Mahara (software)

Mahara is an open-source web-based electronic portfolio (eportfolio) management system written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License.^[3][9] The Māori language word mahara means "to think about or consider".^[10][11]

Mahara

Screenshot of a Mahara e-portfolio dashboard
Original author(s)	Catalyst IT Limited and contributors
Initial release	1 April 2008[1]
Stable release	20.04.2 / 22 October 2020; 4 years ago (2020-10-22)[2]
Repository	git.mahara.org/mahara/mahara
Written in	PHP
Type	Electronic portfolio system
License	GPLv3+[3]
Website	mahara.org

History

Mahara began in 2006 as a collaboration between Massey University, Auckland University of Technology, the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington, funded by the New Zealand Tertiary Education Commission.^[12] Mahara was initially developed by Catalyst IT Limited, a New Zealand open-source software company, and first released in April 2008.^[1] Development of Mahara has since expanded to include a community of contributors, including the New Zealand Ministry of Education.^[13]

The software was designed to be an open-source electronic portfolio platform to support the student learning and personal learning environment goals of educational institutions.^[12] Mahara allows students to select their own work and prepare an online portfolio, to both share in a university classroom context and show to future employers.^[14]

Language support

Mahara supports translation into different languages using language packs, and contributions of complete or near-complete coverage have been provided for Japanese, Basque, French, Māori, Slovenian, German, Czech, and Danish languages.^[15]