What is an e-Portfolio?

  • An e-Portfolio is a collection of your reflections and experiences held together in one place online.
  • Its purpose is to demonstrate your learning, skills, development and to record your achievements over time.

Mahara is a tool used to build and display your e-Portfolio.

You can choose to share your e-Portfolio with different audiences. For example you could create:

  • a page for your tutor, for assessment which includes reflection
  • a page to showcase your best pieces of work and your CV for potential employers etc.

A single page or a collection of pages can make up your portfolio.

What do I include in my e-Portfolio?

Files, images, videos etc. are known as 'artefacts' within Mahara.

  • Imagine you have collected all your 'artefacts' in a box
  • Whenever you have a new 'artefact', you add it to the box
  • When you are ready to create your portfolio, you take a look at the 'artefacts' in the box and choose the ones you want to make available on a portfolio page
  • You can then add and arrange the 'artefacts' on a page or on different pages.

What will I gain from using Mahara?

The Mahara ePortfolio tool will give you a structure for:

  • Collecting evidence of your learning, skills and development
  • Identifying goals what are you doing now, what do you want to do, how will you achieve this? Questions which will enable you to develop short and long term aims
  • Reflecting on your achievements so you can see progress and learn from your experiences
  • Organising your work and reflection, enabling you to showcase your achievements and experience
  • Sharing your portfolio of evidence with friends, tutors, future employers, external contacts etc. to gain feedback or demonstrate your experience.