We are currently looking into ePortfolios options for Moodle. We've installed Mahara and a few other blocks, including MyStuff. We are very interested in Mahara and are going to try to integrate Mahara with Moodle soon. Mahara and a few other ePortfolio options address the majority of our needs, however our administration wants an ePortfolio system to have the ability to sort and aggregate student information for institutional assessment. So far I haven't been able to find something that will do this effectively. Does anyone know of an ePortfolio system that works with Moodle that has this capability?
Thanks so much,
Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Lauren Panton -
Number of replies: 16
In reply to Lauren Panton
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Howard Miller -
I'm not at all sure what you mean. Can you expand or provide an example? Sort and aggregate what?
In reply to Howard Miller
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Lauren Panton -
Below is a part of what the Dean requested regarding the institutional assessment:
As an institutional assessment tool, the portfolio system must have the ability to easily collect and aggregate the data a student enters, particularly related to the following:
• Career: Job applications made, interviews, offers made, and employment
• Graduate/Professional School: Applications, acceptances, and enrollment
• Experiential Learning: Number and quality of experiences
• Study abroad experiences
• Success of networking experiences
• Relevance of major to the positions applied for/obtained
• Leadership experiences
This information will be used both to assess individual students’ progress toward their career goals, and in aggregate to make curricular changes, improve and inform the advising process, and enhance co-curricular student development.
This is all of the information I have at this point. I'm awaiting a meeting to discuss it in detail with the Dean. In the meanwhile, I was asked to investigate open source options that would do this and more.
Thanks!
As an institutional assessment tool, the portfolio system must have the ability to easily collect and aggregate the data a student enters, particularly related to the following:
• Career: Job applications made, interviews, offers made, and employment
• Graduate/Professional School: Applications, acceptances, and enrollment
• Experiential Learning: Number and quality of experiences
• Study abroad experiences
• Success of networking experiences
• Relevance of major to the positions applied for/obtained
• Leadership experiences
This information will be used both to assess individual students’ progress toward their career goals, and in aggregate to make curricular changes, improve and inform the advising process, and enhance co-curricular student development.
This is all of the information I have at this point. I'm awaiting a meeting to discuss it in detail with the Dean. In the meanwhile, I was asked to investigate open source options that would do this and more.
Thanks!
In reply to Lauren Panton
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Nigel Robertson -
Quite a lot of things would normally be private to an individual, whether an ePortfolio was used or not.
There tends to be two approaches to ePortfolios - those that are owned by the institution and those that are owned by the learner. Owning in this sense is comparable to who owns the learning rather than the physical infrastructure.
Mahara is certainly focussed around the learner owning their portfolio. The content inside it is theirs to choose what to do with. They can create views of parts of that content for different purposes and share it with specific people or groups. Perhaps a solution would be to provide templates for your learners relevant to the info that you need and give them a task to complete them and evidence them with views of that info in their portfolio.
If you go down the path of the institution automatically being able to harvest information from the portfolio, then the portfolio no longer belongs to the learner and the learners interaction with it will change. It will be less likely to be used as a learning tool and you would need to be very careful that it doesn't instead turn into a hoop jumping exercise.
I do think that you have a key question to ask of the Dean, and that is whether they want a tool to support administration or a tool to support learning!
Cheers, Nigel
In reply to Nigel Robertson
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Nigel McNie -
"I do think that you have a key question to ask of the Dean, and that is whether they want a tool to support administration or a tool to support learning!"
Indeed!
I'm the Mahara lead developer. We've designed it to be learner-centred, which means they choose what they share. It's not designed for "data mining", so much as lifelong learning.
If you want an institutional portfolio, then you may well be better off looking at one of the Moodle extensions that adds a portfolio. That way, you get access to Moodle's reporting features, and students are under no illusion about what the portfolio is for.
Having said this, Mahara does provide the ability for students to submit Views for assessment. They choose what to put in them, and teachers can always fail them for not including required information, so it provides a nice balance of student and institution control. I'm not sure if that would 100% cover your needs though.
Indeed!
I'm the Mahara lead developer. We've designed it to be learner-centred, which means they choose what they share. It's not designed for "data mining", so much as lifelong learning.
If you want an institutional portfolio, then you may well be better off looking at one of the Moodle extensions that adds a portfolio. That way, you get access to Moodle's reporting features, and students are under no illusion about what the portfolio is for.
Having said this, Mahara does provide the ability for students to submit Views for assessment. They choose what to put in them, and teachers can always fail them for not including required information, so it provides a nice balance of student and institution control. I'm not sure if that would 100% cover your needs though.
