Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dan Stasko on April 7, 2010 at 7:20pm

Greetings everyone. Thanks for the introduction to MERLOT and a tour of the Vineyard this afternoon Cathy.

I am a professor at the University of Southern Maine and I am interested in online/blended class strategies for the sciences. I teach chemistry and am toying with the idea of a blended class. The tools and learning materials available are a nice step in the right direction and I hope to utilize some of them. One issue I have is the serious time commitment involved in material preparation and the lack of easy ways of representing chemical and mathematics notation short of extensive use of tools like mathtype. What would take 10 sec on the board with a piece of chalk becomes an hour long affair (I exaggerate, but not by much).

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on April 8, 2010 at 8:40am

Welcome, Dan. One thing about blended learning is that other people have created many of the materials you can use in your classes, which makes organizing them so much easier. Why re-invent the wheel? There are a lot of great resources that people have already created.

Permalink Reply by Ken Conder on April 14, 2010 at 12:44pm

Hello all,
I am a professor of Criminal Justice at Shoreline Community College. Shoreline is just north of Seattle. I have used Merlot since I started teaching 4 years ago. I learned about it from a Biology professor here on campus. Getting involved in the Peer Review process will force me to become more familiar with distance learning technology.

Permalink Reply by Sidyetta on April 23, 2010 at 6:09pm

Greetings,
My name is Sidyetta Brown-Thomas and I am new to the Merlot site. I recently signed on because I am enrolled in an online course delivery and support training course at my university. I was pleased to have the opportunity to participate in a webinar hosted by Dr. Cathy Swift, on April 18, 2010. I have never taught an online class before, but I am eager to gain as much knowledge as I can. So, I guess I can begin by asking, "What is Grape Camp?"

Permalink Reply by Cathy Swift on April 24, 2010 at 5:21pm

Hi, Sidyetta:
I'm glad you were able to attend the webinar. GRAPE Camp stands for "Getting Reviewers Accustomed to the Process of Evaluation." It is an online training program in which people learn how to do MERLOT Peer Reviewers. You can view a video of several reviewers at the following site (only 3 minutes long),: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzMUqm5Sqm4

Rather than take a lot of space here to talk about reviewing, please go to the following page:
http://taste.merlot.org/peerreviewer.html
Here you will learn what the requirements are to be a Peer Reviewer, and also an opportunity to sign up for the June GRAPE camp, which can be done during the time posted, or asynchronously. And then if you have any further questions, please let me know.