Faculty Development

Faculty development is a critical strategic initiative for MERLOT and its Partners. As a benefit of membership, the MERLOT Management Team works with faculty and faculty development personnel of its Partners to provide training and professional development in the use of MERLOT and how to integrate technology into teaching and learning.

Available to all users of MERLOT is the collection of online resources found in the Faculty Development Community. This community represents a cross-disciplinary community whose primary goal is to support faculty in higher education by increasing their knowledge, productivity, and professional effectiveness in teaching with technology. The community includes instructors, instructional designers, faculty development officers and technology support providers. This collection contains resources of best practices, instructional support ideas, resources and materials that advance the pedagogical understanding of teaching with technology, whether in the classroom, online or in blended models.

Faculty Development services and training for MERLOT Partners include:

• Annual faculty development (train-the-trainer) workshop.
• Consultation services.
• Participation in regional and/or individual campus workshops.
• MERLOT International conference session devoted to faculty development.
• Online course for faculty developers.

Future programs and services include expanded development of online courses on the use of MERLOT, development of new workshops, courses, and online resources to meet the changing needs of faculty, and the development of an online workspace for MERLOT Partner faculty development personnel to share their strategies, curriculum and conduct problem solving discussions.

Personal Collections

Personal Collections help personalize the MERLOT collection for Members.  A Personal Collection is a compilation of MERLOT modules that MERLOT Members can access easily to use for specific purposes, classes or topics.  Owners of Personal Collections can annotate each collection to more easily explain the purpose of it.

15% Solution

A goal of MERLOT is to increase the number of faculty who successfully use academic technology in higher education.  Our target is to achieve a “15% solution” where 150,000 faculty of the 1 million faculty members in North America are certified as having demonstrated skills in academic technology within 5 years.

Jumpstart your CV

MERLOT Members are asked to update their Profiles by selecting the “My Profile” on the upper tab.  Members are able to “jumpstart” their curriculum vitas (resumes) by exporting information from the Member Profile to a rich text format.  That produces a Word document with the relevant information.

Support Materials

The MERLOT Community has developed an extensive set of faculty development support materials that are available for use by MERLOT Partners. These materials can be used by faculty development staff to teach courses about electronic learning. For more information on becoming a partner, visit our Partner Support section.

If you have any questions, contact the MERLOT Webmaster at webmaster@merlot.org