Thursday 14 April 2011

Using Mahara

Using the OU's Pyramid of Usability, I have approached Mahara to assess how usable it is.

If I had not been aware of what an e-portfolio was I suspect I would have found Mahara tricky to understand, but to some extent that would be because of the intensely personal nature of an eportfolio. However, for novices, there is a good explanation up front (in the 'about' section) that describes the main features of an e-portfolio, and there is also a very useful demo site, which breaks users in gently. The scrolling real examples of e-portfolios on the front page are also inspiring and educational at the same time; wait for an example from someone who works in your field and see how they do it;-)

At a general and technical level, as I expected, the site is very usable. Simple language is used, there are many places to seek help, including open forums, and the navigation feels quite instinctive. A very nice touch is that Mahara is translatable into many languages, and has discussion groups for many. My suspicion is that the general and technical ease of use has a lot to do with the Open Source platform. Many of the pages here openly ask for feedback, and the many users do seem to give this freely. Although I suspect novice users will require scaffolding to help them make the most of Mahara, the functionality will be quite supportive.

As I expected, trouble started to brew for me at the academic and context-specific levels of usability. At the academic level, if I had not been aware of the concept of artefacts, I suspect I would not have known where to start, and the big open space of your new portfolio is rather daunting. But for those who have a basic grasp of e-portfolios, there is huge scope to create your own repository adding documents, files of all kinds, blog entries, plans and the like. The site lends itself very well to personalisation, with your basic portfolio being private to you, but with the option of creating views and collections of views of your artefacts for other to see. Being able also to summarise one's achievements in a resume structure is also a very efficient feature of the site.

The fact that individuals using Mahara can form/be formed into groups, or can find their friends for discussion and collaboration gives much greater pedagogical scope,and a wiki for more formal collaboration is an additional boost.

At a context specific level there seems to be a great deal of depth available. As far as I understand, Mahara is available for download and use locally, which I am sure makes it a useful platform with those who have more advanced technical and pedagogical skills. I find it difficult to imagine what the advanced use of the platform might look like, but with the many examples and general discussion forums, the potential seems to be enormous.

Quite mind bogglingly, the online Mahara community (of which I am now a member!) stood at 19,035 users the day I did the assessment. If I weren't so busy at work and on the H807, I'd be very tempted to get going on a portfolio for myself. Maybe after July 4th?

Ref:
The Pyramid of Usability: http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/resourcepage/view.php?id=373894

Monday 11 April 2011

Mahara's Usability: 1. Potential issues

I decided to use the e-portfolio platform, Mahara, for the usability assessment.

In thinking about the kinds of usability issues that might arise, I would imagine the following:
Technical usability: since Mahara is an open source platform, I suspect that technical issues will be well handled and the site will be easily available. Ditto the general level: input from lots of developers ought to make the site relatively navigeable and well ordered.

I suspect any usability issues will kick in at the academic and context specific levels. During H808, I found the concept and practice of the e-portfolio very difficult to grasp, and I suspect trying to make the general and specific use of the e-portfolio clear to users will be tricky. The fact that an eportfolio is such an individual record of achievement, and is used for different purposes (reflection, planning, publishing) means that the platform must offer a lot of scope for individual personalisation of the platform. Until a student has got their head around what it is that they want to achieve with their e-portfolio, the many options might be very confusing.

But this is a good experiment for me, as I hope to incorporate the use of eportfolios into a new programme of mine.