MERLOT Awards: Innovative Use
Innovative Use of MERLOT award is given to an individual, department, or program that demonstrates novel, comprehensive, or creative usage and/or application of MERLOT materials and services. Nominees must provide evidence of an impact on students that can be demonstrated through qualitative or quantitative research or anecdotal evidence. The impact on learning is valued above the impact on student interest. Nominations are due by January 31st for the award that will be presented at the MERLOT International Conference. The MERLOT Editors' Council will determine the winner(s) (maximum of two each year) of the award.
2023
Highlighting the E of stem
This year's award goes to the MERLOT Engineering team for the development of a truly outstanding open educational resources (OER) entitled Highlighting the E of Stem, "a set of open-access exercises, discussion issues, reference documents, videos, and quizzes related to Engineering & Society for STEM teachers."
Our 2023 award winners were recognized at the 2023 Innovate Conference, hosted by the Online Learning Consortium and MERLOT. Dr. Eduardo Montero (Professor Emeritus, Universidad de Burgos) delivered a virtual presentation entitled "Highlighting the E of STEM: An Open Tool for Teachers to Broaden the Knowledge of Engineers as Authors of Well-Known Social Improvements."
Eduardo Montero, Universidad de Burgos (Spain)Natalia Muñoz-Rujas, Universidad de Burgos (Spain)
Ana Pavani, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Jennifer Baptiste, University of Trinidad and Tobago (Trinidad and Tobago)
Fatima E. M'Hamdi Alaoui, Université Abdelmalek Essaadi (Morocco)
2022
The National Skills Development Corporation of India
This year's recipient is The National Skills Development Corporation of India. NSDC aims to promote skill development by providing free and low-cost access to workforce training materials to individuals, education centers, as well as career & technical education centers throughout India. NDCD has adopted over 250 open mini-courses from the SkillsCommons-MERLOT collection in industry sectors that will produce sustainable employment for people, including programs designed to support women preparing for employment in non-traditional industries. Though a half a world away, Preeti Arora, Meghna Puri, and Niharika Bhayana at NSDC have been wonderful collaborators to bring free access to SkillsCommons resources in innovative ways.
2016
Brenda Perea
Brenda Perea has authored and submitted over 700 materials to the Content Builder. Brenda is Instructional Design Project Manager (TAACCT Grant) and Senior Instructional Designer for the Colorado Community College System.
Angela Gunder
Angela Gunder was instrumental in building a prototype for the development of the MERLOT discipline portals. She is a Senior Instructional Designer at The University of Arizona and an Associate Editor for the MERLOT Teacher Education Board.
2015
University System of Georgia
The winner of this award for 2015 was the University System of Georgia. Accepting the award was Jeff Gallant, GALILEO Visiting Officer for OER on behalf of Merryll Penson, Project Director for the University System of Georgia.
2014
Rick Lumadue, Texas A&M-Commerce
Rick has integrated MERLOT GRAPE Camp Peer Review training into the Global eLearning Program for all students to complete and receive certification as a MERLOT Peer Reviewer. Also, student developed web pages using MERLOT Content Builder have provided a great resource to help measure the programmatic student learning outcomes of the MS Global eLearning Program.
In addition, Rick has developed over 200 MERLOT web pages and 20 MERLOT websites. Many of the websites are fully developed online courses that provide free open education resources, including embedded presentations, files, and companion iBooks, which he has co-authored. Rick has also made use of affordable learning solutions materials by assembling relevant, low cost e-Textbooks using McGraw-Hill Create. Rick has collaborated with Cathy Swift to develop an updated version of asynchronous GRAPE Camp.
2013
University of Northern Michigan
The University is recognized for the Active Learning Catalyst initiative. The goal of the Active Learning Catalysts Project is to increase the adoption of technology-enhanced active learning in classes taught by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty. Northern Michigan created a MERLOT "Teaching Common" for the project in order to give the project a higher profile. Accepting the award from Gerry Hanley is Matt Smock, Northern Michigan Project Director for MERLOT and Director of Instructional Design & Technology at Northern Michigan University.
2009
University of Michigan MERLOT Team
The University of Michigan MERLOT Team consisting of the following individuals:
- Nancy Konigsberg Kerner
- Lynne Crandall
- Brenda Gunderson
- Brian Malley
The project "Enhancing Undergraduate Education through the Deployment of Quality Learning Objects" was designed to overcome barriers that inhibit the incorporation of quality Internet learning resources into undergraduate education. It resulted in the deployment of MERLOT learning and teaching resources into four UM introductory courses involving 5000 students at the conclusion of the first year.
William Paquette, Tidewater Community College
Bill has been involved in MERLOT since 2000, first as a MERLOT History Team Member and later as MERLOT History Editor. Over the last eight years he has redesigned ALL the courses he teaches to incorporate MERLOT into classroom, hybrid, or online versions. The 126 assignments he has posted on MERLOT are offered to history faculty and he mentions this in a monthly newsletter sent to VCCS History faculty.
2008
Virginia Community College System MERLOT Team
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. 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.
Moustapha Diack, Southern University
Mous is the guiding force behind the MERLOT Africa Network (MAN). (See: man.merlot.org) MAN is a Network of African and US institutions affiliated with the MERLOT organization and are considered an Outreach of MERLOT to the African Diaspora. The four ultimate goals of the network are to:
- Build a strong networked partnership between African and US educational institutions, including the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the US;
- Raise awareness about the potentials of “Open Solutions - OSs” in supporting eLearning capacity building, and to improving education and training, and promoting economic development in sub-Saharan Africa. OSs support the view that knowledge and the technologies that facilitate its acquisition should be free and open for use, to promote universal access and economic development. OSs include Movements and technologies such as Open Education Resources – OER (Open Education Movement), Open Access to Scholarly Publications - OASP (associated with the Access to Knowledge Movement- A2K) and Open Source Software – OSS;
- Conduct educational research that could lead to best practices and models of teaching, learning and research using OER and OASP; and
- Organize international fora and expert panels for sharing best practices and enabling social networking among our partnering institutions that can lead to collaborative projects.
MAN also organizes, as part of the MERLOT International Conferences (MICs), the “MERLOT Africa Panels” (MAPs) that gather ICT for Development (ICT4D) experts. The MAPs give opportunities to the African institutions and scholars, part of the network, to attend and present at the MICs. This gives African partners a unique opportunity to build partnerships with the US institutions affiliated with MERLOT.