The challenge of Mahara

I have naively underestimated the power of internal technical teams or prehaps there desire to survive. All the talk here is of Mahara and Moodle. What is the main attraction of this software is that it allows the technical teams within Universities and other institutions to retain control. Of course nobody really buys Mahara, what you do is get hold of the open source software and implement it and therein lies the cost either the internal cost of your technical team or bringing in experts to help you use it.

However you would not believe it from the discussions here. As I previously reported the South Australia University are moving over to Mahara although not quite yet. When the poor lecturer was told that they were switching to Mahara; she was also told that she had to wait for a couple of terms because we have a ‘team working on it.’

What a surprise?

Again to repeat my previous comment that I will support anything that encourages more people to use e-portfolios, however I would urge that a proper evaluation takes place of cost and benefits associated with each portfolio.

Mahara like all open software is freely available that does not mean that it is free. Someone has to maintain the core software and deploy it.

It would be good to know how much that on average it is costing to implement Mahara e-portfolios in particular institutions.


Here is another question if Open Source is so great why are not major corporate bodies, with their eye on the bottom line falling over each other to use it?