Members of MERLOT are part of a variety of communities that are vital to MERLOT's 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. MERLOT Partners are also critical of the growth of the MERLOT community.
These communities are categorized as:
MERLOT encourages interaction among its Members by providing social networking services and functions that enable dialogue among Members. For example, MERLOT Voices is MERLOT's community networking site, that >enables Members to collaborate with all MERLOT Members who are interested in joining particular communities related to the missions of MERLOT Members can join, can others to join, to participate in community conversations, customize their own Voices community webpage, and even add videos related to online learning and teaching.
MERLOT also provides community discussion forums for every material in the collection. Members may provide comments on any material they discover in the collection, and initiate a discussion among Members about that material. See also Material Detail View.
A strong community is an informed community. MERLOT provides a variety of services to keep Members up to date on matters relevant to the membership. These include: