In this video I'm going to give you a preview of the changes to SmartEvidence that we are currently making in September and October 2023. The final result in Mahara 24. 04, to be released in April 2024, may look slightly different as we are finalising the testing, but nevertheless, the big picture is already available.
So let's dive in. SmartEvidence allows you to map portfolio pages to competencies by setting up a competency framework on the site admin level and making that available to learners. It can be added to any personal collection or group, institution, and site collection that are then used as a template and copied into personal accounts.
The enhancements we are making to SmartEvidence thanks to AP Hogeschool Antwerpen centre around who can assess portfolios with SmartEvidence. So far it's only been possible to have one staff member as an assessor, and if you wanted to use self-assessment, the student was the only one to do the self-assessment. This is now changing in SmartEvidence version 2.
You can select multiple people who should be able to perform the assessment: teachers, an assessor, and a mentor. If the framework allows for self-assessment, that is then possible on top of all the other roles rather than instead of them. Here is a SmartEvidence framework that doesn't allow for self-assessment.
So I can give other people access to my portfolio, and they can then provide an assessment. As assessor, mentor, or teacher, I click into the space where the assessment statuses are and I can perform the assessment for my role. Hovering over the different statuses shows me which role still needs to provide feedback.
As usual, the titles are defined in the framework itself. Now, if the framework allows for self-assessment, there is also a status for the student to perform their self-assessment that is then displayed alongside all the other roles. There are two additional changes.
One is the introduction of a fourth assessment status, the one of 'Merit'. Per default, it is displayed as a star. The second change is that the different roles have different text for the assessment status, thus differentiating what sort of assessment is expected from a role.
And this shows the text for a different role. In summary, there are four changes to SmartEvidence: There is the introduction of multiple assessors. The possibility of doing self-assessment along other assessors.
The introduction of a fourth assessment status. And the possibility to adjust the language of the assessment statuses for each assessor. These changes will be available in Mahara 24.
04, and if you have access to the code base, you are welcome to test them already now. If you are looking for details, it's issues 97 and 100. If you'd like to sponsor enhancements to Mahara, please get in touch with me so we can discuss the specifics.
