15 May 2012, 4:40

Hello Dirk,

That's interesting that the interest you see is low. In our NZ installation for the schools (MyPortfolio.school.nz) we did come across that question multiple times already because new teachers started using Mahara in another installation (MyPortfolio.ac.nz) and then want to move from the one to the other when they start teaching.

Sometimes, the school they are entering has already set them up with an account not knowing that they already have a portfolio and thus would like to copy their existing portfolio in there which is not a huge problem if they haven't used their new account yet, but is more tedious if they already started and you'd have to copy everything in.

Cheers

Kristina

15 May 2012, 7:49

Hi all,

I do agree with Dirk, I can also confirm that there were few requests on importing the LEAP files into another MAHARA.

BUT:

• Reason number one is that most people are not aware that their stuff can be taken with them
• and reason number two is that ePortfolio use is still very rudimentary here in Germany.

Still if you introduce Mahara to an institution or a group of people you will need to tell them and make them aware so that they see THEIR ePortfolio as really belonging to them and not to the institution that might decide to block their account once they've left this institution. Even if later they will decide not to use the export function we have to reassure them that their work will not be lost for them.

What is really awkward, even if we alreay have the possibility - as admin - to import a user's stuff with the user is the fact that no other leap files can be added to te same user. This is weird for people like me, doing workshops on various Mahara platforms ( I am "Living" on at least 5 different ones now) and can only hold their stuff together by either linking to these pages or creating another identity to import the leap file... ending up in confusion with so many identities Sigi1, Sigi2, Sigiadmin..... which drives me crazy ;-)

Any ideas how to simplify are welcome ;-)

At least I have set up a symbaloo page where I keep all my logins to the various Maharas and Moodles....

Cheers

Sigi

15 May 2012, 7:52

Hi all

Thank you so much for your imput to my original question, I do feel that I need a concrete plan of action for my students who want to see the ability to take their portfolio with them and keep adding to it itemising their CPD.

I have tested the icampus21 upload and will see what happens...watch this space.

Annette

18 May 2012, 4:43

Hi Dirk 

This is great news and I am definitely going to pass this onto my students. 

Is there any reason why I got a message from you from your gmail account and also another one from Dirk Meyer [email protected]? 

They were a similar message but had a different password? 

Annette

18 May 2012, 9:03

Hi Annette,

Glad to see the emails reached you and the portfolio installed properly. Funny thing is neither of the two emails should have been sending you the account info. The email should have come from [email protected]. The second email you received was a manual reset I did to help prevent it ending up in your spam box.
I think what is happening is that the code responsible for sending new leap import account messages keeps using an email address from a former admin account that has been deleted a long time ago. I did a search in the database and cleared the deleted account and perhaps its working better now. We'll see, need to to some more checking into this...thanks for noticing and bringing this up.

Something to be aware of: The practise of http://www.portfoliocommunities is to run the standard, latest mahara code without any extra plugins and with minimal code modifications. We do this to provide a service that always uses the latest code, taking advantage of the newest features but also for ease of maintenance and for economic reasons. The drawback of this strategy is that LEAP2A export files from systems that do use add-on plugins either wont install and/or some content may not display. The newer code seems to get better at dealing with this though I think. I am not sure what the best practise would be to work around this but perhaps your students could adjust/export only pages and collections that contain only standard mahara features. Perhaps this is a non issue for you as you may not use non-standard plugins anyways.

16 May 2012, 4:46

Here at the University of Kent in the UK we are trying a different approach to get the round the problem of graduates wanting to take their e-folios and PDP record with them. Mahara - branded as Myfolio - is available to all staff and students throughout their time here. i have been a project worker on a JISC funded project concerned with PDP and alumni for the past year and we now have agreement from Information Services and our Learning Technologists that Mahara will be available to all graduates for at least a year after they graduate.

In order to encourage students to use Mahara for PDP. journals, e-folios etc - as opposed to using other applications available on the web - it seems to me essential that we offer them continued access particularly at the time when they may need it most - when they have graduated and are seeking work. We hope to be able to extend our offer beyond one year and many think the provision should, ideally, be life long. Our project has looked in detail at the issues involved in this decision - obviously there are costs and risks involved - but the benefits for graduates and the university easily outweigh these.

The project winds up later this summer and all our findings will be available publicly after that at the project website;

http://www.kent.ac.uk/is/projects/eat/index.html