MERLOT Awards: Service to MERLOT - 2007 Volunteer Awards

The Volunteer of the Year Award honors the hard work and generous donation of our members’ time, energy and enthusiasm that they direct towards the growth and development of MERLOT. These individuals do not receive any support from our partners for completing these responsibilities.  We really rely on our Peer Reviewers to help expand the MERLOT collection and perform the Peer Review process.  These individuals are nominated by the Editorial Boards and then selected by our Project Directors.  This year 2 MERLOT members were awarded the Volunteer Award.

As Associate Editor of Marketing, Michelle Kunz (Morehead State University)  is responsible for triaging all of the Marketing collection (which currently numbers 477 Learning Materials).  She is responsible for recruiting and supervising all Marketing volunteer Peer Reviewers, a group which currently numbers 22 people.  Most of these individuals have committed to completing 5 or more Peer Reviews per year.  This means that Michelle has to make close to 100 assignments of reviews, coordinate those reviews, and then consolidate them.  This past year, Michelle completed 27 Composite Reviews which were then posted to MERLOT.

 Elizabeth Smith (Southwest Virginia Community College) has a unique approach to peer review as she involves her students actively in the examination of each learning object she reviews in French and Spanish. They are then in a better position to judge quality of online learning materials, giving her valuable user perspectives to include in her peer review. Their testing also serves a pedagogical purpose in that they spend more time on task with the materials.  Elizabeth Smith has been a solid supporter of MERLOT and a great help to the World Languages Editorial Board.