16 October 2020, 1:11

Hi Everyone

I would like to get some advise from the experts since I an new to Mahara.

Please could you let me know if it would be possible to achieve the following with Mahara, if it is will Mahara work as is or will custom development be needed.

I am wanting to create a compliance register system using Mahara, what it needs to be able to do is the following.

I want to be able to create a pre-made structure that covers all the aspects that an individual in our industry needs to comply with.

The system must have a way for an individual to upload certificates of qualifications done by an individual though other institutions, annually it must require individuals to  upload CPD certificates and enter the hours they earned though other institutions, any CPD done via our Moodle system should automatically reflect on their compliance record (port-folia).

Since our clients are companies that send their staff for training I need a way to allow a manager in that company to see all his employees records, and possibly edit them if needed by uploading a certificate on behalf of the employee. A manager from one company should however have no way to access records of some one not working for them.

It needs to have SSO and should automatically create a user on the Mahara system when a user is created in Moodle

All these internal and external records need to be combined into a "Portfolio" which the person or his/her manager can download containing a timeline of exactly when each requirement was complied with.

Is this at all possible?

29 November 2020, 12:21

Hi Justin,

Thank you for your patience. This is a complex system you are proposing, and many aspects of it can already be achieved in Mahara today with built-in functionality (and a plugin):

1. Single sign-on between Moodle and Mahara: I recommend LTI
2. Auto-creation of Moodle accounts in Mahara: Done via web services
3. Compliance register:
   1. You could use SmartEvidence for the competencies / standards. See my presentation on it from a little while ago.
   2. We have a proposal available to significantly enhance SmartEvidence to be able to deal more flexibly with small and large numbers of evidence. All it needs is funding. ;-)
   3. Alternatively, if you want more sign-off and verification features, you could use the new portfolio completion functionality in Mahara 20.10. That will also allow managers to verify portfolio pages and have an overview page for each employee.
   4. All of that information can be pulled into reports (not yet available in Mahara for those things).
   5. Take a look at how a District Health Board in Aotearoa New Zealand manages compliance portfolios for nurses.
4. Track CPD hours: There is a third-party plugin that allows to do that.
5. Mahara 20.10 comes with a new web service that allows you to make course completions from Moodle / Totara visible in Mahara and display the number of hours associated with those courses if they contain that information.
6. Metadata for the majority of artefacts display metadata around creation and update date already. I think the 'Text' block might be the only one of the popular ones not doing so, but information is still stored in the database.

Other parts can be built into the system to comply with your requirements.

Best,

Kristina