29 January 2009, 8:46

I'm relatively new to mahara, but I'm interesting in rolling it out to 150+ schools in the UK who currently have moodle systems with us.

One of the big issues that's been raised by the schools is the policing of content and the whole area of cyberbullying which is a big issue here.

 Are there any controls to limit or report on the type, size or total number of files uploaded by a child.

 Secondly are there any controls in place that would limit/detect abuse of the system?

29 January 2009, 9:01

I'm very interested in this too. One of my concerns is/was the fact that pupils can in theory create views that they can make visible to anyone in the world - and how can we permanently police these views? Heinz said that apparently they can set a so-called 'secret url' for their mates, hard to guess for the rest of cyberspace .. another issue is my linemanager is wondering if there is a way we can actually probit them from creating certain 'views' -ie, not allow them to create views for their friendship groups, just for their teachers/exam moderators/prospective employers etc. Anyone answer this in addition to Anthony's question?

29 January 2009, 17:53

Hi Mary,

While I except that cyber bullying is a problem in schools, there are much easier ways for students to undertake this with other tools--Blogs, WIKIs, mobile phones and email.

My concerns with eportfolio systems, including Mahara, pertain to some of the underlying design assumptions.  It seems to me that eportfolio systems are designed heavily around institutional assessment and Mahara is no exception to this.

If you read Attwell and others who are advocating eportfolio use, you will find that an eportfolio should belong to the students and that they should have access to this throughout their lifetime.  Being able to create specific views for different purposes is critical to the success of this approach.  Mahara is on the right track in this regard, however, there needs to more flexibility in terms of how those views can be shared.

My preference would be for instances of Mahara to be hosted by independent companies/institutions that provide low cost accounts for anyone who wishes to have an eportfolio.  In this case the school, university, business could subsidise this cost for the period of time the student/employee is with the organisation, but then there is an opportunity for the individual to keep and add to their work when they leave.

To this end, I would like to see the capability of inviting audiences to see a view of your portfolio by registering as free guest in the Mahara instance.  This way the need to provide public views would be removed and a public view would then only be used for a wider audience when the portfolio owner required this to happen.

In my opinion we need to move the ownership of e.portfolios from institutions to the individual and build a sense of pride in the artifacts our students/employees produce and choose to display.

Best,

Scot.

29 January 2009, 18:36

" It seems to me that eportfolio systems are designed heavily around institutional assessment and Mahara is no exception to this."

Mahara is actually designed to put the students in control. That's why you can't just browse around any student's data, and why they have to make views available to you before you can see any of it. Even administrators can't do this, unless they use the Login As functionality - and we encourage its use only in helping debug problems users are having with a system.

You're right about portfolios being for life, and in fact that's a goal of Mahara, which is why we're taking part in the LEAP import/export interoperability work. Richard Wyles has also set up biobrio.com, which is a Mahara installation for people who don't have an institutional Mahara/portfolio to use.

In reality, Mahara doesn't have much in the way of assessment tools... you can submit a view to a controlled group for assessment, but there's no grading of views... Mahara's social networking features are far more extensive, even

29 January 2009, 21:22

Hi Nigel,

Yes I accept what you are saying, but the community is still pretty closed when it comes to a paid instance of Mahara.  I checked out Richard's biobrio and believe it's a good example of a free alternative, but you still need the options I suggested rather than a public view and Secret URL.

By briinging people to Mahara in a guest capacity you expose more people to Mahara and and keep the intimacy that is often required for specific purposes--not everyone wants the a particular view to be publicly available to those not in the community.

Best,

Scot.

29 January 2009, 22:06

Scot - your idea is a good one, why not file it on the feature request tracker? It's worth keeping a track of ideas like these

31 January 2009, 18:49

Hi Nigel,

 I have done as you suggested.

 Thanks for your ideas and support.

Best,

Scot.

29 January 2009, 18:26

Hi Mary,

You can disable the ability for people to make views public, although it's a bit of a hammer - either everyone on the site can make public views or nobody can. Certainly, others have asked about some how controlling who can make public views - e.g. some kind of moderation system. Something for us to improve on over time.

Currently you can't restrict who users make views available to either - it's their choice whether they make them available to users, groups, their friends etc. The idea of restricting this hadn't occured to me before, but it seems like a good idea - maybe you could file a feature request for this?

30 January 2009, 9:33

Hi, here some interesting links which I received via my tweeterworld ;-)

Graham Attwell und Josie Fraser, thanks to you :-)

 

http://www.digizen.org/cyberbullying/

http://www.stopcyberbullying.org/index2.html

 

I hope these links could be helpful. Josie created the resources for the UK gov.

cheers Heinz

29 January 2009, 9:58

Hi Anthony,

i use  Mahara at my school with pupils in age between 15 -20+. It's a schhol for vocational education. It seems to me that it is very important to teach the kids how to handle this tool for their benefits. We have to show them how to use it the right way, we have to show them the risk, but also the very big advantages. That is the task of the teachers.

About your questions:

The Website admin is able to limit the used webspace per user, there is not limitation about the number of files, but it is possible to restrict the filetype.In the upload area each users has to check that he has read the upload copyright message. 

Yes: The file I am attempting to upload is my own or I have express permission to reproduce and/or distribute this item. My use of this file does not breach any of my local Copyright legislation. This file also adheres to the Terms and Conditions outlined on this site.

The admin can modify this  message  in order to explain the kids what is allowed and what consequences a wrong usage will have.

Also the admin can alter the setting of the public WWW views. If the marker is set to NO the views are not visible to anybody outside the website, even the secret URL option is then disalbed.

I think if we tell the kids that there is a feature to "login as " they will be careful about the stored artefacts.

i hope i could explain my thoughts and it would be great to start a detailed discussion about this topics.

cheers

Heinz