22 November 2016, 9:18

Hi

Our IT Dept is claiming that ePortfolios created with Mahoodle are not portable. Is this correct? Can students export their ePortfolio or access it through a Mahara id after the course is over?

Many thanks!

Ros Woodhouse

22 November 2016, 20:33

You can export content from moodle to mahara if moodle and mahara are connected by mnet-authenticaton ("mahoodle").

In Mahara you can use this content for your ePortfolio-work and you can integrate this content in views or blogs in mahara.

The views and blogs and so on in mahara can be exported as HTML or Leap2-format.

The exported Leap2-Files can then e.g be imported into an other mahara eg if you change school or univercity.

So as long, as you have access to moodle and you can work in moodle and mahara. When the moodle-course is over and you have still access to moodle you are still able to use your portfolio.

Only if your moodle-account is deleted (because the course is over?) you can not access mahara anymore. Then you have to export your mahara-content BEFORE!

But: There is still a way to access mahara after deleting the moodle-account. That is a special feature that the adminstrator has to configure. Then users can access mahara without a moodle-account. Normaly I think this is not supported.

23 November 2016, 5:47

Hi Ros,

Do you use the Mahara assignment submission plugin in Moodle? If so, your portfolio is not actually put into Moodle, but still kept in Mahara. Mahara is entirely independent of courses in Moodle. Thus, students will still have access to them once a course is over.

Depending on where you make the link to Mahara available, they may not see it easily if it's just in the course, so you should put it in a more central space or they can put the "Network servers" block onto their profile / dashboard page in Moodle.

As Andreas mentioned, if you want to allow former students access to Mahara but not Moodle, that can be achieved. This is easily done by changing their authentication method in Mahara from MNet / XML-RPC to internal authentication. Once done, they can access Mahara directly without having to jump from Moodle.

Cheers

Kristina

23 November 2016, 6:46

Hi Christina and Andreas,

thank you for your helpful replies.

We don't have the Mahara plug-in - I am working with some colleagues to try to persuade our institution to add it!  As I understand it, the plug-in would allow courses to coordinate eportfolio assignments (along with other kinds of assignment) through Moodle. Again, as I understand it, Mahara eportfolios are supposed to be portable (which was one of the reasons I was advocating for the plug-in) but, given the negative response from our IT department referred to in my original post, I wanted to verify this.

Is it complicated or expensive to install / run the plug-in? Many IT departments are under-resourced, and any advice or information that would help reassure them that this is straightforward, inexpensive and reliable would be very helpful!

Ros

23 November 2016, 8:03

The problem with plugins in moodle is not the installation (5 minutes). The problem is, that updates of moodle maybe makes the plugin not work any more and so you have to wait with updates until the plugin is ready for the new moodle version.

24 November 2016, 16:37

Hello Ros,

You can take a look at a presentation I did earlier in the year to see some screenshots of the integration between Moodle and Mahara: http://slides.com/anitsirk/take-learning-to-the-next-level-with-a-portfolio The recording hasn't been released yet. An older version describing the connection between Mahara and Moodle is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSM7bc6hle0

Mahara portfolios are portable in the sense that you can export them from your instance and import them into another Mahara instance (via Leap2A) or archive them as stand-alone HTML sites. That functionality is independent of Moodle.

Cheers

Kristina