06 December 2011, 2:52

Hi,

Could you point me to some good resources explaining what Institutions are and how to use them?

I would like to better understand Institutions and how they could play a role on our Mahara installation.

Thanks :-)

Jonas

06 December 2011, 4:44

Dear Joanas,

Institutions are useful when you want to separate users belonging to different.... ... institutions. The default setting in Mahara is every users belong to "Default institution" or "No Institution".

Each institution is accessible via one (or mere) sign-in method, which may be different from one institution to another.

You could use institution to separate students of one class from others or of one school from others.

If you link Mahara with Moodle, institutions are useful to separate students login of one Moodle from others.

Personally, I have three different institutions on my only Mahara server that are linked with the three different Moodle platform we host. This is very convenient to backup only one server serving three different kind of users, instead of having three Mahara servers instances.

If you want to tell a bit more about your project, we could help you to decide how to design your Mahara institutions/groups buildings.

Regards,

-dajan

06 December 2011, 6:40

Thanks Dajan! This is valuable! Some follow-up questions I am seeking answers to:

+ Can one have different themes for different institutions?

+ I assume one student can be a member of several institutions. How can one easily introduce the users to the different institutions there are?

+ Can one artefact/group/forum... be seen by another institution's members? What decides the access?

+ Can one set a specific language to an institution?

Best regards, Jonas

06 December 2011, 9:53

+ Can one have different themes for different institutions? Yes. And with 1.5 user would be able to change that as well if authorised + I assume one student can be a member of several institutions. How can one easily introduce the users to the different institutions there are? Yes they can be in more than one institution. You can import them with a CSV file or with an auth method (LDAP) for example + Can one artefact/group/forum... be seen by another institution's members? What decides the access? Yes. Institution has to be seen as an administration barrier but not as a working frontier. There are discussion in making an institution 'insulated' or 'garden walled' but if it will arrive once in Mahara it will be in a not near future. Therefore anyone who publish something can do it for all institutions. + Can one set a specific language to an institution? No. Language can be set at site OR user level

07 December 2011, 0:33

Thanks a lot Dajan!!

Regarding Publishing: can one decide if one wants to publish only for members of one specific institution and not for members of other institutions?

Cheers /Jonas

08 December 2011, 13:27

Hello Jonas,

In New Zealand we have http://myportfolio.school.nz and http://myportfolio.ac.nz . The school edition of MyPortfolio has over 900 schools each with their own institution. It is possible that a user belongs to two (or more) institutions. However, it is not always advisable, esp. when you want to work with institution themes. Only one theme can be used and it is pretty much up to Mahara at the moment which one it is. E.g. if one of your institutions uses the default theme and another uses an institution theme, you will always see the institution theme no matter whether you want or not.

You select the institution theme on the screen where you have all your institution settings.

Being in one or more institutions doesn't matter if all you want to do is give access to portfolio pages. That can be done across institutions. Institutions are open and not closed.

The access in groups is decided by the group admin and he can give anybody on Mahara access. Institutions do not play in there. In Mahara 1.5 it will be possible that a user makes his profile and portfolio pages only available to institution members. Right now you can only give access to individuals, groups, your friend,s all logged-in users and the public.

Cheers

Kristina

 

08 December 2011, 14:14

Thanks Kristina!

19 April 2012, 4:09

I have multiple Moodle installs, each of which I want to hook into a single Mahara install.

Each Moodle authenticates off the same LDAP.

My Mahara default institution also authenticates of the same LDAP.

I want my students, no matter where they log in from (direct to Mahara or via one or more of the Moodles) to end up logging into the same Mahara account.

So far this doesn't happen, and I end us with user.name and then user.name1 etc.

Can anyone advise?

19 April 2012, 5:09

At risk of answering my own question, I think $cfg->usersuniquebyusername = true; does the trick.

19 April 2012, 15:18

Hello Stephen,

That was what I would have suggested you look at. You can find the links to 2 forum posts where this feature is discussed under "Experimental features" in the documentation.

Cheers

Kristina