In reply to Nigel McNie
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Lauren Panton -
Nigel and Nigel,
Thanks for your feedback. I couldn't agree with you both more. I've been trying to make my case for this, however it hasn't been received with much luck. Perhaps I could reference our conversation.
Thanks again, Lauren
Thanks for your feedback. I couldn't agree with you both more. I've been trying to make my case for this, however it hasn't been received with much luck. Perhaps I could reference our conversation.
Thanks again, Lauren
In reply to Lauren Panton
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Nigel Robertson -
Hi Lauren
Good luck with that! You're welcome to quote anything I've said if you need.
You might want to have a look at http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/e-portfolios and the slides available at http://www.educause.edu/Resources/AssessingImpactEPortfoliosinHi/163635. The latter has some examples of how institutions have changed their focus on ePortfolios e.g. slide 18.
Cheers, Nigel
Good luck with that! You're welcome to quote anything I've said if you need.
You might want to have a look at http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/e-portfolios and the slides available at http://www.educause.edu/Resources/AssessingImpactEPortfoliosinHi/163635. The latter has some examples of how institutions have changed their focus on ePortfolios e.g. slide 18.
Cheers, Nigel
In reply to Nigel McNie
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Mike Smith -
I'm trying to satisfy the assessment and record keeping functions of an RTO (Registered Training Organisation) in the Australian Vocational Education and Training (VET) system. I've been looking at a portfolio system to help with these aspects and the issue of learner-centric versus institution-centric data ownership is significant here. I think Mahara/Moodle will do what we need but I'd appeciate thoughts from people in this forum.
Firstly, formal evidence gathering consistsd of quizzes, assignments, skills demonstration, and other forms of submitted evidence (CVs, references, certificates etc). A portfolio system seems to be sensible here to cover skills demonstration and other forms of submitted evidence, while Moodle can document quizzes and assignments).
In fact all of these bits of evidence can individually be managed solely within Moodle (perhaps using uploaded assignments or wikis), and this allows the RTO to keep the evidence for the required (nonsensical) 30 years. However this doesn't help the learner build a portfolio of their own. We run a TESOL course and feel that this is particularly important for a trainee teacher, since many of the resources they add to their portfolio will become immediately useful in their teaching. We can't expect a TESOL teacher to only teach from within our organisation forever, so they need a way to continue building their portfolio once leaving us.
Mahara would, I understand, allow them to take away their portfolio, but if they closed the RTO's Mahara view of their submitted evidence for their TESOL course, then the RTO would no longer have that original evidence. Am I correct here? Is there a permanent export funciton of a Mahara view that would satisfy the long-term document keeping needs of an RTO?
Secondly, formal competency assessment is a matrix aggregation and evaluation of all the above gathered evidence. There are various checklists applied across all the evidence, possibly with varying weightings for different evidence types. The standard Moodle gradebook is fine for the individual questions, assignments, forums and wikis, but I can't figure out how to aggregate their formal assessment using checklists. Defining the quizzes/assignments at competency level doesn't work because pieces of evidence often contribute to assessment against multiple competencies. I'd really appreciate some good ideas in this area.
Thanks, Mike Smith, Brisbane
In reply to Mike Smith
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Nigel McNie -
Hi - I'm Mahara's lead developer, I can answer some of the technical questions 
Regarding export: From Mahara 1.2, users will be able to export their portfolios to both the LEAP2A format and as a static HTML website (they can also do either for an individual View). 1.2 isn't out yet though. This video gives an overview of the import/export feature:
So the RTO could potentially grab LEAP2A or HTML exports of the portfolios at certain periods if they needed to keep the evidence around.
Regarding Moodle/Mahara integration: Currently, this is just single sign-on - there is no data transfer currently between Moodle 1.9 and any version of Mahara. Moodle 2 will support sending stuff to Mahara and retrieving it again (in both directions only in certain formats at the moment), but Moodle 2 is, as I understand it, ages away from release.
We've been working on extensions to Moodle and Mahara to allow users to submit a Mahara view as an assignment answer for a Moodle assessment. This work will be available as a plugin for Moodle, and the Mahara side will be part of Mahara 1.2.
Hope those answers help trigger some thinking as to how Moodle+Mahara could work for you
. If you have more questions I can hopefully give you some more feedback!
Regarding export: From Mahara 1.2, users will be able to export their portfolios to both the LEAP2A format and as a static HTML website (they can also do either for an individual View). 1.2 isn't out yet though. This video gives an overview of the import/export feature:
So the RTO could potentially grab LEAP2A or HTML exports of the portfolios at certain periods if they needed to keep the evidence around.
