MERLOT for Students is an online reference guide to the open access learning object repository, MERLOT. The target audience is high school students, lower and upper division undergraduate and graduate students, and professionals. This LibGuide provides information about what MERLOT is, the types of resources found within, and a brief description of how to search MERLOT. This guide also offers a list of MERLOT mobile apps and examples of collections in MERLOT in the following subject areas: art, business, education, humanities, math and statistics, science and technology, social sciences, workforce development, and academic support services.
Type of Material:
Reference material
Recommended Uses:
This guide could be used as a reference for students seeking supplemental educational materials.
Technical Requirements:
The resource is viewable in Chrome, IE, and Firefox. The embedded YouTube video on the homepage requires audio speakers.
Identify Major Learning Goals:
This object is intended to familiarize students with the resources available through the MERLOT website.
Target Student Population:
All levels
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:
Users need basic website navigation skills, along with knowledge of terms such as "peer review" and "open access."
Content Quality
Rating:
Strengths:
The site provides a brief overview of Merlot. The page contains a video showing highlights that may be of interest to students. A list of links provide shortcuts to relevant data.
Concerns:
Although the page includes a list of content for students, it could do more to explain how students could benefit form using MERLOT (e.g., examples, case studies, etc.). The description of how to search the MERLOT homepage is short and could be enhanced by adding images and/or screencasting. The tabs for each subject area are lacking information on how to search for materials in these subject areas and the types of collections and resources available for students.
Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
Rating:
Strengths:
The introductory video gives a quick and concise review to the MERLOT site.
Concerns:
The learning objectives are unclear and prerequisite knowledge is not identified. Since this resource is for students they may be unfamiliar with terms such as "peer review" or unsure what "open" means in regards to open textbooks or open journals. The relevance of MERLOT should be discussed so that students understand why this is an important and useful resource to them. The homepage of this guide focuses more on the MERLOT homepage instead of the MERLOTx site which is specifically for students. The searching functionality of both MERLOTx and MERLOT homepage should be demonstrated more completely. Some of the links to other resources from the homepage of this guide, for example the webpage "Quality Learning Materials for Students" is a little confusing and contains information that's not relevant to this topic (i.e. breast cancer, bicycling community). This reference guide does not completely demonstrate all of the useful resources MERLOT has to offer students and how to navigate MERLOT websites. Also the title of this guide in MERLOT is "MERLOT for Students" however, the guide itself is simply title MERLOT, so it's unclear for users who the real audience is from the user perspective.
Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty
Rating:
Strengths:
The organization of the guide is clean, uncluttered, visually appealing, and easy to navigate. An accurate description of what is found in the tabs in the guide is given. A video provides a quick view of site upgrades and an overview of site components.
Concerns:
There is inconsistency in text color and hyperlinks. Some hyperlinks are colored and underlined, while some are just a different color. There is also text that is colored and underlined but not hyperlinked or just colored but not hyperlinked. The inconsistency is very confusing and violates basic web design principles.
The one element of interactivity is a survey box on the homepage. There could be more survey questions about the content within the guide or possibly screencasting videos on searching for content in MERLOT to make it more visually engaging.
Creative Commons:
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