29 October 2021, 19:53

Kia ora,

It's spring time in Aotearoa New Zealand and other parts of the southern hemisphere while the northern hemisphere is quickly approaching late fall. That means that it's time for the release of the annual October version of Mahara, this year, Mahara 21.10. In this release we make available the proof-of-concept implementation of LTI Advantage along with a number of changes and new features that support accessibility, usability, and help maintain Mahara.

This release is also special in that it follows the 15th anniversary of the Mahara project. We look forward to many more anniversaries supporting learners and organisations.

Highlights in Mahara 21.10 include:

• LTI Advantage for authentication, group creation, and portfolio submission
• Sending of 'Contact us' emails to institution administrators instead of site administrator, supporting multi-tenanted instances better
• Setup of SmartEvidence in group template collections
• Export portfolios with private comments or without

View the Mahara manual for these new features as well as changed functionality. Please note that the manual is currently still being updated for all new features, and we expect to have that done within the next few weeks.

See the full list of new features and bug fixes.

You can check out the feature release video.

Download the code or access it via Git.

How to install or upgrade

You can find instructions on how to install a new Mahara site or upgrade an existing one on our wiki.

If you are looking for translations, have a look at the language packs information page.

Supported releases

Mahara 20.10 and 21.04 are still supported for security updates. The support for Mahara 20.04 ended now, and there was one final security update release. Support for Mahara 20.10 will end in April 2022, and Mahara 21.04 will be supported until October 2022. Mahara 21.10 will receive updates until April 2023. You can access the information about the security updates for all supported versions that were released today.

For more information, please see our release cycle.

We recommend you upgrade to 21.10 as that gives you the longest support time frame at the moment. If your organisation uses Mahara 20.10 or 21.04, you can stay on either version until their support runs out. If you cannot upgrade to a supported version of Mahara right away, you can purchase our extended security support.

All site administrators running a supported version of Mahara are encouraged to subscribe to our security announcements.

Support and bugs

If you find any bugs in this new release, please feel free to use our bug tracker to report them.

If you need help with anything, the support forum is the best place to ask your question.

The Mahara manual is in the process of being updated for Mahara 21.10.

Credits

Several organisations contributed to the release of Mahara 21.10 through funding new features and bug fixes and developing new features themselves. We want to thank the following organisations (in alphabetical order) for their support of this release:

• ANU
• Cambridge Assessment
• Carleton University
• Catalyst IT
• D2L
• Griffith College
• LearningWorks
• Mitstek
• OpenEDU
• Open LMS
• Pharmacy Council
• SWITCH
• Visol

We also wish to thank the people who contributed code to this release. They are listed according to the number of changesets:

 Fun statistic on top 10 most changed lines, which changes the picture a bit (excl. re-applied changes):

And the organisations they work for or are associated with:

The most complete translations at the time of writing (at least 90%):

• Basque. Contributors over time: Abel Camacho, Asier Iturralde Sarasola, Ibai Oihanguren Sala, Iñaki Arenaza, José Miguel Andonegi, Juan Ezeiz, Ramón Ovelar
• Czech. Contributors over time: Viktor Fuglík, Veronika Karičáková, David Mudrák, Adam Pátek, Matouš Trča, Marek Drahovzal, Lukáš Kotek, Jiřina Nováková, Tomáš Jeřábek
• Dutch. Contributors over time: Balaam's Miracle, Bas Brands, Eric, Jeroen Hendrickx, Joost Elshoff, Koen Roggemans, M Kerkhoff, Marinka van der Kolk, Raoul Dorrisen, rmob, Snicksie, Volker Schmidt
• French. Contributors over time: Alain Benoit, Alain Bolli, Alexandre Croteau, Anne017, Aurelien Besson, Cmathieu, David Truong, Dominique-Alain Jan, Emilie Lenel, Équipe StudiUM, Eric Breton, François Lizotte, Giulia Vighetti, Hélène V., Jean Marc, londumas, Melvin Romero, Pascale Hyboud-Peron, Paula Caterino, Philippe Petitqueux, Pierre Guinoiseau, sic, Stéphane, Yannick Cordel
• German. Contributors over time: Andy Hediger, Anne Spindler, Bradley Pfau, Christian Kleinhanss, Daniel Winzen, Dennis Baudys, eledia, Ernst Artner, Ettore Atalan, finnnns, Gunnar Staniczek, Heinz Krettek, Jan Behrens, Jonas Renggli, Jürgen Friedrich, Kristina Höppner, M. Ehlers, Marcel Debray, Mathias, Michael Engel, Michael Wuttke, Moritz Ringler, N2k1, Nico Verse, Patrick Neumann, Ralf Hilgenstock, Ralph Ballier, Silas Zahner, Sonia Coiro, Stefanie Berger, Steffen Pegenau, Stephan Woidowski, Tobias Bannert
• Japanese. Contributor over time: Mitsuhiro Yoshida
• Te reo Māori. Contributor over time: Ian Cormack

There are many more translations of Mahara at varying stages of completeness.

The Mahara manual is also being translated. Many thanks to everyone contributing to that.

We want to acknowledge other groups of people as well who contributed to Mahara 21.04: graphic designers, business analysts, UX researchers, accessibility consultants, testers, documentation writers, system administrators, developers improving supporting infrastructure, and security researchers.

Ngā mihi

The 21.10 Release Managers at Catalyst