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. 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.
Set up your own competency frameworks with SmartEvidence
Mahara allows you to set up your own competency frameworks through an easy to follow form that is available to site administrators. Competency frameworks can be used for multiple purposes, including:
- competency-based assessment
- graduate attributes
- skills accomplishment
- self-assessment.
You can define the wording around each assessment status to align with the competencies your organisation wants to measure and set up a hierarchy of competencies for complex frameworks. The flexibility of the wording for assessment statuses enables you to use SmartEvidence in the language you work in.
The future of SmartEvidence
SmartEvidence has continued to grow with Mahara since its first release to match modern expectations of the portfolio platform. In the upcoming release of Mahara in the second half of April 2024, key new features will be made available thanks to funding from our partner, AP Hogeschool Antwerpen in Belgium. The features include:
- A framework will then have the option to be shared with multiple assessors to review and provide feedback. Additionally, a learner can complete a self-assessment at the same time.
- The assessment statuses are expanded by an additional option to allow for more granularity in the assessment.
The Mahara project team plans to make SmartEvidence even more flexible and usable in more learning scenarios. The following features are included in the Mahara roadmap:
- Being able to set up a competency framework that consists of multiple levels of achievement rather than a single one.
- Adding the option to map individual artefacts to competencies.
- Integrating SmartEvidence into Mahara Mobile to instantly map evidence collected on a mobile device to one or more competencies.
You can get an overview of the overall roadmap for Mahara in our blog.
Getting the most out of your Mahara
SmartEvidence provides valuable insight into the progress toward skills or competencies in Mahara by making the assessment process more visible. It is just one way of using Mahara for organisations to support their learners. At Catalyst, our Mahara team is here to support your organisation's learning and professional development initiatives. We offer learning design, graphical design, and technical support services, including complex integrations and hosting services, so you can focus on your learners and their success.
To learn more about our Mahara support services, contact our team today.