22 September 2010, 4:36

To discuss the proposed inclusion of the Walled Garden feature in 1.4.

06 June 2011, 9:35

Hi Andrew, I've become interested in this one...current status?

I'd like to know if I can mix schools with adult learning solutions using this feature.

06 June 2011, 10:54

Hi Don,

The Walled Garden feature has been renamed to Isolated Institutions. There is a detailed specification of the proposal on the wiki at https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Developer_Area/Specifications_in_Development/Isolated_Institutions

At LUNS, we've already successfully implemented Isolated Institutions and released it for Mahara 1.2. We're hoping to get it included in Mahara 1.5 and are planning to give a presentation on it at the Mahara UK Moot at the end of the month.

It does need some updating -- we last made changes to it for Mahara 1.3, and when it comes to submitting the change, it will need quite a lot of review -- the change involves some fairly substantial changes to the codebase and these need to be considered carefully and gone over with a fine-toothed-comb.

Additional funding for this feature would likely speed this up as it will invariably require both time from ourselves at LUNS, and from other core developers within Catalyst. Everyone would like to get it included in Mahara 1.5 -- this was discussed in the most recent (May 2011) developer meeting (see "Walled Garden status" at http://meetbot.mahara.org/mahara-dev/2011/mahara-dev.2011-05-25-07.31.log.html).

We successfully used the feature to fully separate different institutions from one another in the same installation of Mahara. We had approximately 100 different institutions, each with it's own Moodle as an authentication mechanism. Each was isolated from every other installation:

• users were unaware of users from other institutions;
• groups were not shared between institutions; and
• views were not shared between institutions unless made publically available.

There are also options for an institution to opt-out of the Isolated status, which would enable them to see all users, groups, etc for any other institution which had opted out.

There are also options for institutions to set up trust-relationships with other institutions. This allows schools to partner with other schools as required.

Cases where trust-relationships are broken are also handled (e.g. friendships are forcibly broken, group members are removed as required).

I hope that this answers your questions!

Andrew

06 June 2011, 20:57

Andrew, thanks for this useful overview of isolated institutions. Here in NZ we have growing interest in this functionality, albeit still keen to see it working before really knowing. We are also able and willing to fund (or subsidise) work where it is necessary (as Kristina can attest to). This might be an opportunity for cross-hemisphere working together.

Paul.

06 June 2011, 12:00

Interesting that the discussion on this feature has activated today in another thread: http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=3713

06 June 2011, 12:20

Thanks to you both...very useful for me as I try to developp a regional strategy that spans edcuational sectors.

07 July 2011, 8:46

Hi everyone,

It seems Mahara 1.4 didn't include this feature, did it?

Does the project is aborted? Or will you try to include it in Mahara 1.4.1?

Also, where can I download this feature (Or a way to implement it)?

Thanks for your support.

Regards.

07 July 2011, 9:41

Hello Thibault,

This thread answers all your questions: http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=3713#post16738 

07 July 2011, 9:41

Hi,

I'm afraid that the Isolated Institutions (Walled Garden) feature didn't make it into 1.4. The target for this is now Mahara 1.5 and have growing enthusiasm to get into place.

New features are not included in minor versions of Mahara, so it won't make it to Mahara 1.4.1 I'm afraid.

At some point soon, we hope to make a demonstration version of the feature available but I'm not sure when we'll be in a position to do so.

Out of interest, what kind of installation do you intend to apply this too?

Andrew Nicols

LUNS

07 July 2011, 11:01

Re,

Actually, we are trying to set up a community platform to help people in their job researches and life long learning.

But we don't want the institutions to communicate with each. We prefer let the administrators choose their relations (We only care about installation, integration and system maintenance (Upgrades and troubleshooting)).

Your feature seemed to answer our need.

Regards