2. Einführung

Willkommen beim Mahara-Handbuch. Dieses Handbuch ist als Dokumentation für Personen gedacht, die Mahara tagtäglich benutzen. Es deckt die Funktionen von Mahara ab, um Sie mit Informationen darüber zu versorgen, was Sie auf dem Bildschirm sehen.

Lassen Sie uns direkt anfangen.

2.1. Was ist Mahara?

If you’re wondering what Mahara or an ePortfolio is, why you might want one and what it can do for you, then read on. You’re about to find out.

At the most basic level, Mahara is two things: an ePortfolio and a social networking system combined. An ePortfolio is a system in which students can record ‚evidence of lifelong learning‘ – such as essays, artwork or other such things they produce that can be stored digitally. Such things are known as artefacts in Mahara. Social networking systems give a way for people to interact with their friends and create their own online communities.

But Mahara is much more than just a place to store files. Mahara also includes blogging, a résumé builder, and web services to integrate with other platforms.

Bemerkung

Here’s a short video by Domi Sinclair, formerly at University College London. She explains what Mahara (called ‚MyPortfolio‘ at UCL) is and for what it can be used.

2.2. Using a metaphor

It often helps to use a metaphor to explain a new concept. There are many metaphors used for portfolios. Here are two of them to give you an idea of how you could explain portfolios to your learners.

Bemerkung

Kate Coleman explores the idea of using metaphors for portfolio work in her PhD thesis.

Would you use any of these metaphors? Do you have your own?

2.2.2. The performance

The performance metaphor

Bemerkung

Diese Metapher wurde von Hazel Owen auf ihrer Website vorgestellt. Sie teilte ihre Idee im „Mahara Newsletter Januar 2018“ <https://mahara.org/artefact/artefact.php?artefact=434513&view=36871>`_.

An important aspect in this metaphor is the human element and that activities happen in communities and are not just things. In the performance metaphor we see that people interact in all matters from the preparation to the final performance and learn from each other.

In the backstage area, projects are discussed and conceptualised, changed, and finalised. A team is often involved in these processes giving feedback, and inviting newcomers / apprentices to try things out and learn from more experienced staff.

Depending on the director, a performance in one theatre may vary widely from that in another as a play can be interpreted many different ways, kept in its classic form, modernised or completely re-imagined. It is up to the company to settle on their interpretation and the way forward, which can include changes to the language, the mood, the back drops, and props used during the performance.

The backstage is only accessible to a group of authorised staff. Outsiders need a pass to be invited into this space.

Rehearsals play a fundamental role when preparing for a performance as they give the performer the time to practice their art, receive feedback from a teacher or also peers. They can practice in a safe space that is not accessible to an audience and thus don’t have to fear premature comments that would only be based on a small extract of the performance rather than its entirety.

Once the performance is deemed to be ready to be shown, often a dress rehearsal is scheduled to invite a select group of people for feedback and giving the troupe a chance to make final adjustments before the show is taken live.

Many different performances can take place within a building attracting different audiences, which in turn have different experiences that they bring to the events and see them through different eyes.

Some performances may require an entrance fee whereas others can be free. Some may also invite people to participate more fully in the performance itself rather than only sit and watch.

In Mahara this translates to:

  • Backstage: Artefact upload and creation and portfolio setup space before the learning evidence is shared with a wider group; portfolios can be created by individuals or in groups collaboratively.

  • Interpretations: Personalisation of each portfolio author in how they want to display their learning evidence, reflections, etc.

  • Rehearsals: Access given to a teacher or peers for feedback; not a one-time thing but iterative and supports growth of the portfolio author

  • Different performances: Being able to set up a variety of portfolios that serve different purposes and may or may not be connected

  • Entrance fee: Access permissions governing who can see which portfolio

2.3. Das Mahara-Konzept

With Mahara, you control which items and what information within your portfolio others see. Such items and information are termed artefacts. To facilitate this access control, all artefacts you wish to show to others need to be arranged into one area. In Mahara this compilation of selected artefacts is called a ‚page‘. You can have as many pages as you like, each with a different number of artefacts, intended purpose and audience. Your audience, or the people you wish to give access to your page, can be added as individuals or as a member of a group. It can even be made publicly available.

Einige Beispiele, was Sie in Mahara erstellen können:

  • eine Seite für Ihre Freunde oder Familie mit Urlaubsbildern und einem persönlichen privaten Blog

  • eine Seite für Ihre/n Tutor/in mit Aufgaben und einer Lernprozessreflexion

  • eine Präsentationen Ihrer besten Arbeiten und Ihr Lebenslauf für potenzielle Arbeitgeber

Ihr Portfolio kann aus einer einzelnen Ansicht oder einer Sammlung von Ansichten bestehen. Artefakte, die in einer Ansicht platziert werden, sind zunächst nur für Sie selber sichtbar. Jedes Artefakt wird nur einmal von Ihnen angelegt. Danach kann es in beliebig vielen Ansichten von Ihnen verwendet werden.

Stellen Sie sich vor, dass Sie alle Artefakte in einem Schuhkarton gesammelt haben. Immer wenn Sie ein neues Artefakt erstellen, legen Sie es in den Karton. Wenn Sie nun beginnen, Ihr Portfolio zu erstellen, greifen Sie in den Karton und wählen die Artefakte aus, die Sie verwenden möchten. Jetzt müssen Sie die einzelnen Artefakte in Ihrem Portfolio nur noch so anordnen, wie Sie es sich vorstellen.

