08 January 2020, 8:45

I am looking for a system that can support the onboarding process for new employees in training. I imagine that in the first year a certain sequence of tasks must be completed. This structure is predetermined. I specify that within a certain time frame (from the 3rd month to the 6th month after starting work) a certain course (online and real) must be completed. It should be possible for the course instructor of a course to confirm successful participation (online), but for the participant to transfer the participant certificate to his ePortfolio.

Is this possible with Mahara? I have not yet figured out how it can work. Is Mahara generally suitable for a guided ePortfolio system (obtaining certificates for which there is an obligation)?

08 January 2020, 10:44

When we used it for similar educational purposes, I found Mahara was completely integrated with badge creation/certificate compliance protocols from the Open Badge Factory. Now that  we use it for alumni social media interaction, including sharing of former and current awards, badges and certificates, it continues to meet and exceed all expectations. You can view a sample with embedded badge displayer here. Have fun exploring the possibilities  using Mahara.

09 January 2020, 8:39

Hi Henryk,

Mahara is an ePortfolio platform that can be used to create a series of different portfolios. Assessment portfolios are one of them. However, we do not have many pre-set structures in place to facilitate some of the work flows that you are interested in.

For example, you can set up tasks for people with the updated plan functionality that is now available in Mahara 19.10 allowing learners to choose which tasks they want to complete, and also have a deadline given to hem. You cannot track those things though on a teacher dashboard or mark things completed as teacher as everything is in the hands of the learners.

Mahara does not do course management like Moodle or others as learning management systems (LMS) do. It does integrate with LMSs though to take advantage of the best of both worlds: Structured instruction in the LMS, submission of portfolios from Mahara into the LMS for sharing evidence and getting it graded.

Portfolios can be submitted directly in Mahara or into an LMS allowing you to give feedback without the portfolio being changed in the meantime. You can then issue a certificate in the LMS for the completion or use badges as David suggested.

If you want to integrate with an LMS where you have your formal courses, you can push data from the LMS to Mahara via web services calls. These may still need to be developed as I don't know your specific requirements. The Catalyst team in Wellington is embarking on a client project where we develop functionality to push course completions from Totara to be displayed in Mahara. That is one convenient way to collect the data in one place and then make it available in Mahara automatically without requiring double entry.

Some people do get by without an LMS also for "courses" as you can have instructions on a page in Mahara and thus provide task descriptions in a light weight format. Plans now take that a bit further if you like to explore that more. You can take a look at this feature video for a very brief overview of how assignment plans work.

Another way of tracking progress in a portfolio is through SmartEvidence. It allows you to work with competency frameworks, but you could also use it to simply track progress.

So it comes down a bit to what the individual components are of your portfolio work, whether you want to include formal course components and how you want to achieve that, what sort of portfolios you'd like to create (evidence collection, sharing, and feedback vs. tickboxes) and how you want to present that.

You can use our demo site to trial the majority of features to get an idea of what is possible. You may also wish to take a look at a recent workshop concept that Sam Taylor shared in the Mahara newsletter that helps you pose some questions for your portfolio implementation.

Cheers

Kristina