Multi institute MaharaBenefits and Issues

Presented by Craig Eves at Mahara Hui 2014

Myportfolio .school .ac settings

Centrally hosted

Based on mahara - active since 2008

Growth rate fairly constant - initially large growth- slowing down

Allowed to belong to multiple Institutes in school site

Everyone can create Groups –Admin create public groups.

Custom themes for some institutes

Single sign on for some institutions – Moodle, saml, ldap Moodle/saml

Institution admin responsible for user admin

Number registered users school site

26434

36921

4253044725

55527

64520

6962472043

8134985869

89167 90045 91259

0

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000

100000

Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Qtr1

2011 2012 2013 2014

Tertiary registered users

1252913565 13718

1429715025

18006

2191522498 22580 22668

Qtr4 Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Qtr1 Qtr2 Qtr3 Qtr4 Qtr1

2011 2012 2013 2014

Comparison of sites

Tertiary

Pay per user

Assessment based

Internal technical expertise

Internal training – or contract

Little inter institute

communication

School

Central funded – ‘unlimited users’

Showcase based pages

Limited internal expertise

Centralised training

Good inter institute

communication

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Friends Pages Groups

Average number

Tertiary School

Success factorsSupport resources provided

Initial free Face to face taster session around country

Video resources created and shared by members

Online resources - links

Manuals = quick start, full, admin and user

Site Discussion groups

Contact me link for email support

Telephone and face to face support provided

…..Success factors continued

Low cost to institutes – free or cost per user, SLA with training and support included

Local developers able to fix bugs quickly and implement features

Administered by institute admin – promotes ownership and have knowledge of users

Support of central body for funding and developments – less overheads

Involvement of institute administrators to make it a success

Able to trial for free

Able to use content from other web apps that are being already in use eg Google Apps

Able to set up SSO to sign in with existing username

Bug and feature requests from users are filtered by hosts

Benefits to client of multi site

Centralised support available

Allows for institutes with small numbers to participate

Supports cross institution communities

Able to have individual institute settings to keep identity

Members able to change institutes easily

spreads costs for development – wish list from many institutes implemented

on site

support resources able to be spread across institutes

Larger community available

Benefit to provider of multi user sites

Administration – upgrades, fixes, settings able to be applied site wide for all

institutions

Only one server to maintain

Easy to share resources

Suitable for central funding and also user/institution models

Features developed are suitable for wide range of institution type

Issues

Formation of inappropriate groups – hard to control

Reluctance to open institute to public

Deleting of portfolios when leaving school

SSO issues when changing servers

Process for bulk transferring of institutes not easy to follow

Central funding provides some uncertainty of continuation

Usernames not unique between institutes

Difficult to change emails when changing institutes

resolutions

Can choose to allow only staff and admin to create groups

Allow institution public pages

Users create backups – bulk export of institutes – requires command –limited file size

Need to ensure new key generated on new server

Easier interface

Rely on another payment model –maybe per institute, sponsored, longer term contracts, ownership

Central id number such as NZQA number

Not require a confirmation

…. continued

Issue

Lifelong access not guaranteed

External iframes URL not

guaranteed to be stable so

embedding not guaranteed

Transferring of portfolios from one

provider too another is not easy –

file size limits

Large graphic files are being used

Resolution

Have a portal that provides

unlimited access – require funding

or business model to support

Have an alert to site admin when

this happens

Increase file size limit for

importing

Have a converter in mahar to

compress graphics

Opportunities for multi institute sites

Moderation of work between institutes

Multiple connections with external LMS

Collaborative development of features

Piloting releases of new developments

Having Alumni institutions

Links with employer organisations and professional bodies

Accreditation of pages similar to Open badges

Sharing of resources – maths videos is an example

Storage of achievements – central repository

More flexible/powerful search of others pages

Responsive themes

Further ideas?

Archiving of submitted pages

More integration with LMS – to competency level

Conforming to international standards for academic record, resume

Mobile app with more features

Save with timestamp to show progress over time

Further integration with linked in or similar professional networking tool

Continuing professional development plugin – total up hours and show progress

Site for users not belonging to institute – alumni

Responsive themes to device viewing on

More built in tools for creating multimedia resources – video editor/recorder

Adding more skin templates