|
About MERLOT Peer Reviews of Learning Materials
MERLOT Peer Reviews are designed to help faculty determine the quality of the learning materials in the MERLOT catalog and their relevance and applicability to the courses they teach. MERLOT conducts structured peer reviews of online learning materials to allow faculty from any institution of higher education to decide if the online teaching-learning materials they are examining will be successful in their course(s). The emphasis on the user's perspective is the reason peer reviews are performed by peer users of instructional technology, and not necessarily peer authors of instructional technology.
Conducting these Peer Reviews is a critical, strategic initiative for MERLOT. The peer review process used by MERLOT follows the model of peer review of scholarship. For example, each material that is submitted to a discipline subject area that is covered by an editorial board in MERLOT, is initially examined to determine its priority for being reviewed. This process is called "triage" and it is meant to ensure that the highest quality materials are reviewed first. A learning material is then selected for review based on the triage values it receives. Materials that attain an "accepted for review" tag are those that received high marks in the triage process, but have not yet been assigned to reviewers.
Once reviewers are assigned to an item (material), it appears in MERLOT as "under review". Each MERLOT peer review is conducted independently by at least two higher education faculty members. From these two individual reviews, a "composite review" is written and is sent to the Author. With the Author’s permission, the Composite Review becomes the Final Review that is posted to the MERLOT website. A material remains “under review” until the peer review is posted publicly on the MERLOT website. Currently fifteen editorial boards conduct peer review. A list of the editorial boards and links to their community areas in MERLOT are available on the home page or by clicking the "Communities" tab in the navigation bar.
Members of the Editorial boards are faculty with experience using technology in teaching and learning and conducting peer reviews of online learning resources. The foundation of the process rests on MERLOT's Editorial Boards who are responsible for:
- Implementing the peer review process according to discipline-specific criteria (based on a set of evaluation criteria common to all disciplines) and using a common rating system.
- Recruiting and training peer reviewers.
- Posting peer reviews.
Peer Reviews are performed by evaluation standards that divide the review into three dimensions:
- Quality of Content
- Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool
- Ease of Use
Each of these dimensions is evaluated separately and the Strengths and Concerns are identified. In addition to the written findings (review) by the reviewers, there is a rating for each of the three dimensions (1-5 stars, 5 being the highest). A review must average three stars (or textual equivalent) to be posted to the MERLOT site. For more details about the peer review process, evaluation standards, becoming a peer reviewer, or the rating system, please contact Cathy Swift at cswift@calstate.edu.
|
