MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments.
You are welcome to browse the collection or search for materials. Members may add materials, comments and assignments to MERLOT. Membership is free.
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What will I see when I look at a learning material?
What can I do with the materials I find in MERLOT?
Who contributes the materials to MERLOT?
Who oversees and maintains MERLOT?
The MERLOT Community
MERLOT is also a community of people who are involved in education. Community members help MERLOT grow by contributing materials and adding assignments and comments. Many community members make their professional information available in MERLOT’s member directory.
View the PowerPoint overview of MERLOT
MERLOT stands for the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching and is:
- A continually growing catalog of online learning materials, peer reviews, learning assignments, and user comments, organized by discipline into specific discipline communities and created to help faculty enhance their instruction, that anyone can use for free.
- An international consortium of partners and affiliates who cooperate to continually create, expand, and refine MERLOT in order to transform and improve higher education.
- A community of individual members, from academia, business, and professional organizations, who strive to share and enrich their teaching and learning experiences and who contribute learning resources and support materials such as comments, evaluations, assignments, and personal collections. Contributing materials and resources is free to MERLOT members.
- A technology initiative with its own infrastructure and dynamically designed set of technology tools and software development policies created to help faculty integrate high quality online instructional technology resources into their courses effectively, easily, and enjoyably.
MERLOT’s strategic goal is to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by increasing the quantity and quality of peer reviewed online learning materials that can be easily incorporated into faculty designed courses.
MERLOT’s vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.
About the Learning Materials:
The materials in MERLOT are categorized as follows:
- Simulation: Approximates a real or imaginary experience where users’ actions affect their outcomes. Users determine and input initial conditions that generate output that is different from and changed by the initial conditions.
- Animation: Allows users to view the dynamic and visual representation of concepts, models, processes, and/or phenomena in space or time. Users can control their pace and movement through the material, but they cannot determine and/or influence the initial conditions or their outcomes/results.
- Tutorial: Users navigate through electronic workbooks designed to meet stated learning objectives, structured to impart specific concepts or skills, and organized sequentially to integrate conceptual presentation, demonstration, practice, and testing.
- Drill and Practice: Requires users to respond repeatedly to questions or stimuli presented in a variety of sequences. Users practice on their own, at their own pace, to develop their ability to reliably perform and demonstrate the target knowledge and skills.
- Quiz/Test: Any assessment device intended to serve as a test or quiz.
- Lecture/Presentation: Any material intended for use in support of in-class lectures/presentations. Lecture notes, audio visual materials, and presentation graphics such as PowerPoint slide shows that do not stand alone are examples.
- Case Study: Illustrates a concept or problem by using an example that can be explored in depth.
- Collection: Any collection of learning materials such as web sites or subject specific applets.
- Reference Material: Material with no specific instructional objectives and similar to that found in the reference area of a library. Subject specific directories to other sites, texts, or general information are examples.
The learning materials in MERLOT are organized into discipline "communities".
