MERLOT Award Winners - 2007

The MERLOT Awards program recognizes and promotes outstanding online resources designed to enhance teaching and learning and to honor the authors and developers of these resources for their contributions to the academic community.

Each of the MERLOT Editorial Boards selects an outstanding resource from its discipline to receive the MERLOT Classics award. The Editors’ Council, composed of the editors of the Editorial Boards, further reviews the Classics awardees and selects among them the resource or resources they consider to be exemplary models for all disciplines. These resources receive the highest award of honor, the MERLOT Editors’ Choice award.  The winners of the 2007 Editors’ Choice award and the 2007 Classics award were honored with a ceremony at the 2007 MERLOT International Conference, held August 7-10th in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

Biology - Classic

e-Skeletons
John W. Kappelman, Jr., University of Texas Austin
This interactive site allows participants to learn about skeletal anatomy by viewing the bones of a human, chimpanzee, and baboon. Users select a bone from the list of four bone types on the skeletal image, and launch the bone viewer. A detailed look at each bone from six viewing angle options is provided along with the option to select another bone or make a comparison with another species (chimpanzee or baboon). The Comparative Anatomy section enables users to make direct comparisons of bones. The material is appropriate for science teacher education as it illustrates how careful observation leads one to wonder about the dizzying beauty of a planet that works by bringing us one different creature after another.

Business - Classic

Guide to Financial Statements
Arthur Downing, Baruch College
A 45-minute in-depth interactive tutorial that explains 3 financial statements: Income Statements, Cash Flow Statements and Balance Statements. It begins with an introduction to the financial statement and then explains income statements, balance sheets and cash flow statements. The tutorial also provides information on ethics in accounting. Other topics included in the tutorial are foreign exchange accounting and business ethics accounting.

Chemistry - Editors'

VR Molecules
Mark Couture, Télé-université
VR Molecules is an online simulation presenting dynamically and interactively the vibration and rotation modes for 24 molecules (out of a more extensive list) containing up to twelve atoms. It allows the user to create and save on one's hard disk documents containing, much in the same way as a Power Point presentations, up to 10 "pages", each featuring one or two molecules with specific parameters (viewpoint, active modes, etc.).
VR Molecules Pro can also be used to make one's presentations available through the Internet. One can also associate sound and text explanations to each page of an online presentation, thus creating a full-fledged multimedia document.   To view a video of the award winning author, go to View VR Molecules - Chemistry Award Winner 2007 video .

Faculty Development - Classic

Access eLearning
GRADE Project, Georgia Tech University
This learning material is a free, online ten-module tutorial that offers information, instructional techniques, and practice labs on how to make the most common needs in distance education accessible for individuals with disabilities, and enhance the usability of online materials for all students.  The Faculty Development Editorial Board believes this site is outstanding because it is relevant to instructors in all disciplines as well as those in the corporate world.

Health Sciences - Classic

Assessing Blood Pressure
Scott Barker, Danny Mistry, & Andrew Winterstein , Cal State University, Chico; University of Wisconsin
The Raid on Deerfield in 1704 is an interactive assessment which helps develop student skills of analysis and critical thinking.  The History Editorial Board selected this site because the content is excellent with cultural information on background, scenic descriptions, food-ways, clothing, entertainment and leisure, society, and government for the French and English in North America as well as several Indian tribes.

History - Classic

Raid on Deerfield
Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Memorial Hall Museum
The Raid on Deerfield in 1704 is an interactive assessment which helps develop student skills of analysis and critical thinking.  The History Editorial Board selected this site because the content is excellent with cultural information on background, scenic descriptions, food-ways, clothing, entertainment and leisure, society, and government for the French and English in North America as well as several Indian tribes.

Information Technology - Classic

Camtasia Tutorial
Michael Fimian, Kaplan University
This learning material is a step-by-step tutorial for learning how to use Camtasia.  The material is animated and the audio provides clear, easy instructions on how to use Camtasia.  The Information Technology Editorial Board selected this site because of the ease of use, the ability to select certain portions of the tutorial and for the outstanding graphics provided.

