WEB-BASED LEARNING MATERIALS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION:
THE MERLOT REPOSITORY
ABSTRACT
MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching) is a web-based open resource designed primarily for faculty and students in higher education. The resources in MERLOT include over 8,000 learning materials and support materials from a wide variety of disciplines that can be integrated within the context of a larger course. Support resources attached to materials include sample assignments and evaluations of the learning materials, and help faculty members identify learning materials that are high quality and pedagogically appropriate for their courses. Evaluation materials include discipline panel peer reviews and individual user reviews. MERLOT is also a community of people who strive to enrich teaching and learning by connecting systems, consortiums, and institutions of higher education, professional organizations of academic disciplines, and individual members. The number of registered individual members who can add materials, comments, and assignments to the MERLOT collection has currently exceeded 11,000. This paper presents examples of learning materials included in the repository and discusses some of the issues in the use of web-based materials in teaching in higher education.