2. Myportfolio .school .ac settings
Centrally hosted
Based on mahara - active since 2008
Growth rate fairly constant - initially large growth- slowing down
Allowed to belong to multiple Institutes in school site
Everyone can create Groups –Admin create public groups.
Custom themes for some institutes
Single sign on for some institutions – Moodle, saml, ldap Moodle/saml
Institution admin responsible for user admin
5. Comparison of sites
Tertiary
Pay per user
Assessment based
Internal technical expertise
Internal training – or contract
Little inter institute
communication
School
Central funded – ‘unlimited users’
Showcase based pages
Limited internal expertise
Centralised training
Good inter institute
communication
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Friends Pages Groups
Average number
Tertiary School
6. Success factors
Support resources provided
Initial free Face to face taster session around country
Video resources created and shared by members
Online resources - links
Manuals = quick start, full, admin and user
Site Discussion groups
Contact me link for email support
Telephone and face to face support provided
7. …..Success factors continued
Low cost to institutes – free or cost per user, SLA with training and support
included
Local developers able to fix bugs quickly and implement features
Administered by institute admin – promotes ownership and have knowledge of
users
Support of central body for funding and developments – less overheads
Involvement of institute administrators to make it a success
Able to trial for free
Able to use content from other web apps that are being already in use eg Google
Apps
Able to set up SSO to sign in with existing username
Bug and feature requests from users are filtered by hosts
8. Benefits to client of multi site
Centralised support available
Allows for institutes with small numbers to participate
Supports cross institution communities
Able to have individual institute settings to keep identity
Members able to change institutes easily
spreads costs for development – wish list from many institutes implemented
on site
support resources able to be spread across institutes
Larger community available
9. Benefit to provider of multi user sites
Administration – upgrades, fixes, settings able to be applied site wide for all
institutions
Only one server to maintain
Easy to share resources
Suitable for central funding and also user/institution models
Features developed are suitable for wide range of institution type
10. Issues
Formation of inappropriate groups
– hard to control
Reluctance to open institute to
public
Deleting of portfolios when leaving
school
SSO issues when changing servers
Process for bulk transferring of
institutes not easy to follow
Central funding provides some
uncertainty of continuation
Usernames not unique between
institutes
Difficult to change emails when
changing institutes
resolutions
Can choose to allow only staff and
admin to create groups
Allow institution public pages
Users create backups – bulk export
of institutes – requires command –
limited file size
Need to ensure new key generated
on new server
Easier interface
Rely on another payment model –
maybe per institute, sponsored,
longer term contracts, ownership
Central id number such as NZQA
number
Not require a confirmation
11. …. continued
Issue
Lifelong access not guaranteed
External iframes URL not
guaranteed to be stable so
embedding not guaranteed
Transferring of portfolios from one
provider too another is not easy –
file size limits
Large graphic files are being used
Resolution
Have a portal that provides
unlimited access – require funding
or business model to support
Have an alert to site admin when
this happens
Increase file size limit for
importing
Have a converter in mahar to
compress graphics
12. Opportunities for multi institute sites
Moderation of work between institutes
Multiple connections with external LMS
Collaborative development of features
Piloting releases of new developments
Having Alumni institutions
Links with employer organisations and professional bodies
Accreditation of pages similar to Open badges
Sharing of resources – maths videos is an example
Storage of achievements – central repository
More flexible/powerful search of others pages
Responsive themes
13. Further ideas?
Archiving of submitted pages
More integration with LMS – to competency level
Conforming to international standards for academic record, resume
Mobile app with more features
Save with timestamp to show progress over time
Further integration with linked in or similar professional networking tool
Continuing professional development plugin – total up hours and show progress
Site for users not belonging to institute – alumni
Responsive themes to device viewing on
More built in tools for creating multimedia resources – video editor/recorder
Adding more skin templates