From the Education Metadata Meetup on 7/30/14 in Washington, DC - Barbra Bard Sperling gives an overview of MERLOT, a metadata registry for open educational resources.

1. Barbra Bied Sperling,
Manager of Technical Development
California State University, Office of the Chancellor
MERLOT: An Open Education
Resource Tool for Learning and
Online Teaching

2. www.merlot.org

3. MERLOT
Premiere online international community of
faculty, staff, and student
(Users, Members, and Consortium Partners)
from around the world who share their pedagogy
and repository-based
Learning Objects, Open Courses, Open Access
Textbooks, and Open Access Journal articles

4. www.merlot.org
MERLOT II is managed by the MERLOT Community

5. What Is Unique about the MERLOT Collection?
 A referatory of metadata of over 46,000 OER’s for
teaching and learning submitted by educators.
 Peer-Review methodologies set us apart in the literature
(vs i.e. Google search of Geometry)
 Across Disciplines; World-wide, Multi-language
 All levels of Education
 We have been around for 17 years (longer than most)
with worldwide membership and usage, including
International Partners.
 We are partnering with QM (Quality Matters) to develop
focused rubrics and methodologies for online courses and
modules, specifically.

6. Sample of MERLOT resource metada
• Title
• URL (including mirror/display image)
• Description
• Material type (18+)
• Primary Audience
• Language
• Keywords
• Subject Categories (disciplines)
• Author Information
• Technical Format
• Technical Requirements
• Mobile platforms
• Creative Commons
• Cost
• Accessiblity

7. LRMI: MERLOT and Curation of
resource metada
• LRMI tags added to MERLOT material detail
page to make our content more discoverable
• Members add:
• Ratings
• Comments and Discussions
• Personal Collections
• Editorial Boards
• Peer Review Process

8. One of our 46,000+
materials. The
Quality Box: That’s
how we get OERs
curated - by our
Editors/peer
reviewers and our
members. We
consider personal
collections an good
indicator of quality.

10. MERLOT is so much more…
 MERLOTx – www.merlotx.org - Student Centered/Faculty Usable online
help
 Affordable Learning Solutions
 Content Builder - MERLOT JOLT (Journal of Online Learning and
Teaching). A quick and easy way to create [hosted] learning materials as
web pages and web sites that you can use for instructional purposes
 MERLOT API’s to integrate LMS’s and other applications
 Mobile Search Apps (iOS, Android, Blackberry)
 MERLOT Discipline Communities and Partner Communities for
collaboration
 MERLOT Voices (community discussions)
• MERLOT Blog (blog.merlot.org)
• Discussions for every material
• MERLOT YouTube Education Channel
• MERLOT Grapevine Newsletter
• Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

11. Contact Information
Barbra Bied Sperling
Manager of Technical Development, MERLOT
www.merlot.org
bsperling@calstate.edu
562.951.8488