This year�s winner is:

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                 Virginia Community College System MERLOT Team - Laura Franklin, William Paquette,� Marty Zahn, Idana Hamilton

 

Through the faculty development course, MERLOT 101 Online, authored by Dr. Laura Franklin and delivered from Northern Virginia Community College, the VCCS team has provided professional development to hundreds of VCCS faculty across the Commonwealth for several years. Laura Franklin, who delivers the course through Blackboard, is the lead while the other members of the VCCS MERLOT Team participate in the course as guest expert users.

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MERLOT 101 is a unique, three week online course that assists faculty in building a collection of online learning materials relevant to their disciplines while engaging them in actively using and contributing to MERLOT. During the course of the class, it becomes a learning community for the faculty who participate. The VCCS MERLOT team all come in virtually and help the participants become proficient MERLOT users online. In some cases, the team members also get in their vehicles and drive to colleges to give face to face assistance on the course contents:

                 Familiarization

                 Creating a MERLOT Profile

                 Search and Browse Techniques

                 Making Personal Collections in MERLOT

                 Learning Assignments

 

The fact that all of these individuals make themselves available to discuss MERLOT proves the course�s success in becoming a true interactive learning community. More

importantly, MERLOT 101 provides the kind of deep learning that allows participants to really integrate MERLOT in their teaching.

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Laura Franklin accepts the MERLOT award

MERLOT (http://www.merlot.org) is an international initiative enabling faculty to integrate technology into higher education.� It is an online community of faculty and institutions collaborating to increase the quantity of high quality web-based, interactive teaching and learning materials. The MERLOT website is a free �gateway� for these web-based materials.� Finding web-based materials to incorporate into one�s course is just the first step for faculty; faculty must also decide if the materials are correct, effective teaching-learning tools, and easy to use.� A continually growing collection of high quality online teaching and learning materials is realized through MERLOT�s peer review process.� MERLOT conducts the peer review of online materials and ensures reliable and valid reviews through the selection and training of the editorial board members as well as on-going support for the review process. The MERLOT Community offers additional services to both instructors and students that help improve the learning process.

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