01 July 2009, 15:07

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but i could not find the answer.  We are thinking about using mahara at our university and would like to automatically create and populate groups in mahara to match our classes on moodle.  That way, any student who logs in to mahara will automatically see their classes and be able to participate in discussions without having to search for their class groups manually.  is this possible?

01 July 2009, 16:24

Hi - it's not possible yet, but it's a great idea, and one that has been brought up before. It's on our roadmap page for Moodle/Mahara integration.

06 August 2012, 14:44

I don't know if this issue has been discussed elsewhere more recently, but our school is also trying to coordinate Moodle courses with Mahara groups.  I did look at the roadmap wiki.

If this is not available, I was thinking of the following workaround in the meantime- have students create a "secret URL link" to their portfolio, then create a field in their Moodle profile (that only teachers can see) with that link.  That way, teachers can go into their Moodle course, click on any student and click through to the portfolio.

Note- We're still on Moodle 1.9, Mahara 1.3.

Does that make sense?  Is there a better way for now?  Would updating to 1.5 change this?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

06 August 2012, 15:27

Hello Charles

the link in the personal profile will be visible for all teachers in all classes. If several teacher will use the concept all ofthem sees the same URL. If I understood your intention correct there will be some other alternatives:

• Create an assignment (text) and let them add the URL. In the class overview for the assignment you'll see the link and comment and/or grade. Grades will be added into the gradebook.
• Create a  database with two fields: URL and comment (textarea). In difference to an assignment you can approve the entries before publishing them to other students. (Glossary also can be used in this way)
• Create a  workshop including self and peer grading and feedback based on a multi dimension rubrics.
• Create an forum (one topic per user). Each student should start a new topic, publish the link and a short comment. The posts will be visible for all students and they can comment. 

Ralf

07 August 2012, 6:14

Dear Charles,

The roadmap wiki is no more maintained and you must access the blueprint page to have an idea of what is hot in Mahara development (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/mahara).

There is no way to sync Moodle, easily, courses with Mahara groups. I think that if you have programmers in your institution, they could have a look at the web services for Mahara/Moodle and fin a way to to this from Moodle (with a cron launching a procedure for example). See the docs here: https://wiki.mahara.org/index.php/Plugins/Auth/WebServices. Have a look at the Core Function Interface at the end of the doc and you will notice it is possible to create groups from another platform directly into a Mahara. Webservices are available as a plugin for 1.4 and are in core from 1.5 and on.

Or you can follow one of the different solutions suggested by Ralf.

Regards,

-dajan

08 August 2012, 4:05

Hello Charles. My school (for regional political reasons ) is still on 1.9 and Mahara 1.3 but we make good use of the online text assignment in the way Ralf suggests in his first option and it works well for pages/views that the teacher will assess.

08 August 2012, 15:17

Hello Charles,

just one more idea or more a workaround. In Moodle you can create a list of your students, if you change this list a little bit, you can create a user import file for groups.Its not an automatic process, but it will be possible now.

Sources that describe user import into groups in Mahara:

http://manual.mahara.org/en/1.5/site_admin/groups.html#new15-add-and-update-groups-by-csv
http://manual.mahara.org/en/1.5/site_admin/groups.html#new15-update-group-members-by-csv

In Moodle you can create a student list from gradeboook import. Wait until all students are in your course, create a gradebook export as excel or csv file. 

Change the structure and delete not required columns.

As Admin you can upload the file into your Mahara system.

ralf

 

14 August 2012, 4:45

Sorry, dajan, but web services continue to be a plugin for the time being.

Cheers

Kristina

14 August 2012, 4:52

Hello Charles,

There are already a few suggestions in the forum here for accomplishing what you want. I try to provide you with some more information:

1. Web services: they would need a bit of extension to work with Moodle. Probably not much as they are built on the Moodle ones.
2. You could install the Mahara assignment submission plugin: That allows your students to submit a page from within the "Mahara assignment" in Moodle and your teachers can grade it there. Essentially, a secret URL will be created that only the teacher will see in the assignment.
3. You can create a group on Mahara and add all your students to it. In Mahara 1.3 it would have to be a course controlled group which only staff or admins can create. Once you have added your students, they can submit their portfolio pages to the group and the admin / tutor of the group can assess them / give feedback. That is similar to what you could do in Moodle just without the Moodle plugin and the automatic adding of the grades to the Moodle gradebook.
4. If you are thinking only about wanting to create a group for a Moodle course, you'd have to do that manually in 1.3, but can add students to a course controlled group and students can't leave. ;-) From Mahara 1.5 on you can use CSV files to create the groups and then also update the group membership. Ralf already provided the links for that.

Cheers

Kristina