Cathy Swift Interview Notes - September 21, 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
• 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

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