She showed how different the portfolios of the students can be depending on the preference of the students and how they wanted to express themselves.

During the MoodleMoot, a number of presenters had another presentation slot in which they went into more detail regarding their use of Mahara. But already these brief showcases allowed me a glimpse into how Mahara is being used in German schools and German and Austrian universities. The variety of uses is fantastic and also the getting together of the practitioners to share their ideas and discuss them with each other.

Notes and observations from the PESC Data Summit

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The PESC Data Summit Fall 2011 took place in San Francisco from October 12-14, 2011. It is a regular meeting of organizations that come together to discuss and further interoperability between educational systems. PESC, the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council, “enables cost-effective connectivity between data systems to accelerate performance and service, to simplify data access and research, and to improve data quality along the higher education lifecycle” (PESC info sheet).

In order to achieve that PESC develops XML standards that are community driven and open for anyone to use. Because of the involvement of institutions of higher education as well as vendors / producers of software for that sector, it is hoped that the standards that are being developed have high relevance and are a result of actual demand and thus are more likely to be implemented by vendors in their products.

PESC has a number of workgroups and taskforces. I participated in the ePortfolio workgroup and learned a great deal about how PESC views ePortfolios and what academic institutions in the U.S.A. and Canada expect of an ePortfolio. PESC looks at an academic ePortfolio for which tracking of competencies and assessments are important components. Furthermore, the academic ePortfolio will be used in academic advising, e.g. for future career paths or further studies. Therefore, it must be machine- and human-readable. Transcripts that are moved from one institution to another and can be stored (or a link to them) in the ePortfolio are a necessity. Thus, the ePortfolio is not entirely learner-driven, but it has a number of prescribed content that it must contain in order for an in-taking institution to get a more complete picture of a student.

Besides discussing the ownership of the portfolio, we particularly looked at standards for portfolio data exchange. PESC does not have to come up with its own standard if there is already one that is in use and that is usable for PESC purposes.

There are not too many ePortfolio schema around. Leap2A and Desire2Learn’s XML export structure were put forward. The IMS ePortfolio standard was put aside as not being suitable because PESC does not only require the moving of content artifacts but also of assessment information.

As PESC tries to implement XML standards, Leap2A would not work exactly because it is based on ATOM feeds. However, it was discovered that CETIS is working on a Leap2R standard that converts Leap2A into an XML structure.

There is more analysis needed to look into how Leap2A/R could be implemented and what kind of data can be pulled from other systems. Even though it would be quite handy to get everything automatically in an easy-to-read and easy-to-process format, I think that not everything can and should be done (in the beginning). Implementing web services that assist in the transfer of information is not to be taken lightly. If every software involved in the process is expected to support these web services, uptake may be slow as high costs may be involved in developing the necessary interfaces.

I think it is important to define a priority list for connectivity, exchange of data, and export of ePortfolios. Being able to pull in transcript information into a university’s portfolio for advising purposes is all well and good. However, if the purpose of the advising is to find a graduate school for the student that will take him away from his current institution, then being able to export his portfolio and import it into the other institution may be more important to the student and he’d be happy to include his transcripts as secure PDF documents only instead of having them transferred automatically.

A pragmatic approach may be useful in order to get an initiative started and to see how it is being received instead of trying to accomplish everything.

In New Zealand, the Ministry of Education is funding the LMS-MyPortfolio Interoperability Project which aims to connect the major LMSs used in NZ schools to MyPortfolio, which is a Mahara installation. The main areas of work are:

  1. account provisioning
  2. notifications
  3. moving content

In order to achieve this, a web services stack has been implemented in Mahara which allows other LMSs (and also Student Management / Information Systems) to consume these web services and thus connect to Mahara.

The account provisioning project part is the most advanced. Sometime during the discussion of what to enable besides account provisioning, group creation came up. However, the actual implementation of total group management via the LMS was not activated for MyPortfolio because group admins should still have the possibility to add users from outside of their institution who have accounts on MyPortfolio to their group or remove users without having to check back with the LMS. The attempt to manage everything via the LMS would have been far too complicated and would have had to take a number of exception as well as special rules into account. The “low-hanging fruit” was the implementation of account and group creation via the LMS as well as initial group membership provisioning. However, the updating and deleting of groups was abandonded for MyPortfolio because it is a Mahara instance that is used by many schools (over 810 at the beginning of October). Had it been a Mahara with just one institution, the group management via the LMS would have worked better.

Besides the administrative concerns, other thoughts need to be heard. MyPortfolio (and Mahara) is a learner-centered portfolio application and thus the users should have as much freedom as possible. Therefore, governing all groups via LMSs would be in direct conflict with this ideal. Of course, the students who use MyPortfolio are connected to a school and thus have to follow certain rules, but MyPortfolio should still be different from a LMS.

That does not mean that no formal assessment documents can and should be included. However, the amount of information or group membership making it into a learner’s account is the question.

Coming back to PESC: Being aware of the work that is going on in the U.S.A. and Canada as well as thinking about possible connecting points for future development work in Mahara is beneficial in order to advance possible integration work with other systems.