Mahara as an e-learning tool

Karen DunneVeterinary Nursing

Overview

• What is Mahara?

• What did we do with it?

• How did we get on?

• What next?

Introduction

“Facebook for academics”

• Staff & students can create an account

• Text, images, files, videos etc. displayed on pages

• Added together to make a portfolio

• Create a group & invite people to join & see your work, or make it public

“Open source”

• This means it’s free

• This also means nobody spends any money making sure it works really well!

This user interface

really sucks!

My intervention

What did we do?

• Pharmacy module (50:50)

• CA assignment (30%)

• Design a client information sheet

• Review information for veterinary colleagues

• Evaluate sources used to inform the work

How is this relevant to veterinary nursing?

Client complianceNo matter what

veterinary nurses say to clients.....

This is what they hear....

Optimal medication use

• Medicines must be used correctly to be effective (clients & veterinary staff)

• A common test of communication skills!

• This project was designed to improve students’ communication strategies & IT skills

How did we get on?

Quality of student work

• Marking scheme & assignment details provided on Moodle

• From passable to excellent

• Promoted creativity

• Integration of text, images, audio & video clips

What did the students think?

Student feedback

• SurveyMonkey

• A lot of grumbling!

• Did (reluctantly!)concede that they learned several new skills

• Could see the value of the exercise

Mahara

Some of them really embraced it

How did I find it?

Strengths

• Flexible - especially for the use of multimedia

• Encouraged student creativity

• Student progress & engagement can be monitored

• Easy to place comments on work

Weaknesses• Hard to get student access to PCs

for training

• Difficult to give specific & detailed feedback

• Some problematic software quirks

• Privacy settings confusing

• “figure it out as you go along”

What next?

• I will use it again

• Make students share their finished work with the rest of the class

• Find another way to give feedback - only put part of the project on it

Final thoughts

• Useful tool

• Great way to incorporate multimedia

• Annoying software interface & privacy settings

• Encourages student creativity

Thank you for your attention

Any questions?