Putting Educational Innovations into Practice.

MERLOT 101 Online 2009: Week One Introductions and Post- Workshop discussion

Welcome all, near and far, to a special three-week version of MERLOT101 beginning March 2009. This online course will get newcomers started with MERLOT, help you discover its many features and show you how to build a Personal Collection of learning materials for teaching and learning.

Before entering the course content, let us begin by building our community.Please introduce yourself to the group. Tell us the discipline area that interests you, what kinds of learning materials you seek and ask any questions that you may have about MERLOT.

For participants with some background in MERLOT, welcome as well. Your objective for the workshop is to build a Personal Collection and to share it with our network. If all goes well, this course will have an international audience, so the potential to meet new colleagues and to learn about new resources should be greater than usual.

Please remember that throughout the course of these three weeks you will have access not only to your MERLOT team, but also the TLTG team and the MERLOT Africa Network.
Interaction with people who can help us get what we need is the heart and soul of MERLOT. So, let's get acquainted with each other and the course.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Heather on March 17, 2009 at 1:16pm

Greetings,

My name is Heather Seitz, and I am an assistant professor at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS. I teach biology and microbiology and am a new professor here to learn about all of the resources available on MERLOT. I hope to find valuable teaching tools to use in my face to face and hybrid online courses.

Permalink Reply by Laura Franklin on March 17, 2009 at 2:59pm

Hi Heather,

I am a French professor in Virginia and I know two teachers of Spanish from Johnson County. We meet yearly at our national professional organization. Small world.

I also teach f2f, hybrid and online. In the hybrid world, I always look for good materials to help acclimate my students to this newer way of learning. (Not new to us per se, but new to many students.) In MERLOT, type hybrid course:

http://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials.htm?keywords=hybrid+course

You really have a wealth of materials in the Biology collection. Check this portal: http://biology.merlot.org/
Please also be sure to look at this collection, with samples chosen by the Biology editors:

http://biology.merlot.org/teach.html

Moustapha can also help you find the materials you seek in Science. Good luck with your search.

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on March 17, 2009 at 3:59pm

I'll use an example from Biology when we do the Peer Review sessions tomorrow, Heather. You'll also learn about the Pedagogy Portal on MERLOT next week. As a new professor, here is an advance look: http://pedagogy.merlot.org/

Permalink Reply by DIOP Youssouf on March 18, 2009 at 3:43am

Je veux bien discuter des sciences de l'education en Afrique et des ressources educatives libres pour l'importance que cela revet dans les enjeux de la formation de plus en plus pointue dont nos enfants ont besoin.

I like to share in science of education and the Open Educative Ressources (ORL)
Thank you
Youssouf Diop
Coordinateur Afrique Reli@
Dakar

Permalink Reply by Laura Franklin on March 18, 2009 at 4:01am

Merci de votre participation, Youssouf. MERLOT contient une forte collection de RELs pour les sciences de l'education dans notre communaute Teacher Education. Nous avons aussi besoin d'ameliorer l'acces a ces RELs a travers des versions francaises. C'est notre defi maintenant. Une solution serait d'avoir plus de RELs ecrites en francais dans MERLOT. Dans cet atelier, les participants apprendront a ajouter des RELs en n'importe quelle langue a nos collections pour que tout le monde puisse en profiter.

Thank you for your participation, Youssouf. MERLOT contains a strong collection of OER in its Teacher Education community. We need to improve access to these materials by having French versions. This is our immediate challenge. One solution would be to have more materials in the the French language in MERLOT. In this workshop, the participants will learn to add OER in any language to our collections, so that everyone may benefit.

Cordialement,

Laura

Permalink Reply by Betsy Eudey on March 18, 2009 at 5:57am

I'm Betsy Eudey. I direct and teach in the Gender Studies program at California State University Stanislaus, and also direct the Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Within Gender Studies, I especially teach classes related to activism, theory, education, research methods, and education. I teach three wholly online classes (society and gender; gender and education; women's and feminist activism) and would love additional resources for these classes. In my role with the Faculty Center, I'm especially looking for materials that can help me help my faculty develop new skills and understandings that will support their teaching, research, creative activities, and service efforts.

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on March 18, 2009 at 10:31am

Betsy, you will really enjoy next week's session as Ray Purdom will show you ways that you can introduce faculty to MERLOT. Also, you asked during this morning's webinar about how we start a new community, particularly in Women's Studies. I just searched MERLOT and we only have 7 materials in Women's Studies. If you're interested in pursuing the new community, please let me know. cswift@calstate.edu
(That goes for anyone else interested in a new community)

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Bacon on March 18, 2009 at 6:23am

My apologies for not participating earlier. I'm the Academic Director of the Educational Technology Center at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas (close to Kansas City, MO). I'm interested in learning about MERLOT so I can assist JCCC's faculty in learning about MERLOT.

The Ed Tech Center (http://web.jccc.edu/edtech) provides primary support for JCCC's online faculty and I'd anticipate MERLOT would be a wonderful resource. We're transitioning from Blackboard to ANGEL in case anyone is curious, see http://angeliclearning.blogspot.com/.

Permalink Reply by Laura Franklin on March 18, 2009 at 9:54am

I mentioned to someone else from Johnson County CC that I know some of your faculty members in Spanish from ACTFL, our national prof. organization. I hope they'll join you in your fac. dev. about MERLOT. I am looking for Spanish peer reviewers all the time.

BTW, look up Lisa Pirinelli in the Member Directory of MERLOT. She has authored a bunch of good tutorials on how to use the separate features of MERLOT like search, browse, personal collections and assignments. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Ciao,

Laura

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Bacon on March 19, 2009 at 5:44am

Was Luz Alvarez one of the Spanish instructors? We've worked together on some projects.

Thanks for the tip. I will look up Lisa's materials.

Jonathan

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on March 18, 2009 at 10:39am

Welcome, Jonathan. Next week's session will really be helpful, as Ray Purdom will be talking about Faculty Development and how to get your faculty members involved in MERLOT. We have a Building Block in Blackboard and we are working the kinks out with Angel so that Angel users can access MERLOT within their Learning Managment Systems.

Also, as far as training faculty, I just this morning got a list of some videos that our Executive Director, Gerry Hanley, created. I am attaching a Word doc with the links to these. They are videos that explain some of the resources and services of MERLOT. These recordings will soon be in the MERLOT collection, so this is an Advanced Preview for all of you. Once we get them added to MERLOT, we'll advise you of where.

Attachments: