Mahara (a Māori word meaning ‘think’ or ‘thought’) is a simple, easy-to-use, creative platform for people to showcase their learning. It’s a customisable and flexible personal learning environment that allows you to collect, reflect on and share your achievements and development in an online space you control. You can create web pages incorporating journals, uploaded files and social media resources from the web and collaborate with others in groups.
More than 1,600 New Zealand schools and many educational institutions around the world use Mahara, but it’s not just for the education sector. It can also be used for accreditation purposes and competency gathering.
Mahara features
- Create content, for example, using journals, plans or the résumé builder
- Upload files or add content from mobile devices to include in your portfolio
- Manage access: you decide which individuals or groups can see your pages and whether they can provide feedback
- Navigate easily using desktop or mobile devices
- Keep track of your achievements using competency frameworks in your portfolio
- Use it in conjunction with a learning management system
Catalyst’s Mahara services
As lead development company and maintainer of the Mahara project, our staff know Mahara inside-out and are able to provide a wide range of services.
Implementation
We’ve been using and working with Mahara since its inception, so we have the expertise to give you advice and support on implementing and using it in your organisation.
Installation and optimisation
We can help provide a secure, stable and scalable ePortfolio site for your organisation, no matter what its size. We have experience in large, multi-tenanted and high-performance installations of Mahara.
Business requirements analysis
We can help you capture what you need and want to accomplish with your Mahara site. With experienced business analysts on staff, Catalyst can offer top-quality requirements analysis and documentation services.
Custom development
We have core Mahara developers on staff who have the expertise and experience to write customised code or help you design and implement new features for Mahara.
Theming and design
Our creative team will work with you to develop an innovative look and feel for your site while retaining your organisation’s brand and identity. Our design team includes some of the most talented and experienced Mahara designers around who have created a number of design resources for the community.
Training services
Catalyst has experienced trainers available to create custom online and face-to-face training programmes for your users and help you get the most out of your Mahara site.
Ongoing support
We can provide tailored second and third-level support packages for your Mahara site for stakeholders, administrators and technical staff. Our online work request management system allows you to log issues with us at any time.
Managed hosting
We offer fully managed hosting for organisations of all sizes. With 24/7 monitoring and proactive and reactive security protocols in place, we offer a safe, stable and scalable hosting environment for your Mahara site.
Integration
Do you want to integrate your Mahara site with your IT systems and custom authentication methods? Maybe you want to create a seamless link between other systems such as Moodle, Totara LMS, Drupal or Koha? Catalyst can help.