Background
AP Hogeschool Antwerpen is a university of applied sciences in Belgium. It is committed to student learning and providing innovative learning spaces. This approach supports students in their growth and helps them become professionals who are also lifelong learners.
Since 2016, the ePortfolio platform Mahara has been part of the digital learning ecosystem at AP. It enables learners to reflect on their studies and connect learnings from various subjects.
Challenge
Students create a portfolio to document and reflect on the competencies they have gained from both classes and practical work. While Mahara could already visually represent a competency framework and a student's progress through SmartEvidence, AP wanted to extend the platform to fully support its assessment workflow. The challenge in this project was finding a solution to balance the vast amounts of data that needed to be presented visually while keeping it meaningful for learners and assessors.
Solution
Solution design phase
AP engaged Catalyst to extend the existing functionality of SmartEvidence in Mahara to both support its workflow and centralise and visualise all instructor, mentor, and learner assessments.
AP worked with a Catalyst business analyst and the Mahara project team to:
- define the requirements
- iterate design proposals to ensure the solution was fit-for-purpose.
Usability and accessibility were central to all design conversations. Together, the project team primarily worked with wireframes to discuss the functionality required and both view and experience the proposed solution.
Working closely with AP on the solution design gave the Catalyst team a deeper understanding of how portfolios are used at AP. We also reviewed feedback from other organisations. Ultimately, this meant we could create the right solution for AP while making it flexible enough for other organisations to use as well.
Development phase
Once AP agreed on the final solution design, the Mahara development team implemented the following functionalities into Mahara:
- the ability to have multiple assessors review and grade assignments
- the addition of ‘Merit’ as a new grading status.
Because AP wanted to contribute the functionality back to the wider Mahara community, these enhancements will be available in Mahara 24.04 (due for release at the end of April 2024.)
Community collaboration is one of the main benefits of using open source software. Community members create new features for their own needs and they can then choose to share these features with others. If another community member wants to further enhance these features, they can do so and share the updates with the community, creating a continuous improvement lifecycle.
Jeroen Hendrickx, AP Learning Designer says “Seeing the assessment of competencies by students, teachers, assessors, and workplace supervisors side by side gives everybody a much better idea of how different stakeholders view the status of that competence. Especially, if that assessment differs between the stakeholders, it seems an excellent reason to start the conversation. That way, we can also ensure that students learn whether they rate themselves too high or too low and guide them towards a more realistic assessment of their own abilities, which they will certainly need as lifelong learners."
Contributing to the Mahara project
Catalyst and the Mahara project thank AP for its contribution to enhancing Mahara for the wider educational community.
If you want to discuss a new feature for Mahara or would like more information on how to contribute to the Mahara project, contact us.
