Mahara in Numbers

This inaugural stats post is to kick off a monthly look at how our Mahara service is doing from a numbers viewpoint, and potentially how we can change the flow of traffic and probably more importantly, where.

Since our soft rollout to the institution mid 2011 the statistics haven't been awe-inspiring to say the least, however there is some form of rationale behind this, mostly because we were still figuring out what we wanted from the service, it can offer so much but adopted wrongly can cause issues, of which I'll undoubtedly blog about soon.

So let's take a looksie..

As you see from the above graph, the amount of users on the system compared to the number of pages created is quite drastic, however I'd rather personally have a low percentage of students using the service effectively than a gold star stats report where very few students understand the service.

Well looky what we have here! Two very clearly distinguishable peaks in our lifetime stats. Care to hazard a guess at when these peaks, err, peak? You'd be correct in thinking that these do indeed fall on September/November for the past few years, right slap bang when we are doing our student inductions. We push the Mahara service in our student inductions, explain it's effective use and benefits, and it clearly shows students are taking a ganders. Problem is, why aren't they staying?

This is something we need to focus on, the interest is there from students to use it.. next step, get them to stay there and continue using the service.

• Is there enough follow-up support for students?


• Are the FAQs enough?


• Is it quick and easy enough?

Obviously an area I need to work on and I shall report back any progress before if not next months stats post.

To briefly summaries, Mahara is being used, not greatly but it is being used none the less. It's effective use reflected through case studies will come next but that's a different blog post!

:)