Mahara vs PebblePad

Mahara is a free ePortfolio system for learning communities. Students and staff can collect evidence, reflect on experiences, and relate work to competencies or registration requirements. Listed uses include study, professional development, work-integrated learning, assessment, presentation, and employability. Portfolios can be shared with an individual, group, or the public, with access limited by a time frame or assessment task. Users can comment, give feedback, build portfolios together in groups, and take part in group forums. Portfolios can be submitted to learning management systems through LTI for marking. Mahara is open source, under conditions that include providing source code with copies and using the same license for derivative works. It can be hosted on a Linux server; the manual also describes Docker setup for development and testing, and advises securing that environment before live use. The manual describes LTI 1.3 Advantage as experimental and tested only with Brightspace. The project links to community forums, a manual, a wiki, an issue tracker, and extended security support; Catalyst is named as maintainer.

PebblePad is a higher education platform for learning, assessment and engagement, designed for institutions, educators and learners. Students can plan and reflect on learning experiences, then collect and share evidence of their capabilities in ePortfolios. Educators can create templates and workbooks for activities, projects and placements, and use assessment tools to monitor engagement and give formative or summative feedback. The platform maps competencies and skills to programme outcomes or professional frameworks, while dashboards help institutions define completion and identify learners ready for assessment. PebblePocket captures reflections and learning evidence offline and syncs it after reconnection. Accounts are issued by institutions, each with its own installation. Integrations with learning management systems support single sign-on, enrolment synchronisation, resource links and grade synchronisation; listed options include Blackboard, Brightspace, Canvas and Moodle. The service is hosted on AWS and has a stated 99.9% uptime SLA. PebblePad lists ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, Cyber Essentials Plus and TX-RAMP among its security certifications. Pricing is institutional and available on request.