Mathematics - Classic

Graph Theory Lessons
Christopher Mawata, University of Tennessee - Chattanooga
Software that can draw, edit and manipulate simple graphs, examine properties of the graphs, and demonstrate them using computer animation. It can display information about a graph like the number of vertices and their degrees, the adjacency matrix, the number of components, and articulation points. It can find complements of graphs, line graphs, find the chromatic number of a graph, check if a graph is bipartite, and check if two graphs are isomorphic or if one graph is a sub graph of another and find the dual graph of a planar graph in many cases. It also demonstrates Euler and Hamilton circuits, searches, and algorithms for finding minimum spanning trees. This project is targeted at undergraduate beginning classes in Graph Theory.. It is assumed that the students have some measure of mathematical sophistication; for instance that they are able to write an induction proof etc. The subject matter addressed are topics typically found in undergraduate graph theory and discrete structures classes. These topics are central to graph theory and essential to further learning in the area.

Music - Classic

Music Theory and History Outline
Brian Blood, Dolmetsch Musical Instruments
The theory of music is a description of the way we think about, or believe we should think about, music and about its notation, structure and performance. You do not need to know anything about music theory to enjoy listening to music but it is essential should you decide to take a more practical interest in the subject, for example, by learning to play a musical instrument, for, as Leonardo da Vinci, himself a fine performer on the lyra da braccio, said about painting, "You must not only believe what you see, you must also understand what you see", so it is with music: to listen properly, we must understand what we hear. In additional to the extensive introduction to music theory, they have prepared a series of essays on music history. They have highlighted topics that are easily isolated within a narrow time period and have offered introductory remarks that may help prepare those seeking deeper insight from more substantial published works. The history resource will be extended but even then it is not designed to give any sense of progress which, they believe, is an artifical way of looking at any history, and particularly the history of music.

Physics - Editors'

MIT Physics 8.02: Faraday’s Law
John Belcher, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This collection of 16 animations and simulations covers the topic of Faraday's law and induction. They illustrate the currents and fields induced by moving magnets and changing magnetic fields. The Physics Editorial Board selected this learning material because it moves the class beyond the simple, analytically solvable problems usually covered in introductory classes.

Statistics - Classic

Rice Virtual Lab Sampling Distribution
David Lane, Rice University
Rice Virtual Lab contains simulations and demonstrations for both the student and instructor that give a visual demonstration of the concept and further explain the concept. Practice exercises are provided for each of the statistical concepts in the package along with a section of Cases that provide independent practice for the student to develop "ownership" of the information.  The Statistics Editorial Board selected this material as it is a very useful teaching tool and very resourceful in its applications.  To view a video of the award winning author, go to View Rice Virtual Lab - Statistics Award Winner 2007 video

Teacher Education - Classic

Quest Garden
Bernie Dodge, San Diego State University
Many instructors have found a WebQuest to be a successful way to engage student with an inquiry-oriented learning activity, but most instructors are limited to using WebQuests created by others because of a lack of web authoring skills.  Bernie Dodge has provided a solution to this problem by introducing Quest Garden, a low-threshold application for and hosting WebQuests. The Teacher Education Editorial Board selected this learning material because it is a true interactive learning object that allows instructors to enter their own content into a template and publish a finished WebQuest that can be used in the classroom.

World Languages - Classic

Lingu@net Europa
Lingu@net, National Centre for Languages
Lingu@net Europa is a multilingual, on-line resource centre for foreign language learning.  It provides information about, and links to good on-line resources from around the world relating to the learning and teaching of any modern foreign language.  Lingu@net Europa is based on the idea that if you are learning or teaching a language you could be interested in relevant resources in any language you understand - not only the resources you can find by searching in your mother tongue.  Lingu@net Europa gives multilingual access to over 3,500 catalogued on-line resources, many of them specifically for learners. It also offers support for adult learners on how to learn a language, how to assess your level and how to communicate with other learners on-line. These sections have been developed by language learning specialists from throughout Europe. You can access the whole site in: Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.