1. What’s new in Mahara 24.04?

Mahara is being improved from version to version. On this page, you see the highlights for the latest release of Mahara.

You can see a list of all new features (visible to subscribers) or check out the features via the new in Mahara 24.04 ‘New in Mahara 24.04’ index entries.

1.1. Show recently used block types

You can access the block types that you have used recently on a page quickly at the top of the block configuration modal when you open it.

1.2. Continuing professional development (CPD)

The CPD plugin is now available in Mahara directly. It allows you to record learning activities alongside the number of hours you have spent on them for a continuous log. You can filter that log on a page by date and / or tags.

1.3. SmartEvidence version 2

SmartEvidence has seen a number of enhancements:

  • There is no differentiation between a framework that either allows self assessment or external assessment. This can now be mixed.

  • A total of five assessors, including the learner themselves, can be defined. These can correspond to different roles in Mahara.

  • An assessor does not have to have the ‘Staff’ role any more.

  • A new status ‘Merit’ can be given to indicate extraordinary achievement.

1.4. Active account holder count

The ‘Overview’ page of the reports shows the number of people who have logged in over the last year. This is the number that is important for the subscriptio.

You can also use the CLI script to see in more detail how engaged your account holders were during a particular time frame.

1.5. Dark mode

Mahara supports dark mode. If your device is set to dark mode in general, you see Mahara automatically in dark mode if the theme that you use supports it. Alternatively, you can switch your browser to dark mode.

1.6. Easy issue reporting

If you encounter a problem in Mahara and see a generic error message, you can report that to an administrator if they enabled that functionality. The error message is sent to them to follow up on.

1.7. Allow the copying of blocks on a page

If the site allows the copying of blocks on a page, you have the ‘Make a copy’ icon available to quickly copy blocks. This is useful when you set up templates.

Currently, this is an option that needs to be set in the `config.php` file because it can result in many copies of blocks that portfolio authors cannot easily remove when they work with templates.

1.8. Other new features

  • Allow the CLI script that populates the outcomes tables to enable the functionality itself for the respective institution.

  • Have more sort options available in the ‘Group portfolios’ block.

  • Show which is the auto-copy template on the portfolio index page on the site level.

  • Add a copy setting for the portfolio owner for tagged journal entries blocks.

  • Allow the portfolio overview page to have the ‘Show submissions’ option to be sticky.

  • Allow skin headers to have a repeatable background image.

  • Make the ‘Cron is not running’ message on the administration’s overview page more detailed.

  • Allow AI reflection bot Riff to be embedded within Mahara.

  • Have a CLI script for bulk adding blocks to pages.

  • Add OpenID Connect as authentication method.

  • Improve the display of a drop-down menu to be more useful.

  • Share portfolios in bulk with reviewers to an audit group.

  • Simplify how to remove members from groups when deleting accounts.

  • Allow institution administators and support administators to add fellow members to their other institution instead of only being able to invite them.

  • Retrieve deleted content from a ‘Text’ or ‘Note’ block.

  • Disable the copying of an activity page to group members.

1.9. New features on the back end

  • Add console logging and DOM output for Behat.

  • Add PHPStan and PHPCS static analysis to CI/CD.

  • Allow CPD to set start and end date to be the same day.

  • Show upgrade loops as percentage as well as number done / total.

  • Allow Mahara to use lazy loading for images to speed up page loading.

  • Allowlist the ‘Allow’ attribute on iframes.

  • Allow the compilation of only one theme.

  • Allow Gulp to compile only selected themes.

  • Extend the “gulp css on selected themes” change to be able to be done via ‘make css’.

  • Record the session type and SAML session type in the statistics to mahara.org.

  • Add ‘Number of active accounts over last 365 days’ to the registration data.