27 May 2013, 13:52

Hi

Just wondering if anyone out there has seen any examples of Mahara being used as an employee appraisal system.  I get it that it is not designed with this sort of application specifically in mind however it appears that it might be able to.

For clarity, what do I mean by an appraisal system?....

The employee would use the system to document both work objectives (i.e. what is required of them on the job) as well as career development.  This would be shared with their supervisor plus anyone else deemed appropriate.  The supervisor would review the documented plan and, once the content is agreed, provide their endorsement.

Subsequent to the endorsement the employee could, at any time, add relevant content & notes on progress.

At some point in the future (e.g. 12 months) both parties would conduct a review of outcomes of work objectives and progress re career aspirations.

For this to satisfy organisational requirements, it would need to use some sort of standardised process so that the broad structure is the same for everyone.

I’m a complete newbie to Mahara so I hope some of you gurus might be able to help.  Even if you’ve not seen such an application, perhaps you could imagine one based on my description above.

Thanks!

David

27 May 2013, 16:18

Here's a blog post that describes the use of Mahara for appraisal: http://www.think-associates.co.uk/performance_management/focus-on-think-folio/

Mahara does have "plan" artefacts, which are basically a free-form to-do list. But it's free-form, all user-editable, and doesn't support a formalized set of objectives and approval statuses. You'd need to do some significant coding if you wanted to add that as a feature.

Actually, what you're describing sounds a lot like Totara's "learning plans" feature. Totara is a distribution of Moodle aimed at business and government, and it has something quite similar to what you're describing. If you log in to the demo site ( https://sandpit.totaralms.com/ ) and go to My Learning -> Learning Plans you can see it. I think Objectives are freeform text while Competencies are pre-defined, but you could rename those. Since Totara is built on Moodle, you could link it to a Mahara instance using MNet for SSO, and have users record relevant content in the Mahara side of things.

Cheers,
Aaron

28 May 2013, 15:20

Thanks Aaron.  This is helpful

09 June 2013, 17:40

Hello David,

In New Zealand, Mahara is being used for teacher appraisal in schools. I've also done some training for a school in Sydney that uses Mahara for their reflection and evaluation purposes.

The schools often create template pages which contain the criteria the teachers need to look at for their appraisal. They may also include GoogleDocs or other documents in which longer text or a contract can be found. Journals are also used to collect the reflections and colleagues / the principal / a facilitator working with the teacher looks at them and leaves feedback.

Cheers

Kristina