The Catalyst team released Mahara 20.04(external link) on 29 April 2020. This version of the popular open source ePortfolio platform has several features that support large organisations wanting to automate administrative processes. Also, general usability improvements, as well as new features of importance to portfolio creators, have been added by the Catalyst team thanks to funding provided by its clients.
What is Mahara?
Mahara lends itself well as a portfolio platform in formal and non-formal education contexts. For example, it is used by schools in Aotearoa on MyPortfolio Schools(external link), by tertiary institutions on their own instances, or in the case of SWITCHportfolio(external link) in Switzerland by a group of higher education institutions on one site. Beyond the education sector, instances like Nurseportfolio(external link) support professionals to fulfil their portfolio requirements digitally, allowing them to keep their professional registrations up to date.
Since the beginning, Mahara has supported multi-tenancy, the idea that many organisations can use one instance of Mahara to successfully support learners at their own organisations with their portfolio needs as well as make it possible for learners from different organisations to engage with each other and collaborate in communities of learners and communities of practice. Over the years, the multi-tenanted features have been expanded and refined to allow for different scenarios of engagement and support.
Mahara 20.04 release information
In Mahara 20.04, the team focused on making it easier for administrators to set up institutions and different levels of accounts by connecting to information available in external authentication methods that can be used on Mahara for single sign-on purposes. By automating the institution creation in Mahara, the distribution of account permissions based on roles, and the easier move between institutions initiated by learners, organisations can be up and running faster with fewer administrative interventions giving more autonomy to account holders in how they interact with the platform from the start and for the long term.
Features
Several other features were also included in Mahara 20.04 that improve the usability for learners, for example:
- Labelling groups to find them more quickly
- Adding a cover image for a portfolio
- Switching between languages more comfortably
- Exporting entire portfolios as PDFs
For more information on this version of Mahara, please read the release announcement(external link) or watch the highlight video(external link).
Throughout May, Mahara Project Lead Kristina Hoeppner will be showcasing the new features of Mahara 20.04 in a webinar to allow interested people around the world to learn about the new features and ask questions.