Hello all,

My name is Sara Ferguson. I teach English as a Second Language (ESL) at Grossmont Community College in San Diego, CA. I've been teaching ESL for 20 years in the San Diego area. My students are from all over the world, but primarily right now refugees and immigrants from the Middle East. My classes focus on academic skills in English (reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary, grammar) as well as cultural skills.

I just discovered Merlot last week. It's summer vacation, and in between trips to the beach I am researching ways to make my classes low or zero cost. I plan to develop materials that will make this possible, and I'd like to share my materials as open ed resources. When I received the email invitation to become a peer reviewer, I was interested as a way to become more familiar with the Merlot website and the materials that are available. I see now that I may be able to use some of the materials available through Merlot to supplement those that I develop for my classes. I've attended the first online training for peer review, and feel that this training will give me a richer understanding of ways to review and understand online materials in my field.