Mahara Eportfolios/Induction

Induction
Including Mahara in your course induction activities will promote students’ ownership of the purpose as well as the processes behind eportfolios. However induction needs to be handled carefully. There is an equal danger of overwhelming the technologically anxious by covering too much, or alienating the ‘digital natives’ by moving too slowly.

More specialised topics such as blogging, uploading files, groups, forums and views are best handled in context, when the need arises. The ICT-adept will have explored these already in any case.

Following are suggested activities for Mahara induction:
 * a broad introduction to the purposes of eportfolios and the * role they will plan in your course
 * introduction to the Course View you may have set up
 * guidance with Login or Registration processes for those who need it
 * introduction of the Profile and finding Friends (including ‘playtime’).

You will probably refer to the following topics in the Mahara User Guide:

Profile: Profile, Profile Icons, My Resume, My Goals, My Skills, Edit Profile

Friends: Friends, Control how friends are added, Find friends.

Identifying Learning Needs
Identifying relevant previous experience, strengths and weaknesses, learning needs and goals are important first steps in helping students become reflective learners, with a sense of ownership of their own learning.

A Self Assessment instrument could be a useful tool to help students identify and prioritise their learning needs. This could be made available through a View that you develop for your class. Students could then use the Profile (i.e. ‘My Goals’, ‘My Skills’) and/or a Blog post to record and reflect on the results.

You will probably refer to the following topics in the Mahara User Guide:

Profile: Profile, Profile Icons, My Resume, My Goals, My Skills, Edit Profile

Blogs: My Blogs, Create a Blog, Add a Blog Post, Add a file from My Files, Upload a file to a Blog, Embed an image to a Blog post, View Blog, Blog comments

Views: My Views, Create a view, Step One – Details, Step Two – Layout block, Step Three – Configure block settings, Step Four – Assign Access to View, Providing a Link to a View.