06 November 2015, 4:00

Hello

There is a degree programme at my university successfully using Mahara for a few years.  They have started to collaborate with another university in another country, who also are big users of Mahara.   They are wondering how to collaborate on a shared blog.

Here's the bare bones of my reply but I'd love to know if anyone has any other ideas?

•    I suppose it’s not really feasible to issue accounts to their students for our Mahara, or vice versa.  That would be the easiest way, technically, but I can think of loads of reasons why this might not be an option politically.   

•    There are quite a few free Mahara hosts where students from both institutions could join, such as foliofor.me and portfoliocommunities.com    It would be a pity for students to have to take out an account with a different system when they have one institutionally but it is something I tell students they can do if they want to continue their portfolio after finishing their degree with us.

•    I suppose it would be possible for each institution to create pages, get the secret URL of each and send that to the other institution.   You could edit the homepage of your own group and put these links on.  If students had access to creating pages within the group, they could create pages for each example of teaching practice or for each subject area, so there could be a couple of pages.   Students from the other institution would be able to view them using the secret URL and they would use the Feedback link to make comments.  

Thanks

Marion

06 November 2015, 18:04

Perhaps MNet? Although it's usually used for "Mahoodle" purposes, you can just as well connect two Mahara sites to each other.

Now, as you say, it might be politically difficult for them to accept the idea of giving the other institution's students access to their Mahara site.

Perhaps they could set up a third (smaller) Mahara site, and allow MNet access from each institution's Mahara to this "joint" Mahara? It would technically be a new account on an external site for the students, but the beauty of MNet is that you don't actually have to sign up or manage a separate password. You just log in at your "host" site and it single-sign-on's you over to the other site.

Cheers,

Aaron

06 November 2015, 22:52

Thanks Aaron, I'll check that out.  It'll be an interesting case study if it works!

Regards

Marion

07 November 2015, 6:26

That MNet/third site possibility looks promising - we'll give it a go at Gaia University and report back ...

10 November 2015, 14:28

Let me know how it goes. I haven't used the Mahara-to-Mahara Mnet myself, I've only heard about it second hand. :)

Cheers,

Aaron