Regarding Moodle/Mahara integration: Currently, this is just single sign-on - there is no data transfer currently between Moodle 1.9 and any version of Mahara. Moodle 2 will support sending stuff to Mahara and retrieving it again (in both directions only in certain formats at the moment), but Moodle 2 is, as I understand it, ages away from release.
We've been working on extensions to Moodle and Mahara to allow users to submit a Mahara view as an assignment answer for a Moodle assessment. This work will be available as a plugin for Moodle, and the Mahara side will be part of Mahara 1.2.
Hope those answers help trigger some thinking as to how Moodle+Mahara could work for you
. If you have more questions I can hopefully give you some more feedback!
In reply to Nigel McNie
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by lawrence li -
I came across the new concept e-ePortfolios with Moodle, I'm new on this with stupid question in mind, why need to seperate Moodle and ePortfolios? Any advantage I can get from it? -- Both from Learner side and school side? Thanks
In reply to lawrence li
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Jocelyn Ireson-Paine -
Me too. It would be great if someone replied to this.
Jocelyn
In reply to Jocelyn Ireson-Paine
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Geoffrey Rowland -
The University of London Computing Centre (ULCC) provides a nice overview of how VLE (Moodle), PLP, ePortfolio (Mahara) and assessment components fit together via their 'Personalisation of Learning Framework'
One key differentiating concept is that of 'ownership'. Moodle Courses are effectively 'owned' by their teachers/lecturers. Mahara Pages/Views are 'owned' by learners (or groups of learners). Of course, Moodle allows some learner ownership, through My Moodle, Moodle Profiles and some 3rd party plugins such as the ULCC PLP/ILP module. However, Mahara provides a more flexible/capable ePortfolio System which nonetheless integrates well with and complements Moodle (Mahoodle). For example, Mahara users can make ePortfolios/resumes available to potential employers. This would be tricky/cumbersome (though not impossible) to do via Moodle.
One 'lightweight' way you can tie Mahara to assessment (gradebook) in Moodle is via Mahara's 'Secret' URLs. Effectively, students submit a secret url for Mahara content as a Moodle assignment.
In reply to Nigel McNie
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Lino Oliveira -
Hi Nigel
I know you are not anymore in Mahara develpment teem
Do you know if this plugin is already available?
Regards from Portugal,
Lino
In reply to Lauren Panton
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Deleted user -
Reflective showcase portfolios and more assessment driven portfolios do not have to be exclusive of one another. At Chalk & Wire we have tried to develop a system that will allow students to support reflective practice and at the same time allow for institutional assessment (with the aim or improving program outcomes) to take place. The reality is that assessment matters to students and is a key factor in their engagement. Only if their formal education is perceived as being relevant will student become life-long learners.
Here is how we have integrated our assessment portfolios with Moodle.
Any discussion and/or feedback is most welcome.
Here is how we have integrated our assessment portfolios with Moodle.
Any discussion and/or feedback is most welcome.
In reply to Lauren Panton
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Julia Hengstler -
We're instituting Mahara as our eportfolio platform with it being accessed via a Moodle bridge. We're in EARLY stages--bridge is installed & functional, we're pre-building 2 templates 1 for accreditation of program needs and 1 for student employment needs, establishing some necessary tagging taxonomy. After that, students are free to build their own versions & share with people outside our faculty & institution. Only the eportfolio instructors & some tech support have been really in the system. We hope to do a pilot deployment this fall semester.
If you want to chat more contact me.
Julia.Hengstler@viu.ca
Educational Technologist & Instructor
Faculty of Education
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
If you want to chat more contact me.
Julia.Hengstler@viu.ca
Educational Technologist & Instructor
Faculty of Education
Vancouver Island University
Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
In reply to Julia Hengstler
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by A. T. Wyatt -
Greetings, Julia!
This sounds very interesting! I hope you will come back and report your progress from time to time. I, at least, would love to see what you are doing!
atw
In reply to A. T. Wyatt
Re: Portfolios: Institutional assessment, ePortfolios and Mahara
by Marika Nychka -
This may have been asked already, and if it has been answered could someone direct me towards it?
Is it possible, as teacher or admin, to easily view a list of submitted e-portfolios on Mahara?
I make comments on student journals and respond to their writing on their portfolios, but finding it cumbersome to do that for 230 students without an easily accessible format other than looking up someone's name and going back and forth between lists.
Could someone please direct me to a better method for viewing a huge list of portfolios.