MERLOT Award Winners - 2008

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 winners of the 2008 awards were honored with a ceremony at the 2008 MERLOT International Conference, held August 7-10th in Minneapolis, MN. 

Biology

Connecting Concepts: Natural Selection 3: Microevolution: Evolution in a Population
Bob Jeanne and Jan Cheetham - University of Wisconsin
Students play the role of predators on moths on a tree trunk. Then, they play the role of biologist, analyzing the changing gene frequencies of the moth population and determining if the population evolved over three generations. Students will: 1) collect data by “eating” moths; 2) calculate gene frequencies for each phenotype over three generations; 3) interpret graphs of data their data to determine if microevolution occurred; and 4) explain how selection acts on populations.  View the Connecting Concepts - Biology 2008 Award Winner video

Business

E Commerce Business Ethics Case
Terry Morris , Harper College
Students explore ethical decision making and current issues in e-commerce as they follow the developments of E-Kin -- a company started by graduate students. As E-Kin grows and delves into the world of e-commerce, the founders and executives encounter some tough decision making. The case study is presented in a multimedia format, with Flash movies which describe the company background, scenarios of busines ethics issues, and an overview of ethical decision-making. The case studies were written by graduate students of Dr. Beverly Kracher at Creighton University. Permission was given to the author to adapt the materials to a multimedia format, publish to the Web, and submit to Merlot. The case study consists of four scenarios -- each with a Flash movie scenario, company employee bios, and case questions. Additional resources include a page of e-commerce links and an e-commerce newsfeed.

Chemistry

3DMolSym
Michael Sigalas and Nickolas Charistos - Aristotle University of Thessaloniki - Greece
3DMolSym is a molecular visualization educational program designed to visualize the symmetry elements of molecules and to animate the corresponding symmetry operations in an interactive 3D environment. It is aimed to help chemistry students conceive the symmetry properties of the molecular structure. 3DMolSym includes a searchable database with symmetry and geometry data of 48 organic and inorganic molecules, corresponding to all point groups of chemical interest.  View the 3DMolSym- Chemistry 2008 Award Winner video

Faculty Development

The Common Craft Show: Sense Making for the Masses
Sachi and Lee LeFever, Common Craft
The Common Craft Show is a series of short explanatory videos on current topics of interest related to instructional technology. Titles include: Blogs in Plain English, Wikis in Plain English, Social Networking in Plain English, Social Bookmarking in Plain English, Online Photo Sharing in Plain English, and RSS in Plain English.

Health Sciences

Outbreak at Watersedge
Debra Olson and Amy Scheller - University of Minnesota
The site is an interactive game.The game shows a variety of people involved in halting an outbreak and only the intern can save them! The players receive case files, maps, visit locations, take samples and draw conclusions. Players not only try to solve the case, but learn about public health careers.A teachers guide and related links are included.  View Outbreak at Watersedge - Health Sciences 2008 Award Winner video

History

Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History
Peter Gossage - University of Usherbrooke – Canada
This site includes a collection of nine historical mysteries which draw students into Canadian history, critical thinking and archival research through the enticement of solving historical cold crimes. Each of the mystery archives includes an average of 100,000 words in English (and in French), as well as up to several hundred images plus maps. Some of the mystery websites also include 3-D recreations, videos and oral history interviews. Site users can look at the collections of archival materials and analyze the evidence provided. Students are encouraged to come up with their own interpretations of primary documents. Educators have access to a Teachers' Guide and experts’ interpretations for each of the mysteries.   View Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History - History 2008 Award Winner video

Mathematics

Demos with Positive Impact
David Hill - Temple University, Lila Roberts - Georgia College and State University
Demos with Positive Impact is a collection of quick classroom demos that enhance the learning of mathematics content through animations, experiments etc. Each demo comes with stated objective, prerequisites, instructor notes and platform info, plus the level of the demo and credits. This setup appears conducive to quick inclusion into a class.  View the Demos with Positive Impact - Mathematics 2008 Award Winner video

Music

The Emerson String Quartet: The Bartok Quartets
Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall
Explore the six string quartets of Bela Bartók through the vision of the Emerson String Quartet in this amalgamation of video footage, written commentary, and animated score. Much of the video was taken during a workshop given by the Emerson members in 2003 and has been supplemented with additional video of Emerson members and others speaking about the quartets. This site is intended for performers who are preparing these pieces as well as listeners and concertgoers who wish to learn more about the Bartók quartets and about the many musical decisions that must be made in order to perform these demanding works.

Physics

Math and Physics Applets
Paul Falstad
This site provides a large selection of physics and math simulations. There is also fairly comprehensive explanatory information about the science and computation behind the applets. The applets are fairly small, and load quickly (even on dial-up), but are very broad in their coverage of topics. These applets are useful for illustrating physical systems and behavior that can not, in general, observed by experiments.

Teacher Education

Pageflakes - Teachers Edition
Dan Cohen
Page Flakes - Teacher Edition is a site that allows academics to create personal pages that are hosted on the site without cost. Pageflakes is your personalized homepage on the Web. Your favorite news, weather, sports, entertainment, photos, videos, music, email and much more – all on one page that you can access from anywhere. What's more, you can collaborate on your page with your friends, or publish it to the entire world.

World Languages

Rutgers Multimedia Chinese Teaching System
Ching-I Tu and Holly Tyson - Rutgers University
Computer-based multimedia curriculum to supplement first, second, third, and fourth year language instruction at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.  View the Rutgers Multimedia Chinese Teaching System - 2008 the World LanguagesAward Winner video.