Assessing Mahara e-portfolios

Published on: 12/08/2024 · Last updated on: 25/11/2025

Introduction

There are different ways to review and assess e-portfolios. Students can share their work with tutors or peers for comment in Mahara. Staff can use a Smart Evidence Framework (see Smart Evidence Framework guidance). If you want to formally assess the portfolio (with a grade and feedback), you can use submission to Moodle.   

See our Formative Assessment and Summative Assessment Recommended Workflows for an overview.

Sharing with others for feedback

For formative feedback, students can receive comments on each page of their Mahara e-portfolio. This is helpful for in-context feedback.

• A student can share their e-portfolio work with individuals (staff or peers). 
• A student can share their e-portfolio with people external to the University – and without an account in Mahara (e.g. employers, examiners or guests). 

Once shared, staff, peers or externals can view or comment on the portfolio.

How does a student share their work? 

Students can share their work from the Portfolios page, by finding the padlock icon corresponding to the collection/page they want to share and then selecting Manage access.

How does a staff member, peer or other person add a feedback comment? 

• To add a feedback comment to the page, add text to the *Add comment box on a given page.  
• You can also upload a file by clicking Browse.  
• You can add multiple files by clicking Add attachment for each new one.  
• When finished click the Comment button to submit the comment. Making the comment ‘public’ means anyone with access to the portfolio can see it. If the comment is ‘private’ only the portfolio author will see it. 

The person leaving the comment cannot delete comments or edit them beyond 10 minutes. Please take care before posting comments. Students can stop sharing their portfolio with others at any time. 

Using a Smart Evidence Framework

Using a Smart Evidence Framework in Mahara, staff can create a set of criteria or competencies (known as standards). As they build up their portfolio, students can map evidence against the standards. A Smart Evidence map displays as the first page of their portfolio. Staff can review completion at a glance. Staff can place feedback and assess e-portfolio evidence against the framework. To find out more, see our full guidance on Using a Smart Evidence Framework.

Giving feedback

Students identify evidence for assessment against the criteria by adding an ‘Annotation Block’.

• Anyone who has been given access to the e-portfolio can click the Place Feedback button and leave a comment on the Annotation Block.

Assessing evidence against the framework

Tutors can assess the evidence by choosing a relevant ‘status’ in the Assessment drop-down menu and clicking Save (providing they have the ‘Staff’ role in Mahara). The assessment status displays in the Smart Evidence framework on the first page of the portfolio.

Along with Smart Evidence Framework, you can also use submission to Moodle for formal assessment.

Submission to a Moodle Assignment

If you want to formally assess the portfolio (with a grade and feedback), students can submit their portfolio to Moodle.  You can use Moodle Assignment to provide marks and feedback, at a time controlled by you. You must use this approach for summative assessment. You can also choose to use it for formative assessment milestones where you want to provide an overall grade and / or feedback.

For summative assessment, staff must ensure that archiving is enabled in the assignment settings, to make sure that an archive snapshot of portfolios is captured at the time of submission. A grade must be released from the Moodle submission for the archive copy to be taken. See more information about Archiving portfolio submissions.

Create a Moodle Assignment 

• Navigate to your Moodle space. 
• Turn editing on, and in the appropriate section of your Moodle space click Add a new activity or resource. 
• Select Assignment. Choose the appropriate settings. Under Submission types ensure you select Mahara. You can de-select the other options as required.  Marking workflow is a default setting that allows you to control when students see Grades and overview Feedback Comments in Moodle. 
• You can choose whether to Lock submitted portfolios
  • If you do not lock the portfolio, students can continue to edit their ‘live’ portfolio. In the Moodle assignment, you can place Feedback Comments or Smart Evidence Framework assessments directly on the ‘live’ portfolio. We recommend this option for formative submissions. 
  • If you choose the option to Lock, and keep locked, a ‘submitted copy’ is created and can be accessed from the Moodle assignment. Students cannot edit the submitted copy. They can continue to edit their ‘live’ portfolio. We recommend this for summative submissions.
• The Archive when graded option is set to Yes by default, and this will take a snapshot copy of the student’s portfolio (in Mahara) when grades are released.  You must ensure Archive when graded is set to Yes for all summative submissions. 
• Keep the maximum grade at 100 if you intend to transfer the final grade to SAMIS from Moodle. 
• Save and return to the course. 

Remember, for the archive ‘copy’ to be taken in Mahara, the Moodle submission must receive a grade (i.e. grade is present in the gradebook).

Student submissions 

• Students can (optionally) save their Page or Collection to a timeline (to create a time stamped version just before they submit), from the three-dot menu on each page. 
• Navigating to their unit’s Moodle space they should select the relevant assignment submission point. 
• Students will see a list of available Pages or Collections from their Mahara account. Selecting the one they want to submit and clicking the statement to confirm their agreement with the University’s Academic Integrity Statement, they can then Save Changes. 
• For unlocked submissions, the original portfolio remains available for editing.
• For locked submissions, students can view the submitted portfolio, by selecting the Show submitted portfolios check box. The submitted portfolio displays the submitted date and time and is not editable (locked). Once you release grades and feedback, students can visit the assignment submission point to view the results. 
• Within Mahara, students can view the submitted portfolio, by selecting the Show submitted portfolios check box, and clicking Search. The submitted portfolio displays the submitted date and time and is not editable (locked).
• Once you release grades and feedback, students can visit the assignment submission point to view the results.

Please note that for Mahara and Moodle to connect, students must ensure that their Bath email address is present in their Moodle profile.

Assessing portfolio submissions 

• After students submit their portfolio, you can return to the submission point to grade and give feedback as you would for other Moodle assignments. You may choose to notify students in advance of the time window for marking and feedback, and advise them not to edit their portfolio during that time.

  Note that if you are adding feedback comments to a ‘live’ portfolio, and a student is simultaneously editing the page, this can cause issues or editing conflicts. 

• For unlocked submissions, you can select the link to the student portfolio, which will open a new browser window or tab in Mahara. The ‘live’ student portfolio is displayed. Feedback Comments are added to the student portfolio. You can also record Smart Evidence Framework assessment statuses and feedback annotations. These are visible to students immediately. 
• For locked submissions, you can select the link to the student portfolio, which will open in a new browser window or tab in Mahara. The submitted copy is displayed. You can add an overall Grade for each student in the Moodle Assignment, and provide ‘overview’ feedback (using the Feedback Comments). In Mahara, you can add Feedback Comments or record Smart Evidence Framework assessment status and feedback annotations, but note these will be recorded on the ‘submitted copy’, so you should direct students where to access these final feedback comments. 
• Once you have marked all the portfolios (i.e. added a grade), update the marking workflow status as needed.  When you want the students to view grades and feedback in Moodle, change the status to Released. At this point, with archiving selected, a copy will be taken in Mahara,
• Students can view their grades and feedback in Moodle, and after a short delay (when their work has been archived in Mahara), their submitted e-portfolio will be released, but cannot be edited. If you have chosen the setting to Keep locked (recommended for summative), it cannot be edited. If you have chosen the setting to Unlock after grading, then the submitted copy can be made editable again.

Archiving portfolio submissions 

With the setting ‘Archive when graded’ enabled, a snapshot copy of the portfolio is taken, when grades are released to students, and stored in Mahara. Mahara administrators can view the archived snapshot.  It is a zip folder and cannot be viewed directly in Mahara.  It can be: 

• exported and viewed offline or, 
• exported and then re-imported back to Mahara to view in its original form 

If a course team needs access to a portfolio in this way, please contact the TEL team.