Yuliya Bozhko at Mahara Hui in Wellington on 19 March 2014 https://maharahui.org.nz/course/view.php?id=2

1. Social Networking
Features in Mahara
Totara Learning Solutions, 2014

2. Totara Learning Solutions
http://totaralms.com
TotaraLMS is an open source learning
management system for corporate environment
Project Overview
Who we are

3. Part 1
Mahara enhancements (to help us with the
implementations in Part 2)
Part 2
New features (to improve social participation
and user engagement with the community)
Project Overview
What we are going to do

4. Project Overview
Where we are now
● This project is work in progress
● Finalising requirements
● Finishing technical specification
● Proof-of-concept implementations
● Looking for community feedback

5. Mahara enhancements
● Artefact-level sharing
● Improvements of existing notification system

6. Artefact-level sharing
● Currently sharing of artefacts is available
only through pages
● While it is a great way of sharing a collection
of artefacts, it is not the best way of sharing
a single artefact

7. Artefact-level sharing
● Will allow users to share artefacts directly
while they are being created
● Using JS autocomplete sharing will be as
simple as artefact tagging
● Fine-grained control similar to page sharing
(including options to allow/moderate
comments on shared artefacts)

8. Improvements of notification system
● Separate direct messages between users
from notifications generated by the system
● Add notification user preference settings for
artefacts to support artefact-level sharing
● Prepare notification settings to support social
activity streams

9. New features
Features:
● Activity stream
● Real-time chat
● Mahara as a badge backpack
Artefacts:
● Status updates
● Questions
● Ideas

10. Activity streams
An activity stream is a reverse-chronological
feed of user activities.
Examples in social networking/media:
such platforms as Facebook, Google+,
LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Current Mahara functionality that resembles
Activity Stream is user notifications.

11. Activity streams in Mahara
● Types of activity streams (Home, Individual, Group, and
Institutional)
● Activity stream (AS) will provide one of the ways for
users to stay up-to-date with what is happening in
community
● Users will be able to comment on and subscribe to
artefacts related to activities in AS (like watching pages)
● Similarly to popular online social networking platforms
activities can be liked/unliked

13. New artefact: Status updates
Status updates are a form of micro-blogging
allowing individuals to share with their
community important things such as what they
are working on, as well as events and
information worth sharing.
Current Mahara functionality that is close to
status updates is a wall block.

14. ● Plain text status updates with support of
attachments
● JS autocomplete for
selecting sharing
audience
● Sharing audience pre-
filled with user defaults
● Support for tagging

15. Real-time chat
● Chat will be an integration of an existing third
party library into Mahara
● Individuals will be able to chat with their
connections via chat widget available on
every page

16. New artefact: Questions
Questions are a key way for individuals to
request advice from more experienced
community members.
They also allow individuals to learn from
previous questions asked and from answers to
previous questions.

19. New artefact: Ideas
An idea is an insight piece of information worth
sharing with the community.
Ideas in Mahara can be used to share
innovative suggestions, quick tips, best
practice; get other users’ feedback and opinion
through comments and voting.

22. Mahara in OpenBadges infrastructure
● Display of all badges in Mahara ePortfolio
system
● Support of direct pushing of Moodle badges
to Mahara via Portfolio API
● Mahara ePortfolio system as a backpack
provider

24. ● A lot of work :)
● Feedback
● Contributing to Mahara core
Project Overview
What is next

25. Contacts
Yuliya Bozhko
Email: yuliya.bozhko@totaralms.com
Twitter: @YuliyaBozhko

26. Questions?