Mahara is a free ePortfolio system for learning communities. Students and staff can gather evidence, reflect on experience, and connect work to competencies or registration requirements. Listed uses include study, professional development, work-integrated learning, assessment, presentation, and employability. A portfolio can be shared with one person, a group, or the public, with access limited by a time frame or assessment task. Users can comment, give feedback, collaborate on portfolios in groups, and take part in group forums. Portfolios can be submitted to learning management systems through LTI for marking. Mahara is open source; conditions include distributing source code with copies and applying the same license to derivative works. It can be installed on a Linux server. The manual also describes Docker setup for development and testing, and advises securing that environment before using it for a live site. LTI 1.3 Advantage is experimental and has not been tested with LMS platforms other than Brightspace. Mahara offers a demo that resets daily, so user-created content is erased unless portfolios are exported beforehand.
Who it is for
Mahara suits students and staff who need to collect and reflect on evidence for learning, assessment, or professional development. It may also fit organisations using portfolios in learning and assessment.
What is good
- Free ePortfolio system for learning communities.
- Portfolios support individual, group, and public sharing.
- Access can be limited by time frame or assessment task.
- LTI submission supports LMS marking.
- Users can collaborate and give portfolio feedback.
What to know first
- LTI 1.3 Advantage is experimental.
- LTI 1.3 has not been tested beyond Brightspace.
- Docker setup should be secured before live use.
- Demo content is erased in its daily reset.
Verdict
Mahara provides portfolio creation, sharing, feedback, collaboration, and LTI submission for learning settings. Review the LTI limitation and deployment guidance if planning an integration or self-hosted site.
Compared on portfolio website builders
- Free plan
- Yes
- Evidence collection
- Yes
- Assessment tools
- Yes
- Feedback workflows
- Yes
- Mobile access
- both
- Single sign-on
- Yes
