e-Portfolios

A planned upgrade of Mahara to version 1.3 should take place between 7.00am and 9.00am tomorrow morning (Tuesday 5th October). Mahara will be unavailable to users during this period.

Mahara 1.3 brings many new features and improvements to existing functionality.

The first thing that you’ll notice is the change to the home page.  This will now be a user-configurable View that can be edited to include a variety of blocks (Dashboard View).

Other additions and improvements include:

• Collections (sets of Views that are linked to one another)
• Plans (task lists)
• New blocks: notifications, recently modified views, recent forum posts
• Locked blogposts and files when views are submitted for assessment
• Feedback enhancements: editing, deleting, export, moderation of comments

A quick tour around the experience of leaving feedback has brought up the following pointers for our Mahara users:

Leaving feedback…

• You can add feedback to views, blogs and individual blog posts by clicking on the “Place feedback” link at the bottom of the page.
• You could leave feedback on your own view – start a discussion, invite comments, leave yourself private notes as a reminder/to-do list.
• Feedback is private by default, but can be made public.  The owner of the content can then make it private – but this can’t be changed back once done.
• Watch out! Once left, feedback can’t be deleted/edited by the owner of the view/blog or by the leaver of the feedback – it can only be made private.

Viewing your feedback…

• When feedback is left for you on any of your artefacts, you will be notified in the way you have set up in your Activity Preferences (in Settings). The default is to be emailed for each notification, but you can choose to receive a digest (end-of-day summary email) or for it to be added to your Activity Log.
• To view your feedback, click on the link in the notification email.
• Feedback for a View will always be sat ready at the bottom of the View page.
• Feedback on blogs and blogs posts does not appear to be directly visible from within the blog (ie via My Portfolio, My Blogs).  To see previous feedback for blogs and blog posts:
  • go to Settings, Activity Type = feedback, then click on the relevant link for each artefact (blog or blog post)
  • go to a view with the blog in it and click on the blog heading (name) to see feedback on that artefact

An update on support resources for Mahara users…

If you’re just starting to use Mahara, why not take a look at our guide on How to: set up your Mahara profile.

Or visit the Learning Technologies FAQs, where the number of Mahara questions that have been answered is steadily growing and now includes:

• How do I add a picture to my profile?
• Why doesn’t my introduction text show up in my profile?
• Who can see my profile view on Mahara?
• How do I create a group?
• How do I add users to a group?
• What is a Block?
• What is a View?

As the next pilot group meeting will be looking at how we implement e-portfolios, it might be a good moment to highlight the Keynote Presentation at at Mahara UK 2010 earlier this year.

Lisa Gray (JISC) and Gordon Joyes (University of Nottingham) spoke about the complexities involved in implementing e-portfolios and the concepts that need to be understood to achieve a successful implementation.

The video of this presentation is available in the conference report (you will need Quicktime to play the .mov file).  Since the presentation slides aren’t yet available online, a summary of the main points made by Lisa and Gordon is outlined below…

A model for e-portfolio implementation built around threshold concepts was suggested.  Threshold concepts represent ‘troublesome’ knowledge.  The “Aha!” moments which, when you’re on the other side of understanding them, you forget as having been difficult to grasp.  These are often linked to misconceptions and pre-conceptions.

A better understanding of what these threshold concepts and associated pre-conceptions are should help us avoid reinventing the wheel when implementing e-portfolios.

Threshold Concept 1 – The role of PURPOSE

Preconceptions…

• There is one definition of an e-portfolio
• One e-portfolio works for all situations
• Once students have been introduced to e-portfolios they will apply them aross their courses

Threshold Concept 2 – The role of LEARNING ACTIVITY DESIGN

There must be a conscious design and support of a learning activity suited to the purpos and the context.

Preconceptions…

• Users will work out how to use an e-portfolio system to suit their needs
• Implementation can be left to study skills specialists

Threshold Concept 3 – The role of PROCESS

The processes involved in the creation of the e-portfolio in the particular context must be understood and both technical and pedagogic support needs to be provided.

Preconceptions…

• Students are digital natives and so will easily adapt to using e-portfolios
• Users (students and tutors) understand processes like feedback, reflective writing, selecting information, planning
• Tutors know how to support students in using e-portfolios

Threshold Concept 4 – The role of OWNERSHIP

The e-portfolio processes and outcomes need to be owned by the student (portability and choice of tools need to be considered)

Preconceptions…

• There needs to be one e-portfolio for life
• Bespoke technologies (ie PDAs and digital cameras) are best for information capture

Threshold Concept 5 – The DISRUPTIVE nature of e-portfolios

They are disruptive from a pedagogic, technological and institutional perspective because e-portfolios tend not to fit exactly within exisiting systems.  There are implications for the nature of the curriculum and its assessment as well as staff workload and pedagogic and technical support (particularly in work-based learing and life-wide contexts)

Preconceptions….

• An e-portfolio will save everyone time
• An e-portfolio can simply replace a paper-based portfolio system
• e-Portfolios will be valued by university admissions/prospective employers
• Curriculum and pedagogic approaches will remain unaffected
• Information capture in the workplace is unproblematic
• Student access to e-portfolios is unproblematic

I think that I noticed that when you upload a CSV file of new users to Mahara you have the option to add them to an institution. So before we go ahead and add our students for our pilot, it thought it might be best to try and get to grips with what creating institutions might offer us…

Having had a look at Chapter 7 in the Mahara 1.2 e-Portfolios book I’m a little clearer on what to expect, but it brings to mind as many questions as it answers!

• Setting up institutions would let a number of different ‘groups’ (Faculties? Departments?) share a common Mahara user base (University of Bath users?)
• User management can be shifted from Site Adminstrators to Institutional Administrators
• Institutions can have their own theme

Institutional Administrators can:

• manage new users (and remove, suspend, reactivate)
• monitor abuse
• set institutional theme
• allocate roles
• set up *asterisk required fields in profile information and ‘lock fields’

How to add users to an institution? This is how I see them so far, in order of practicality and time consumption…?

• CSV bulk upload of new users – only added to one institution
• Manage Users, search for user and click on username, Add user to institution – also has option to amend role to staff or admin for that institution
• Manage Institution, Institution Members, Users to Display or Search, add to right-hand list, Invite Users – email sent to user and they have to log in to Mahara and accept the invitation

This leaves many questions that I hope to return to later…

1. How is it evident that you are a member of an Institution? From your theme? From the list in your settings?
2. What if you are a member of several? What happens to the themes?
3. Can you add a user to an institution rather than just invite them?  If added to the instution when user is created by CSV upload, is it an invite or an add?
4. Can you create groups across many institutions?
5. Where do the ‘contact us’ queries go – to the site admin or institutional admin?
6. If tutors have a staff role for the main Mahara site, do they also need a staff role for each institution they are in?