Have you ever wondered if you were on track towards gaining a qualification, but you couldn't check your progress? Perhaps you weren't even sure of the requirements to begin with? Unclear progress can make you feel stuck and think you're not advancing toward your goals. To remove the guesswork, the Mahara feature 'SmartEvidence' displays your progress toward a skill or qualification visually. In this blog post, we’ll discuss how SmartEvidence associates competency frameworks with 'evidence maps', so progress can be seen at a glance.
What is Mahara SmartEvidence?
SmartEvidence simplifies the assessment process for competencies and skills in Mahara by clearly displaying progress against competencies. The Mahara project team released the first version of SmartEvidence in October 2016, enabling organisations to easily track competencies with existing competency frameworks across disciplines.
The above image is used with permission from the Mahara project(external link). It depicts the overview page of a portfolio that uses SmartEvidence to give a quick view of competencies attained. Portfolio pages displayed at the top are mapped to standards on the left. Different icons indicate the progress towards the standards.
Learners can have a lot to juggle when they're working towards a skill or qualification, especially if they have to manually track what they've completed and what's coming up next. Assessors might face similar challenges if managing multiple teams and classes - it can be a lot to remember the status of each learner for each skill or qualification. SmartEvidence redefines this process by visually presenting learners’ progress all in one place. Both learners and assessors can quickly see progress due to the display of status icons for each required competency.
For instance, SmartEvidence can show completed standards, standards currently being worked on, and areas not yet started. Each assessment status has a unique icon, so it's easy to check the status at a glance. This gives reassurance to the learner about what stage they’re at and provides assessors with an easier review system.
Learn more about Mahara SmartEvidence in the demo video by Mahara project lead, Kristina Hoeppner.