Mahara Upgrade Complete

UCS' e-Portfolio system, Mahara, was successfully upgraded this morning to the latest stable version 1.10.2.

The upgrade went smoothly with only 10 minutes of downtime at 8:15am.

After our testing and checks, Mahara is now back open for staff and students to use.

If you are a student and wish to utilise Mahara to keep an e-Portfolio or a reflective journal, simply head over to http://mahara.ucs.ac.uk and register for a new account using your UCS email address.

If you are a staff member who would like to use Mahara with your students, please contact the Elevate Team in Learning Services - elevate@ucs.ac.uk

Future blog posts will detail some of the new features and functions.

Mahara Upgrade Tomorrow!

This is the last reminder that UCS' e-Portfolio system, Mahara, is being upgraded to the latest stable version (1.10.2) Tuesday 17th of February between 7am and 9am.

The whole of Tuesday is seen as an at risk period and it is advised to only use Mahara after we have verified the upgrade has been successful and have completed all of our testing.

If you wish to view some of the new features the new version brings, please follow the link below:

https://mahara.org/features

Mahara Upgrade - New Features Spotlight

With UCS' e-Portfolio system (Mahara) being upgraded next week on Tuesday 17th of February between 7am-9am, we thought we would take this opportunity to focus on a key new feature/change that will come with the upgrade.

This new feature is the updated easy to use drag and drop navigation for editing portfolio pages.

Currently you have a set of tabs which run horizontally across the screen with icons depicting elements which you can use in your portfolio page. There is then a quite small area below where you drag those icons.

This has proved to be a little confusing at times, especially users who are working in Internet Explorer or those who have smaller screen resolutions.

The new interface condenses the elements into more readable text rather than icons for quicker navigation and a larger working area to the right of the menu.

This is how the new portfolio page editing will look like:

As you can see from the image above, the design is a lot easier to read and hopefully in a more sensible area to work with.

If you wish to get a head start with some of the changes and what they mean to you, here is a link to Mahara's support pages of the new version.

http://manual.mahara.org/en/1.10/index.html

Mahara Upgrade - Update

This is just a small post to remind everyone that UCS' e-Portfolio system, Mahara, is getting upgraded on Tuesday 17th of February.

The upgrade has been scheduled between 7am - 9am, the rest of the day will be seen as an at risk period.

Here is a small video detailing some highlights of the new Mahara 1.10 upgrade.

You can also see the individual features at the following website - https://mahara.org/features

Mahara Upgrade - New Features

We thought we would take some time to post some of the new features coming with this months Mahara upgrade. (Tuesday 17th of February)

Mahara will be upgraded from version 1.7.3 to 1.10.2 This means we will be upgrading a full 3 stable releases, this will naturally bring with it lots of new features and functions.

There is an extensive list of updates, however we will list the new features relevant to the end user below:

New Features

• Streamlined easier-to-use "Text" block 
• The new "Note" block retains all the removed features of the Text block 
• Streamlined rich text editor, with a toggle button to access advanced features 
• "Messaging" profile tab replaced with "Social media" tab with newer options 
• Added a "sent" box alongside the inbox for user messages 
• Groups: "Objectionable content" button for forum posts 
• Groups: Forum moderators can relocate forum posts between forums 
• Groups: Option to auto-create a LEAP2a archive of submitted pages 
• Groups: More control over which group members receive feedback & shared page notifications 
• Accessibility! W3C WCAG 2.0 level AA (except for some admin pages)
• Profile completion progress bar
• "Post now" option for forum posts, to bypass post delay 
• Support for Creative Commons 4.0 licenses 
• New "Feedback" block, allows placing feedback as a block instead of at the bottom of the page 
• Can now show image descriptions in "Image Gallery" block 
• Can specify the sort order of files in a "Folder" block 
• "Folder" block can now have "Download all as zip" link 
• Improvements to watchlist notifications 
• "New group page" notification
• Turned the block chooser vertical and scrolling, to accommodate longer Pages 
• The Image block and Text Box block are now conveniently at the top of the block chooser 
• Page layouts can now have rows as well as columns 
• Users can import leap2a files into their existing Mahara account
• PDF block allows PDFs to be viewed in-line in a Page 
• Resume elements can have attachments 
• Notes (and text box blocks) can have attachments 
• Users are notified when they try to navigate away from a page with unsaved changes 
• Many more types of user content can have tags 
• Resume entries for electronic publications can now be hotlinks 
• Drag-and-drop to upload files 
• Page skins, which give individual users the ability to change the CSS of their Pages 
• “Additional HTML" config option for things such as Google Analytics

We will have a deeper look into some of the new features in a blog post next week.

UCS' Mahara Upgrade 17th February

UCS' e-Portfolio tool, Mahara, will be upgraded on the 17th of February to the latest stable release of the Mahara software, version 1.10.2.

The upgrade will take place between 7am and 9am on Tuesday the 17th of February. The rest of the day will be seen as an 'at risk' period while we complete our checks.

This upgrade will bring with it many many new features and abilities, including but not limited to:

• Many new blocks for portfolio pages
• Enhanced feedback routes
• Enhanced multimedia functionality
• Ability for users to archive and restore Leap2A files
• Inline PDF viewing in portfolio pages
• Drag and drop uploading of files

A blog post will come in the near future detailing a full list of features and changes.

Along with these new features, the upgrade will also make sure Mahara is up to date with it's security patches.

We would advise users of Mahara to not attempt to log in during the upgrade period. We will notify users via MyUCS when Mahara has been fully upgraded and our checks are complete.

If any users would like to get in touch with the Elevate Team about the use of e-Portfolios and Mahara, please contact us - elevate@ucs.ac.uk