Mahara

The Mahara was designed to be a fully featured open source 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 demonstrate their life-long learning, skills and development over time to selected audiences.
Meaning think or thought in Te Reo M�ori, the name reflects the projects 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.

Main features

ePortfolio owners create Views using a 4 step process and Views have the following features:
· ePortfolio owners can receive public or private feedback on their View and Artefacts within that View.
· Users accessing a View can report any objectionable material directly to the Site Administrator.
· Users can add Views and Artefacts within a View to their Watchlist and receive automated notifications of any changes or updates.
· ePortfolio owners can Submit a View for Assessment by a tutor or teacher allowing for a snapshot of the View and associated Artefacts on a certain date.

Other Features of Mahara

· File Repository
Mahara includes a file repository which allows users to:
Create folder and sub folders structures
Upload multiple files quickly and efficiently
Give each file a Name and Description
Manage their file allocation Quota
When uploading a file users must agree to a configurable Copyright disclaimer.
· Blogs
A comprehensive blogging tool is provided in Mahara, where blogs and blog postings are considered Artefacts and may be added to a View.
The blogging tool allows users to:
Create blog posts using a WYSIWYG editor
Attach files to posts
Embed images into postings
Configure whether or not Comments may be received on their blog
Create draft postings for later publishing
· Social Networking
Mahara provides a social networking facility where users can create and maintain a list of Friends within the system. ePortfolio owners choose whether other users can add them to their Friends list automatically or by request and approval.
An ePortfolio owners Friends lists shows those Views to which they have been assigned access.
· Resume Builder
Mahara includes a r�sum� builder which allows users to create digital CVs by entering information into a variety of optional fields including:
Contact and personal information
Employment and education history
Certifications, accreditations and awards
Books and publications, professional memberships
Personal, academic and work skills and
Personal, academic and career goals
· Profile Information
Within Mahara users are able to share details through a variety of optional profile information fields including:
Preferred Name
Student ID
Postal address and contact phone numbers
Skype, MSN, Yahoo & Yabber name
Introduction
Profile Icons images
· Metadata
All Artefacts have metadata which includes:
Title
Artefact Type
Owner
(Optional) Description
Date of creation
Date of last modification
File size or number of posts (blogs)
Mahara also provides user defined, searchable tags on all Artefacts.
· Administration
Administrators are able to customise Mahara via a number of configuration settings which include:
Language packages and themes
Virus protocol
Session and account lifetimes
Authentication methods
Institution setup
Core page editor
Main Menu editor
In addition with the Modular plugin structure of Mahara, Artefact types may be configured, disabled or enabled, according to the organisations requirements.
· Interface with Moodle
Mahara provides a single-sign on capability that allows users, at the option of the administrator, to be automatically logged in to both their Mahara and Moodle accounts by providing a username and password at only one of these sites.
The user can sign on at Mahara, and click on a link to her Moodle account, or sign on at Moodle, and click on a link to her Mahara account.
The single-sign-on feature runs over an encrypted transport, and the users passwords do not have to be shared between sites.
· Scalability
Mahara has been designed as a web application with a plug-in architecture. This means it is possible to scale the application up by separating hardware for search, database, file storage and web servers.
It is also possible to replicate each of these operational components to further scale the system upwards. In addition Mahara is designed to:
· be load balanced across several web servers
· have a share file data from a centralised file server
· and have a separate database server.
· This hosting set-up has proven scalability for similar systems like Moodle.
· Security
Mahara automatically detects system settings that a pose security threat.
Session key handling code has been tightly integrated with the core form/request APIs.
Provides database abstraction that prevents any database injection attacks and input validation that prevents script injection attacks.
User authentication can be tied to external systems such as student management systems or other databases such as their Student ID number.
· Interoperability
Mahara is built using PHP web scripting language and leverages PHP5s OO features.
All plug-ins follow a consistent structure and inherit from a common base class (core functions of plug-ins are implemented once)
Mahara currently supports plug-ins for Artefacts, Authentication and Search. Therefore interoperating with an existing product simply requires the development of a plug-in.System requirementsPHP 5.1.3+
Postgres 8.1+ (recommended) or MySQL 5.02+