Cathy Swift Interview Notes - September 21, 2009: Difference between revisions
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* Sort materials by quality rating | * Sort materials by quality rating | ||
* Rely on partners to promote materials | * Rely on partners to promote materials | ||
=== Sustainability and Partnerships=== | === Sustainability and Partnerships=== | ||
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* Licensing content scheme | * Licensing content scheme | ||
* "Sharing" is the mindset | * "Sharing" is the mindset | ||
=== Site Statistics === | |||
* http://www.merlot.com - statistics right on site | |||
* Unsure about usage stats, no sign in required | |||
* ''January - June 2009'' | |||
** 150,000 visits per month | |||
** Average person spent 6 minutes on the site | |||
** 1.7 million+ visits per year | |||
= Navigation = | = Navigation = |
Latest revision as of 12:35, 22 October 2009
Conducted with Erhardt Graeff and Carolina Rossini via telephone on September 21, 2009, concerning MERLOT's work on indexing and reviewing OER.
Interviewee
- Cathy Swift
- Director of Academic Partner Services, MERLOT
- Email: cswift [at] calstate [dot] edu
Notes
Questions about Self-Image
Relative to...
- Textbook Adoption at States / Curriculum
- OER Projects
- Textbook Publishing Industry
How does MERLOT see Itself in this Space?
- Free resource
- No cost to including one's own materials
- Most of their materials are teaching resources
- Only a few textbooks
- ROLE: Catalog Materials
- Educators can enter specific topics to search for on MERLOT
- All materials pertain to education not just a Google search
- They concentrate on higher education but also have K-12
University Affiliation
- California State University system (founding arrangement)
- K-20 education (community college foci)
- Minnesota Schools and Colleges and Universities (pay a partnership fee)
- Tennessee Board of Regents
- 5 person management team work for Cal State
- Cathy works for Cal State full-time on MERLOT
Peer-Review System
- Peer-reviewers have to be active teachers (real world deployment of the teaching materials)
- Peer-review metrics: Quality, Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool, Ease of Use
- No funding to create incentive system for peer-reviewers
- People can apply to be a peer-reviewer
- Offer training to new peer-reviewer
- Honor-based system
- Five or more reviews per year, people get listed as a member of a topical Editorial Board
- Also complimentary registration at MERLOT's
- TENURE INCENTIVE: Write letters for peer-reviewers as a tenure-document
- Don't use any published standards outside their own (PROBLEM?)
- Each year they give a “Classics” award for outstanding material in each topic area
- Sort materials by quality rating
- Rely on partners to promote materials
Sustainability and Partnerships
- Applied for Grant w/ Connexions
- Informal relationships with NSDL
- Agreement to do a federated search of their material
- Informal relationships with NSDL
- Doing professional development atop training for MERLOT
- Partnership system
- Pay for 25,000 dollars a year (membership)
- contribute several people
- Licensing content scheme
- "Sharing" is the mindset
Site Statistics
- http://www.merlot.com - statistics right on site
- Unsure about usage stats, no sign in required
- January - June 2009
- 150,000 visits per month
- Average person spent 6 minutes on the site
- 1.7 million+ visits per year
Back to Contacts for EM
Back to Educational Materials