11 February 2026, 7:28

Hi everyone,

The latest episode of Create. Share. Engage. Portfolios for learning and more' is with Yvonne Moore, MA, and James Pearce, who share how electrical engineering students at the University of Bath in the UK work with Mahara, using SmartEvidence.

I like many of our basic and also advanced features in Mahara that help not only to create portfolios, but also to support the display of evidence and reflections as well as offer visual queues to help view complex portfolios. SmartEvidence is one of the functionalities I like particularly because it adds a lot of value to a digital portfolio that regular website builders that can also be used for the portfolio creation do not. Functionality like that sets us apart and makes it possible to more easily integrate it with assessment and evaluation practices at universities and other higher / tertiary education institutions.

The idea of SmartEvidence was conceptualised by Shane Nuessler, MHEd, and Dr Misty Kirby and conversations with colleagues that they had a decade ago when they worked at the University of Canberra. They presented the idea at our first Mahara Hui in 2014 where we then held a workshop ideating further. In October 2016, SmartEvidence went live in Mahara allowing students to map their learning evidence collected in portfolio pages to competencies and share that with assessors.

AP Hogeschool Antwerpen provided funding a couple of years ago to extend SmartEvidence and allow for multiple assessors reviewing content thanks to conversations that Jeroen Hendrickx and his team had about the use of SmartEvidence at their institution.

Now James is contributing further enhancements that focus in particular on easier management of large frameworks. This shows that feedback and iterating over functionality will grow it and change it to suit needs better over time.

You can listen to our podcast in your favourite podcast app or on the podcast's website.

Have a great day

Kristina