FAQs on Mahara 1.2 ePortfolios

Mahara 1.2 E-Portfolios: Beginner’s Guide

Create and host educational and professional e-portfolios and personalized learning communities

• Create, customize, and maintain an impressive personal digital portfolio with a simple point-and-click interface
• Set customized access to share your text files, images, and videos with your family, friends, and others
• Create online learning communities and social networks through groups, blogs, and forums
• A step-by-step approach that takes you through examples with ample screenshots and clear explanations

Q: What will you need to install Mahara?

A: Before you can install Mahara, you will need to have access to a Linux server. It may be that you run Linux on a laptop or desktop at home or that your company or institution has its own Linux servers, in which case, great! If not, there are many hosting services available on the Internet, which will enable you to access a Linux server and therefore run Mahara.

It is important that you get a server to which you have root access. It is also important that you set your server up with the following features:

• Database: Mahara must have a database to work. The databases supported are PostgreSQL Version 8.1 or later and MySQL Version 5.0.25 or later. The Mahara developers recommend that you use PostgreSQL, if possible, but for most installations, MySQL will work just as well.
• PHP: Mahara requires PHP Version 5.1.3 or later.
• Web Server: The preferred web server is Apache.
• PHP extensions:
  • Compulsory Extensions: GD, JSON, cURL, libxml, SimpleXML, Session, pgSQL or Mysqli, EXIF, OpenSSL or XML-RCP (for networking support)
  • Optional Extension: Imagick

Q: Can Mahara be installed on Windows?

A: At the moment, the Mahara developers offer no support for running Mahara on Windows Servers. It is designed to primarily work with Linux, Apache, PHP, and open source SQL databases.

Q: What are Views in Mahara? How are they different from Blogs?

A: They are one of the stand-out features of Mahara and we think you are really going to enjoy learning to use them. Views, like blogs, are an excellent tool for reflection. The difference between the two is that a blog is very text orientated with a user reflecting on a topic in writing (with usually an odd image or video to supplement the text), but Views allow you to express your ideas in more of a “web page” type format using lots of different blocks. Also, Views are flexible; you can very easily add and remove whichever blocks you want.

Q: What are some of the things you can do with Views in Mahara?

A: Let’s think about some of the things you can do with Views in Mahara:

• You could present all of your ideas related to one of the topics in a qualification you are taking. This could be for your own reference or you may choose to share access to this View with your tutor or classmates.
• You could use a View to take notes on all of the thoughts, ideas, links, and so on, that you gather while you are attending a conference (if you have a wireless connection). You can then share the View with your colleagues after the event to show them what you have learned.
• You could use a View to explore and express your thoughts on a particular aspect of your social or family life, such as a family holiday. This is likely to be private, and something you would only share with other members of your family.
• You could use a View as a tutor to present all of the important materials your learners need to read, watch, listen to, and think about in preparation for a particular topic they are going to study with you. Lots of lecturers prefer to use Mahara to present their work instead of doing so in a Virtual Learning Environment such as Moodle. This may be partly because the lecturer’s name (and avatar) will continue to be associated with the work presented in the Mahara View even after they retire or move on to another academic institution.
• You could use a View to present an ongoing progress report on a project you are doing at work. You might make a blog post an element of this View as well as make important files related to your project available for sharing.

Q: What is a secret URL?

A: It is used if you would like to give some people who aren’t already members of the Mahara site access to your View. The URL is simply a link to the View, which you can set up as a hyperlink in another web page, in a blog, or e-mail so that others can open it. The URL that is created is difficult to guess so that the general public can’t see your View. Rather than use it as a hyperlink, you could just send the whole link to the people you would like to give access to the View by pasting it into an e-mail, for example.

Q: When can the View feedback be useful?

A: This might be useful in the following situations:

• You might have asked a peer for feedback on some work you are doing on a particular course in exchange for feedback you can give on their work.
• A tutor may have added your View to their Watchlist. You may then get some informal feedback from your tutor on your work before you submit it for formal assessment.
• You could be using the feedback functionality as a communication vehicle. You may raise a topic for discussion with your workmates, for example, and get them to answer the core question(s) posed in your View by using the feedback option.
• You may have used a View to share highlights of a recent holiday experience with your friends in Mahara. They could then use the feedback option to tell you how jealous they are of your rich experiences or at least of your suntan!

Q: How can the Mahara partners help you?

A: Mahara partners can help you with hosting, theming, training, coding, tweaking, extending, bug-fixing, problem-resolving, implementation consultancies, and, well, just about anything to do with Mahara, if you ask them nicely enough. All Mahara partners are excellent support agencies and, if you ARE really keen on using Mahara, you really should give one of the partners a shout.

Q: What are the steps to join the Mahara Community?

A: The steps to join the Mahara Community are as follows:

1. 1. Go and register: The very first thing that anyone will do on your Mahara site is log in. Head on over to http://mahara.org and click the option to Register, a small link, which you will find in the pale blue Login butt on in the top right-hand part of the screen. Once you’ve registered you can log in.

1. 1. Respond to your e-mail: You will need to confirm your registration by clicking the link that has been sent to your e-mail address. Once you have done this, you will find yourself at http://mahara.org, which is itself a Mahara site.
   2. Let’s find some people!: Click on the Community tab, and then on the Members tab. Now let’s see if you can find the authors! Can you see the Query box? Type in my name Derrin and see if you can find me?

1. 1. Let’s look at some views: Now you’ve found me, click on my name and why not click on one of my views? Here’s another example of Mahara in action.

1. 1. Join a forum: Click on the Community tab again, and now on the Forums tab. Can you see the Support forum? Its description is Need help using or installing Mahara? Ask your questions here. That’s going to be useful to you, I bet! Why not subscribe to this forum by clicking on the Subscribe button. You will now be e-mailed with all the updates to this forum. Maybe there are other forums you might want to subscribe to. If you just want to browse a forum, just click on the name of the forum and you will be taken to a list of the posts.

1. Have a look at the Mahara partners: Click on the Partners tab.