MERLOT - Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MERLOT = Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching

MERLOT is the probably the largest social network for sharing educational resources in higher education. At the time that I am writing this, the site claimed to have 16,566 Materials (learning materials and assignments), and 45,057 members (faculty, students, librarians, and others).

The website is divided into the following sections:

		Learning Materials Browse peer reviewed online learning materials in your discipline.
		Colleagues Find expert colleagues in your discipline.
		Personal Collections View personal collections from people in your discipline.
		Assignments Get assignments you can use with your students.
		Guest Experts Find guest experts in the Virtual Speakers Bureau.

The Learning Materials is probably the most useful. The list is created by users who basically link to material that they have placed on their own websites. I looked at some of the Editor's Choice material, which I found to be quite good. Despite the large number of members and materials, not a whole lot came up when I typed in my discipline of geography, and nothing came up when I typed in my specialization of Tourism.

MERLOT is ike many other things on the web with the categories of Information Technology and Business being most prominent, while the Arts and Social Sciences are least represented. In addition, because the material is linked to off-site webpages, I would be concerned that some material will disappear over time -- a problem that I have regularly had to deal with in my online classes over the years.

That being said, I am a new member of MERLOT and hopefully I will be able to both use and contriute material to it in the future.