Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on November 12, 2009 at 9:39am

I exchanged the following email with one of the GRAPE Camp participants and decided to share this with you in case you had similar questions.

I had a question regarding something you said during the first hour of GRAPE training, and a couple follow up questions.
During your introduction, and one of the main reasons we are doing the training is to make peer reviewed evaluations of the learning tool. Since these are peer reviewed activities, it would lead one to believe that once reviewed, and activity could be considered “published”. If that is the case, how would someone “cite” the learning tool?
For example, let’s say that I found a tool that would be helpful in a course I taught and set up a learning experiment. Some students had access to the electronic material, while others didn’t. If I published the results, I would of course want to cite the tool that I used, and whoever developed the tool should get credit for designing the tool and be referenced. [Swift, Cathy] Our suggestion is that you cite it in electronic format style. You should have the Author’s Name (which is available on the Material Detail. Let’s say that you used a material on MERLOT called “DNA from the Beginning.” On the Material Detail, http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=90081 , you can see that Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is the Author. You go to the actual site and use that as your reference also. The citation would appear as:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. (2002). Dna from the beginning. Retrieved from http://www.dnaftb.org (this is APA Style)Another way to look at this is if someone did create a learning tool that was reviewed, I would think this would count as a “publication”. The tool is similar to a lab experience and many labs are published in say the “Journal of Chemical Education.”[Swift, Cathy] Yes, but that would be up to the Author to count it as a publication. We have a number of Authors who use the Peer Review citation also: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewCompositeReview.htm?id=144504The second major question relates to content areas. As I mentioned in my introduction I teach chemistry, but I am a medicinal chemist and teach at a pharmacy school. I noticed that there wasn’t a pharmacy or medicine area. I assume that this is quite possibly a subsection of biology, but there are areas of interest that would not fit necessarily in biology. One reason I ask is that I have a student who made an animation regarding drug action. It doesn’t really fit in biology or chemistry per se. I see that you are working to expand the disciplines such as agriculture. I would be interested in helping to develop an editorial board if you think there would be interest.[Swift, Cathy] We do have a category within Health Sciences called Pharmacy, with only 20 materials in it: http://www.merlot.org/merlot/materials.htm?category=2708&&;. That would be a possibility for the drug action animation. Jeanne Sewell, the Editor of Health Sciences would certainly welcome your participation.One last thing that I noticed is that while some of the tools are very good, they seem limited. I like how in the peer review policies focus is on the learning objectives and transferability to other courses. I looked at a few chemistry ones yesterday, but some seem only to be video demonstrations of what is done in lab. These are good for students to see what is to be done, but don’t have a learning goal necessarily in and of themselves. Is this being too harsh? I am holding off on writing comments until I get some guidance on how critical I should be. [Swift, Cathy] As I hope I mentioned during GRAPE Camp, we have a variety of different types of materials in MERLOT. Many of them do not have learning objectives attached, which could be a criticism of the item, i.e. having specific learning objectives identified would certainly strengthen the material. Our definition of the resources on MERLOT is that we include any resources that “help a student learn.” It may just be an animation, but it could, with the faculty member’s explanation, help a student learn. But it certainly would not be inappropriate to criticize it for that reason.Thanks for your time,[Swift, Cathy] I hope I answered sufficiently. Also, would you mind if I copied your email and my response and put it in Voices so that I can share it with the others who are also learning?

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on November 15, 2009 at 8:12am

Here is another question that was asked by one of the GRAPE Campers in email, so I decided to share it with everyone: Regarding our homework assignment, I did not understand this statement on the first page of the evaluation policy attachment:
“2. Content is difficult to teach and learn” ( Policies regarding peer review, page 1, under the heading “quality”). Does this mean if the content is not easy to teach and learn it is a negative when reviewing during the peer review process? When we refer to the content here, it is the content in general in the discipline. For example, in all fields there are some things that the student has a hard time grasping. For example, let’s say it is a mathematical concept that students just don’t “get” easily. If the material you are reviewing (in math) makes the student understand it better, than that is a reason for rating that material more highly, as instructors have a hard time getting it across. Does that make sense?