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DSU’s Gearhart’s paper linked to teaching website

Dakota State University director of distance education, Deb Gearhart has had her paper, “Ethics in Distance Education: Developing Ethical Policies” linked on the MERLOT Teaching Well Online as a distinguished, high-quality source of learning material. The MERLOT project (http://disciplines2.merlot.org:8900) is an online community of faculty who are collaborating to increase the quantity of high quality web-based, interactive teaching and learning materials. The primary audience is teachers and learners anywhere who are interested in using technology in higher education.

            Gearhart says she didn’t submit the article and was taken by surprise when she found out. “The submission to Merlot came as a total surprise,” said Gearhart about the news. “I have no idea who submitted it. I think it’s great that a peer felt my article was worthy as a resource.”

            Benefits to faculty authors include feedback from peers and students, professional recognition from discipline communities linked to professional organizations and a peer review process.

“I will, through the Merlot process, have the opportunity to receive feedback from my peers on the topic and on my article,” said Gearhart. “This was the first article I had published and it is an honor to have my first article receive this recognition.”

MERLOT was recently featured in University Business, July/August 2000, in an article entitled “Swap Shop” (http://www.universitybusiness.com/0007/merlot.html), and in The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 28, 2000, “New Project Brings Peer Review to Web Materials for Teaching” (page A56).