Evaluation and continuation

Once your platform is running, it's tempting to sit back, but you will need to think about what you are going to do next to ensure its continual development.

Reviewing and re-evaluating

This is one of those things that is much more easier said than done. It can be really hard to step back and take an honestly critical look at a platform that has been put in place.

Here are some questions you could be asking:

• Are the people we need to be recording their knowledge in Mahara actually recording their knowledge in Mahara? If not, why not? How can we make it happen?

• Is Mahara helping learners to achieve their qualifications? Is Mahara helping people to do their work?

• Can you offer targeted support for groups who have been slow to engage?

• Does everything really have to be digital?

• Are people actually identifying and meeting their learning, career, and personal goals?

• Is learning over Mahara ever being delivered more effectively through other online or offline approaches?

• Are there variations in success between different types of learners? Are there any good reasons for the variations? How should we respond to these variations?

• Do the groups, forums, or learning program briefs always match the aspirations and needs of the learners?

• Could you yourself set performance improvement targets based on metrics gathered from the sorts of questions we have just asked?

• Are achievement targets set for all courses at all levels?

• Is Mahara participation a requirement? Should it be a requirement? Should you set participation targets or might that have a negative effect?

• If any targets are set, is everyone made aware of those targets? How? How effectively?

• Are staff or users themselves involved in the target setting?

• How do you communicate progress against targets? (Simple graphical displays?)

• How do you celebrate and reward individual success and collective progress against targets?

• Are targets revised frequently enough? By whom? How ambitiously?

• Do we care about all these targets? Wouldn't it be best to leave the whole Mahara thing to grow ad hoc?

Changing and embedding

How are you going to make your Mahara ePortfolio site stick as one of the cornerstones of your learning delivery model? Or has it all been a flash in the pan?

A thriving site will often be in a constant state of flux, changing with the needs and focuses of the organization and its people, embedding itself deeper and deeper as an element of the wider e-institution.

There are various ways you might have approached the change-management process required to implement Mahara usage in your organization.

Some organizations might take a very top-down, directive sort of approach. The wisest among those avoid horrific staff rebellion by putting their weight behind an expert who is brought in to make the change happen. This expert is often a consultant, sometimes a new staff member. The expert will follow a strict project plan and will have the authority to reward and rebuke as deemed appropriate by the implementation planners.

Other organizations might adopt a more bottom-up user-driven sort of approach. They implement the platform, publicize it, and then just wait to see what happens. The problem here is that it can result in pretty much nothing getting done. It is therefore best, in this approach to encourage a knowledge-sharing culture. You could for example give the end users dedicated time to show off their work to each other and share their skills. This nudges progress along a bit without having to bring in an expert because the users are learning from each other.

In our view, an approach that sits in the middle of these two positions is best: a negotiated, circular approach, which not only clearly communicates the organizational drivers, but also gives ample space for the user community themselves to take the lead on what their learning content should cover. The Mahara platform itself, of course, allows nicely for this approach.

If you really want to change your learning and knowledge culture into a reflective, online ePortfolio, supported learning and knowledge culture, you will probably have to continuously re-evaluate to what extent you wish to embed Mahara use into your organizational policies. Here are the key questions:

• Is Mahara usage going to be integral to your business development plan? (This is the information age after all, and your country may even be a knowledge-based economy like the UK and USA?)

• Will Mahara usage be integral to your organizational policies and procedures?

• Will staff responsibilities for Mahara usage and management be a defined and remunerated element of their job descriptions? Or would you prefer to leave Mahara to be a self-managing phenomena?