Mahara

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Established in 2006, Mahara is the result of a collaborative venture funded by New Zealand's Tertiary Education Commission's e-learning Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF), involving Massey University, Auckland University of Technology, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington.

Once released (Feb 2007) Mahara will be a fully featured electronic portfolio, weblog, resume builder and social networking system, connecting users and creating online communities.

Mahara is designed to provide users with the tools to create a personal and professional learning and development environment.

Meaning `think' or `thought' in Te Reo Maori, the name reflects the project collaborator's dedication to creating a user-centred life long learning and development application as well as the belief that technology solutions cannot be developed outside the considerations of pedagogy and policy.

Mahara is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU General Public License). In brief, this means that you are allowed to copy, use and modify Mahara provided you agree to; provide the source code to others; not modify or remove the original license and copyrights, and apply this same license to any derivative work.

For further information please see http://mahara.org

[edit] Mahara Features

Mahara is based on an Artefacts, Views, Groups and Communities Framework where Users could create any number of Views, which would be a collection of any number of items (Artefacts) that exist in their portfolio area, where any number of individuals, Communities or Groups (and all their members) have access as determined by the user.

Groups may be defined as an ad hoc collection of users defined, maintained and added to a View by the ePortfolio owner only. Whereas Communities may be defined as a reusable collection of users who may be added to the Community by a number of different mechanisms. There is the potential for there to be social interaction (through Forums etc) within a Community further down the development track. An ePortfolio owner may add any Community they are an owner or member of, to any of their Views.

ePortfolio owners will be able to create new Views using a 4 step wizard process where they setup a new View by giving it a name, description and access dates, select a View display template, place Artefacts within that View and then assign access to the desired Groups, Communities and/or Individuals or keep the View Private.

Owners can then configure whether Feedback or Comments may be received on the View (and Artefacts within the View).

Artefact Types