Introduction

If you're wondering what Mahara or an e-portfolio is, why you might want one and what it can do for you, then read on - you're about to find out.

At the simplest level, Mahara is two things: an e-portfolio and a social networking tool combined. An e-portfolio is a system in which students can record "evidences of lifelong learning" - such as essays, artwork or other such things they produce that can be stored digitally. Such things are known as artefacts in Mahara. Social networking systems need little introduction - think Myspace, Facebook or Bebo. Basically, they give a way for people to interact with their friends and create their own online communities.

But Mahara is much more than just a place to store files. Mahara also includes blogging, a resumé builder, Moodle integration and the standout views framework.

What are Views?

Views give students a way to display their artefacts in a way they choose, to the people they want to see them. For instance, a student could have one view that contains a journal of their progress and some notes for a project they are currently doing, visible only to their teachers. Also, they could have another view, showing photos from their holiday in Scotland, that their friends can see.

This framework gives users tremendous flexibility in how their data is shown to others. Furthermore, they are not restricted to just placing artefacts in their views - Mahara allows users to insert Youtube videos, Flickr photos, RSS feeds and much more. And the entire framework is pluggable - so anything you imagine could become part of a view, simply by writing a new plugin.

How does Mahara fit in to the e-learning landscape?

If you think of LMSes such as Moodle, Sakai and Blackboard as the formal, structured side of e-learning, then Mahara is the social, reflective side. An LMS and an e-portfolio complement one another in an online learning environment.

In particular, while Mahara's APIs are open to all, Mahara can integrate with Moodle to provide a streamlined user experience. Currently this is limited to SSO, but in future students will be able to export assignments, blogs and much more straight into Mahara to use as artefacts (which can then, of course, be placed into views).

What if Mahara does not support a feature I want?

Mahara has been designed from the ground up to be an open, pluggable system. Creating new artefacts, authenticating against a custom system and much more can be implemented simply through writing a plugin that uses the appropriate core API. What this means is that it is free and easy for you to customise almost anything about Mahara to suit your needs - and paid support is available from the creators of Mahara should you require.

Other things to do

Now you have a basic idea of what Mahara is, you could:

• Read the list of features that Mahara comes with
• Explore the demo or download mahara for yourself to play with
• Review the roadmap to see what features are planned in future releases