23 December 2018, 15:25

Kia ora koutou,

Mark Glynn from Dublin City University asked a few weeks ago whether Mahara could support a rubric or in general a multi-leveled competency framework where the overall criteria stay the same but the descriptors change with each higher level.

We looked into this and came up with an idea. It was important to keep the matrix overview page as visualization. We knew that it was going to be more complicated than just with one level, but stirred clear of using different colors to differentiate the different levels as those may not often be spotted easily and it can be quite hard to come up with a series of colors that go together and also pass accessibility. Additionally, we'd still have the completion statuses.

Instead, we thought to use different icons and retain the 4 colors to indicate the status of completion.

What do you think of this early draft? We'd like to hear your opinion on this idea.

Cheers

Kristina

20 February 2019, 5:03

Hiya,

Overall I really like the idea of a 'rating' for each portfolio page. It's great for a learner to be able to see how your work is bench-marked, and can decide if you wanted to invest in spending time to improve it.

I am struggling, however, to get the idea of the icons into my head... to me they don't help as they are in no logical order. Is there a way that they can be designed so they visually progress? Like an outlined star shape with no middle (unfilled), to a stripey star, to a fully coloured-in star, to a star with a second outline etc. Does this make sense? Or perhaps number the stars 1-6? It would be great to have an additional column with an average (could go well with my numbered star suggestion).

Of course these are just my thoughts, but as mentioned, I really like the concept :)

Kind regards,

Sam

22 February 2019, 19:18

Hello Sam,

Thank you for having pondered this functionality. The icons are not finalized at all and were only some that I had available in the wireframing tool ;-)

The idea to work with numbers instead of different icons is one to think about as it is really hard to have consistent icons across a range of 6-8 options that show progression and are sufficiently different - also in a small size - to see differences. It was pretty easy to do that for the 4 current icons as they also follow the traffic light idea for the assessment statuses and can be distinguished easily even if a person can't see color well. That is much harder with more statuses.

Look forward to more feedback also from others.

Cheers

Kristina

24 December 2019, 14:50

Hi,

I've done a bit more work on the idea of extension SmartEvidence along with a number of people during my recent trip to Europe as well as used some ideas that we already had for extending SmartEvidence to support the aligning of artefacts and integrated those into a new mock-up of the SmartEvidence map where it would be possible to have rubrics, align pages as well as artefacts all in one map.

I haven't mocked up subsequent pages, in particular the "Stream" page, which will come in the new year. But am wondering what people already think about combining the aligning of artefacts and pages to be more flexible so that you could either align only artefacts to competencies or only pages or a mix, for example if it is fine to just have artefacts most of the time but a certain work flow warrants the use of a page to show artefacts in context and thus align that series of artefacts in a page to a particular standard to fulfil it.

Cheers

Kristina

28 January 2020, 8:54

Hi,

An early version of the "Stream" page idea is available now to view via wireframes. The video shows an idea that we have not yet been able to bring to life in Mahara, to align artefacts with standards in SmartEvidence. Since we envisioned this project, our thinking has evolved into the idea of allowing pages as well as individual artefacts to be represented in SmartEvidence, depending on the requirements, thus the corresponding wiki page.

Please let me know if you'd like to discuss funding of this project to bring it to Mahara or have other ideas to put onto a wishlist for SmartEvidence.

Thank you

Kristina

05 February 2020, 21:32

Hi Kristina, I'd definitely like to have a chat with you about what might be involved in supporting a project to bring this to Mahara, how do I get in touch?

Also, in terms of feature suggestions/requests, I think think something which allows/supports the tracking of time spent on tasks, to allow apprentices to capture their 20% 'off-the-job' training requirement. Even better would be the ability to enter some values initially (working hours, annual leave etc.), and have the expected hours then reduce as tasks/CPD was recorded along the way?

Phil

13 February 2020, 9:15

Hi Phil,

Thank you for your feedback. The tracking of hours could be done using the CPD plugin or a variant of it to suit the apprentices more closely. Or did you want to track hours directly on evidence?

Thanks

Kristina

13 February 2020, 21:59

Hi Kristina

I certainly think that CPD could be modified to meet the needs of apprenticeships.

Something which allows an apprentice to enter their working patterns (contracted hours, annual leave entitlement, apprenticeship start date etc.), and then calculates their expected 20% off-the-job hours (by month), which then reduces as they record their CPD activities etc.

A visual progress representation for apprentice and mentor/tutor would be great too, maybe with a visual alert where they may be falling behind expected progress to date etc.

A system which allows them to upload evidence against competencies, and capture time spent as CPD at the same time would be the dream I guess, but two separate processes might be more realistic!?

Phil