Putting Educational Innovations into Practice.

GRAPE Camp Discussions - Spring 2019

Please introduce yourself in this discussion forum. You can share information about your teaching, research interests, institution, and even personal information. This is a great way to build a network of those who are going through MERLOT GRAPE Orientation.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Stacy Greathouse on February 15, 2019 at 9:42am

Ahoy all,

(Quick Note: This is a cross-post from the Winter/Spring 2019 Introductions thread.)

I'm a pirate and OER enthusiast who works as an Instructional Designer and Instructor at Texas Woman's University. Yes, piracy and OERs are the absolute perfect fit.

Literally, I have a PhD in pirates, pedagogy, and children's literature. This means I'm an advocate for equity, accessibility, and social justice in education. One way I do this is with the concentrated use of OERs in all educational situations, including community programming.

My opinion: OERs don't just stop with content. I evaluate and use Open Access edtech, too. It's usually the perfect complement to content OERs.

I'm here to continue to unearth treasure. Help increase access to quality materials not only by contributing to them, but also by partnering with others.

I want to know more about my co-conspirators, including all of you. Contact me if you simply want to swap ideas! I've offered to run a free test of the open resource EdTech Perusall with another OER group. Because...why not? I'm happy to invite all of you, too.

Blue skies,

Stacy

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on February 19, 2019 at 10:37am

Hi, Stacy:

ARGH! I'm happy to hear of your interest in OERs. Please consider cataloging some of your findings in MERLOT.

Permalink Reply by Alexander Lewko on May 20, 2019 at 11:17am

This is Alex Lewko, English Language Instructor at the American University in Cairo. I generally teach writing to graduate students at the early stages of their studies, but I also teach undergraduates as well as other courses here.

I took advantage of some time today to look at the materials available in MERLOT for teaching advanced/academic English. As I said at the first meeting, I already found an e-book that I will use next Spring, but there are more materials that I wrote reviews for:

https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=648987#similarDis... (Cohesion/Organization at the paragraph level)

https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1056102 (Gerunds versus Infinitives)

https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1375211 (E-book: "College ESL Writers")

https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1070739 (English Vocabulary Profile)

I look forward to learning more about the peer review process on Thursday.

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on May 22, 2019 at 6:45pm

Well, thank you Alex. It's great to see you participating. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

Permalink Reply by Dr Pankaj Mehrotra on May 22, 2019 at 10:26am

This is Pankaj Mehrotra, I have taught biology to high school students in India, biology & chemistry courses to bard early college students in China and biology to undergraduate students in Thailand. I have also taught a semester of Fundamentals of Chemistry course to early college students in China and distance education biology & health science courses to undergraduate students for University of the People.

I today looked over the biology materials and found them useful for students as a learning materials for both classroom and laboratory as well as homework.

I have also written a textbook on Fundamentals of Biology and I believe the MERLOT and other resources I am aware of will be good resources for myself and for my students.

I look forward to learning more about MERLOT and connecting with biologist. Any possibility to obtain funding for future collaborative projects would be helpful.

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on May 22, 2019 at 6:46pm

Thank you, Pankaj. It seems as if you have a lot of experience in a variety of areas. Biology is one of our oldest editorial boards, so you should be able to find a lot of resources there.

Permalink Reply by Dr Pankaj Mehrotra on May 23, 2019 at 9:02am

Thank you Cathy for your acknowledgement of my credentials. I would be happy to provide feedback as I share this resources with my students as I teach. Do we have a team of biologist with whom I can connect, if you allow so?

Permalink Reply by Alexander Lewko on May 28, 2019 at 6:16am

I just completed the review of the sexual harassment module. The module itself was quite good in my opinion (as will be reflected in the form I filled out). It also made me think about how I have my writing students complete peer review activities in class. I always tell them (based on research done in applied linguistics) how peer review generally helps the writing skills of the reviewer more than the feedback given helps the one reviewed. That is because it helps the student look at his or her own writing with a "third party" point of view that is important to have.

Likewise, I can see how being peer reviewers will help us create better materials for our own students, whether or not we plan to share them via MERLOT or other means.

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on May 29, 2019 at 8:53am

Great observation, Alex. Feedback is always good to receive. I hope you implement the student peer review in your classes.

Permalink Reply by Dr Pankaj Mehrotra on May 30, 2019 at 6:48am

Dear Cathy, I completed my peer review form and submitted it to you. Apart from practical application to freshman biology, I think this click and learn type material can be be implement for all professional workers who are associated at academic and non-academic institution as a summer training course.

Permalink Reply by Alexander Lewko on June 17, 2019 at 6:45am

Having recently completed GRAPE Camp, it was nice to submit my first “real” peer review today. It was not the type of material I would normally use for my own students due to its own particular focuses. However, it was still a very good learning experience for me to really dig into someone else’s materials and evaluate them based on the review checklist.

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on June 21, 2019 at 2:02pm

Wow, Alex:

How wonderful that you came back to comment on that.Thank you. Do you mind if I use that comment for GRAPE Camp promotion?

Hopefully, next time you'll have something that you might use! :-)