I attended Dublin City University’s retrospective on 10 years of Mahara use as I believe in the value of reflection as a learning tool, and I’m always looking for ways to drive use of Mahara which remains patchy at Sunderland. DCU, however, report that this has gone from strength to strength. A key difference there is undoubtedly the close integration of Mahara and Moodle, their VLE, while we are using Canvas and have found the Mahara integration to be quite poor.
The session began with a series of case studies highlighting good practice. A former student returned to talk about how using Mahara had encouraged reflection and self-awareness, and allowed her to take ownership of her own learning, which gets to the heart of the pedagogical differences between a student-owned system and the centrally controlled VLE.
In the next case study an academic from DCU’s Business School reported on her use of Mahara to facilitate group projects. While the project was completed in Mahara, the end point assessment was an individual piece of work to relieve student anxieties over group working. On the nature of reflective assignments she noted that students tended to be very good at reflecting on what they had done in the project, but less so in how they will apply what they learned in the future. I didn’t note the level or age group of the students here, I suspect that makes a difference.
The final case study was an external speaker who talked about how they are using Mahara to help people who are out of work build customised resumes for use in job applications.
DCU have collated many such case studies in a series of eBooks which have been openly published. The first book, Eportfolio Based Assessment, covers the first early years of their Mahara use. The second book Exemplars of best practice… followed in 2021 and covers case studies from those difficult pandemic years, and the third volume, Case studies of eportfolio assessment practices, has just been published to coincide with the 10 year anniversary.
Finally, Rob Lowney from DCU presented on a student and staff feedback exercise on their use of Mahara. He noted some complaints about the ‘clunkiness’ of the system and user interface, which can be seen in the fact that only 49% of students agree, or strongly agree with the statement ‘I find it east to create e-portfolios…’. On the staff side, 71% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘It is easy to access and navigate students’ submitted Loop Reflect portfolio assessments’. I wonder if this is indicative of staff receiving more training and guidance on how to use Mahara. Despite some big improvements over the past couple of years, I still don’t think the system is particularly intuitive and requires some training for both staff and students to use well. This is maybe echoed in Rob’s statement that the key to driving adoption is to provide a guided learning activity on Mahara.
Update, 05/10/2026: A recording of the session is now available on YouTube, and the slides are on DCU’s website here (PDF).
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