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MERLOT Communities
Members of MERLOT are part of a variety of communities that are vital to its success. Community members help grow the MERLOT collection by contributing materials and adding assignments and comments. Additionally, they introduce others in the discipline to MERLOT by presenting at conferences, authoring articles about MERLOT, and encouraging others to use and contribute to MERLOT.
Academic Discipline Communities
MERLOT focuses its efforts in a number of specific academic disciplinary communities. These are subsets of the MERLOT collection that are administered by Editorial Boards. Users can find peer reviewed materials in each of these academic communities
WorkForce Development Initiative
Beginning in 2001, the MERLOT community has recognized that there is a significant and growing need for many institutions of higher education to develop and deliver high quality academic programs that serve regional and national workforce development demands. Workforce development programs that cover such areas as computer operations and electronics, trades, allied health, protective services, automotive, and hospitality are increasingly important for community colleges and extended education programs to fulfill their missions and receive state funding.
MERLOT has committed to:
- Build discipline-specific workforce development communities of content providers, collection managers, and content users through the MERLOT-managed collaboration of its higher education partners, institutional/non-profit organizational partners, and corporate partners.
- Leverage its technologies and existing collection to provide an online community environment to support and sustain the workforce development community’s digital library and support services.
MERLOT has planned to develop Workforce Development Communities in the following areas:
- Fire Safety
- Allied Health
- Information Technology
- Employability Skills
Task Forces
MERLOT has a number of developing communities called task forces. A Task Force is a community that wants to become an Editorial Board. Their responsibilities are to establish a Taxonomy for the discipline and then to contribute Learning Materials, Member Comments, and Assignments. Current Task Forces include:
Institutional Teaching Commons for MERLOT Partners
In collaboration with the MERLOT Project Directors and Editors, MERLOT has developed a service to enable MERLOT Partners to easily, effectively, and inexpensively customize and sustain the infusion of MERLOT services into their institution. MERLOT’s Institutional Teaching Commons services is a partner-only benefit and will enable the MERLOT Project Directors to bring greater value back to their own institutions and become more successful stewards of MERLOT services. The MERLOT partner has the major responsibility of inviting and supporting the appropriate people to develop and sustain the work and services of the Teaching Commons. Faculty leadership is critical for the success of these Teaching Commons.
With the MERLOT Teaching Commons, a Learning Center Commons for tutors and staff to learn about MERLOT and share strategies for using MERLOT to support development of student skills can be created. MERLOT can also be a bridge between faculty and students. The MERLOT Teaching Commons will enable intercampus collaboration that will result in more cost effective delivery of campus academic programs. The MERLOT Teaching Commons will provide a cost-effective means to provide faculty a discipline-based, institutionally contextualized professional development program for new faculty. Many times, faculty members do not have colleagues in similar content areas and the Teaching Commons provides the opportunities for isolated faculty to connect with colleagues with common interests. For more information about using the Teaching Commons service, email webmaster@merlot.org
Special Interest Communities
MERLOT has collections of materials and members that share a common interest in support of online learning that typically cut across many disciplines. An example of this type of community is CATS, the Community of Academic Technology Staff:
For more information on any of the communities listed here, please contact Cathy Swift at cswift@calstate.edu.
revised 4/29/07 bbs
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