Portfolioarbeit mit Mahara

Das Diagramm unten mit Beispielartefakten, Ansichten und Gruppen zeigt wie Inhalte mit anderen geteilt, in verschiedenen Kontexten wiederholt genutzt und für unterschiedliche Zielgruppen eingesetzt werden können.

Das Mahara-Konzept

2.4. Wie passt Mahara in die Landschaft des eLearnings?

If you think of LMSs such as Moodle, Canvas, OLAT, and Blackboard as the formal, structured side of e-learning, then Mahara is the social, reflective side. An LMS and an ePortfolio complement one another in an online learning environment.

Mahara supports LTI allowing to connect to an LMS following that standard. It also has a wider web services suite available to make deeper integrations possible.

2.5. How do I install Mahara?

You can follow the installation instructions for a ‚traditional‘ installation of Mahara on a Linux server. Please make sure to read the system requirements to ensure you install Mahara on infrastructure that can run Mahara.

For development and testing purposes, you can install Mahara also using Docker. If you want to use this option, it is assumed that you already have Docker available. Therefore, only the Mahara-specific instructions for setting up Mahara with Docker are provided. The Docker images are a good basis for setting up Mahara in a Kubernetes environment.

If you want to use the Docker setup for a live site, we recommend you make appropriate changes to secure the environment.

2.6. Und wenn ich eine Funktion benötige, die in Mahara nicht existiert?

Mahara has been designed from the ground up to be an open and pluggable system. Creating new artefacts, authenticating against a custom system, and much more can be implemented through writing a plugin that uses the appropriate core API. What this means is that it is free, and you can customise almost anything about Mahara to suit your needs. Paid support is available through a network of Mahara Partners should you require it.

2.7. Und wie geht es weiter?

Sie haben nun eine grundlegende Vorstellung darüber, was Mahara ist. Sie können nun:

2.8. Wo erhalte ich Ideen, wie ich Mahara nutzen kann?

The Mahara newsletter features individuals and institutions and their use of Mahara. You can subscribe to it or read it online. It is published four times a year, and you can contribute your ideas as well.

You may wish to check the list of books or papers that have been published on Mahara or what others talk about in conference presentations.

2.9. Wo Sie Hilfe bekommen

  • Contextual help is available throughout Mahara via the Help icon . Click on it to find out more about the action you are about to perform.

  • Stellen Sie Fragen in den Foren.

2.10. Mahara und Barrierefreiheit

Mahara aims to be usable by as many individuals as possible, including those with disabilities or special needs. Creating accessible web content is a requirement in many countries. In order to provide international guidelines, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) were created. There are three conformance levels under the WCAG 2.0, the latest edition of the guidelines: A, AA, and AAA. Each level requires conformance with previous levels and includes its own specific guidelines for how websites should be made accessible.

With version 1.9, Mahara has reached level AA for portfolio and collaboration areas of the system. The administration of Mahara is predominantly on level AA as well. We endeavour to keep up level AA to continue to provide good navigation of the site to everybody.

The Mahara project can only control the accessibility of the navigation and overall platform. People uploading or creating content are responsible themselves to make their content accessible.

If you come across accessibility issues, please file a report in our bug tracker and tag the item ‚accessibility‘.

If you work with a screen reader, you can use the following access keys to navigate the main menu items in Mahara:

Regular interface:

  • d:Dashboard

  • i: Inhalt

  • p: Portfolio

  • g: Gruppen

  • a: Administration

Administrator-Oberfläche:

  • a: Admin Home

  • k: Site konfigurieren

  • u: People

  • g: Gruppen

  • i: Institutionen

  • e: Erweiterungen

2.11. Welche Version von Mahara habe ich?

Wenn Sie keinen Zugang zum Administrationsbereich haben, können Sie nicht sofort erkennen, welche Version von Mahara Sie benutzen. Wenn man die Maharaversion kennt, hat man jedoch einige Vorteile:

  1. You can make sure to refer to the correct manual.

  2. Sie können herausfinden, ob Sie eine aktuell unterstützte Version von Mahara benutzen oder mit einer älteren Version arbeiten.

  3. If you are on an older version of Mahara, you can check the manual for the new features.

  4. Wenn Sie einen Programmfehler melden wollen, werden Sie häufig nach der genauen Version von Mahara gefragt, in welcher Sie das Problem bemerkt haben.

You can find out which version of Mahara you use by looking at the site’s HTML source. It’s not as scary as it sounds.

Der HTML Code zeigt die Nummer der Maharaversion an

Firefox und Chrome / Chromium:

  1. Klicken Sie in Ihrem Browser mit der rechten Maustaste auf eine beliebige Seite in Mahara.

  2. Select the option ‚View Page Source‘.

  3. Look for the meta tag ‚generator‘.

Safari:

  1. Make the ‚Develop menu‘ visible: Safari → Preferences → Advanced → select ‚Show develop menu in menu bar‘.

  2. Klicken Sie mit der rechten Maustaste auf eine beliebige Seite in Mahara.

  3. Select the option ‚Show Page Source‘.

  4. Look for the meta tag ‚generator‘.

Bemerkung

Only the major version number of Mahara is displayed for security purposes. The minor version number is only visible to the administrator on Administration menu → Admin home → Overview. We recommend you keep Mahara up-to-date with security updates to ensure that your instance is not vulnerable to known security issues.