27 September 2019, 13:40

I am an educational designer, and I am looking to provide our university staff and students with advice on how to save and continue with their Mahara work after they leave the insitution. I am looking for EASY, as of course there is a risk people will just abandon their Mahara work. The pattern is, people are just not uptaking Mahara because it is not clear how how they can continue. The situation is somewhat ironic, as I am touting a message that eportfolio work is 'slow' work that does not stop at the borders of the institution. I feel that, unless I can provide an easy and sensible strategy at the end of their institutional time, I can't in good conscience promote the tool as a wide, long, strategy for integrated personal use. 

• One option is to set up a private Mahara account, in preference to transfering to another system. Has anyone recently tackled this? or can point me to information about doing it? 
• The other elephanty-type question is - what other platforms accept Mahara work as an easy import?

Any leads much appreciated, Nicci :-)

27 September 2019, 15:24

This is an excellent question Nicci, and I have experienced the same dilemma. We were fortunate that I had a small group of Mahara users who wanted to continue to develop their work after finishing with their tertiary institution, and a new sponsoring base (a Methodist Church) with a similar, very small group, who wanted to promote their creative output. The parish put up a Mahara instance which we maintain on a volunteer base. Our traffic is small but promotions in FB and Youtube drive traffic to the site. You can learn more here from the site itself.

27 September 2019, 17:39

Thank you David. The post you link to is a good read - I loved your mention of the architectures, so key for understanding how Mahara works, at heart :-)

29 September 2019, 22:35

Hi Nicci,

Did you have the discussion at your university around allowing alumni continued access to their Mahara portfolio? That would be the easiest solution as they wouldn't need to move their portfolios at all. It would also allow your university to continue to stay in touch with them without needing to find them on social media later.

There are a few sites that offer free or low-cost hosting of portfolios for individuals. I bookmarked the ones I'm aware of at https://groups.diigo.com/group/everything-mahara/content/tag/hosting but am not endorsing any of them as i haven't vetted them. Some of the costs of running servers may be recovered by the providers by running ads on the site. The sites may also not be hosted in a jurisdiction that your students may be comfortable in having their data stored. So they'd have to do a little bit of their own research if your university won't allow alumni access.

Cheers

Kristina