28 January 2016, 0:28

Hi

We have students carrying out work placement and they will provide evidence within Mahara of their tasks, goals,  etc. They will send Secret URL links to their e-Portfolio pages to their placement providers (who do not have a Mahara login) for feedback and the work placement providers are needing to provide feedback (which they can already) and attach files with additional scale-rating feedback within their Journal entries, Notes and the pages itself. 

How we enable these work placement providers with the ability to attach files to the elements mentioned above within the students e-Portfolios?

Cheers

Ali

28 January 2016, 7:35

Hello Ali,

The easiest would be to create accounts for the placement providers. Mahara doesn't allow file upload in the feedback section for anonymous users. If you made a code change you should be able to do that, but it is also a big security risk as anybody can then upload files. Since you can't verify the identity of a person commenting when they don't have an account, you can't follow up with them. The files get placed into the student's files area and become their responsibility.

Cheers

Kristina

29 January 2016, 22:56

Thanks Kristina

Yeah, I did think of security implications and the creation of accounts.

Cheers

Ali 

17 March 2016, 17:13

Thanks for this very useful post, response and information. We also have a teaching section in a similar predicament - work placement for Child Studies distance learners.

The other issue we are grappling with, which I imagine is similar for you Ali is that if the workplace supervisor (who are all non-members) comments on a page received via a secret URL, their feedback is anonymous and we are not sure how an auditor would view that. My thinking is that we can provide evidence that the URL was only sent to a particular individual via email and also provide additional verification evidence to back up the feedback provides - if they could attach files might help, but again acknowledge the security risks that would raise.

I do not feel our organisation would be happy to create manual accounts due to increased administrative work and manual accounts also raises additional  privacy and security risks. I had thought of creating a separate Institution, but not sure the organisation would agree due to the additional administrative work that would create.

At present, this is a trial in planning; potentially (if we can find a way to fulfil the needs of the teaching section) could be thousands of students in the future - not sure how sustainable the approach would be if the numbers are significant.

Any additional advice that the community can offer would be most welcome.

Ali, I'm sure my colleagues in Child Studies would be keen to hear how you are approaching the work placement using Mahara. Would you be willing to share your experience if you feel it's appropriate?