MERLOT Enhancements as of November 2009

MERLOT is continually striving to update the website with enhancements and bug fixes to make your experience on the site easier.  Some of the enhancements and fixes so far in 2009 include:

• MERLOT Content Builder released (formerly Carnegie KEEP Toolkit). Users can access the Content Builder from the MERLOT home page or right from their profile page.

• New categories for the Geology materials, now knows as Geoscience

• Ability to search for members language in Advanced member search

• Ability for members to specify their level of proficiency in languages, right on their profile page

• Assignment are now called Learning Exercises and Assignments are a material type for materials added to MERLOT.

• When adding a material to MERLOT, a Creative Commons license can be selected from any country

• On a members profile and in the Member directory, there is a direct link to the materials a member has authored.

MERLOT Enhancements as of August 2009

• From the Member Advanced search page, you can find other MERLOT members by their affiliation. You can also broaden your search by state, country or affiliation type. Go to the Member advanced search to see how - http://www.merlot.org/merlot/advSearchMembers.htm.
  
  
• We have added search tips at the top of the page to help you locate members and materials quickly and easily. See the search tips on the advanced material search page at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/advSearchMaterials.htm.

• We continue to update material links in the repository and remove materials that are no longer available. To improve the integrity of the materials in MERLOT, we have added a "report broken link" link on every material detail view page. Now users can send us an email when they discover a broken link and we take care of it immediately.
  
  
• Assignments have been changed in MERLOT. They are now called "Learning Exercises". We have added a material type, "Assignment" to the repository.
  
  
• Now when you are looking for a material and find a bad link, there is a “Report Broken Link” link on every material detail page.  An email will be sent to the MERLOT Webmaster, capturing the item material name and URL.

• Connexions (http://cnx.org) and LORNET have been added to the Federated Search. Users can now select those digital libraries to include when doing a search. For more information, go to http://fedsearch.merlot.org/fedsearch/fedsearch.html
  
  
• On a members profile, languages can be identified by which a member speaks and reads. Level of proficiency can also be indicated and will appear on a members profile.

• When contributing a material to MERLOT, if you are the author, you will be prompted to declare a Creative Commons (CC) license for your work. This can be done during the contribution process.

• New material types have been added to MERLOT to help users better define a material being contributed. Some of these include, Social Networking tool, Development Tool, Assignment, and Assessment.

• Our Communities page has a new look. We have also added a section called, COMPASS. See the new look at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/communities.htm.

• COMPASS, a new initiative for MERLOT, helps MERLOT members and partners explore open resources for your institution's academic support services and programs. For more information, go to http://taste.merlot.org/COMPASS.html

MERLOT Enhancements as of March 2009

• Translation can now be done on the MERLOT site and a user has the ability to view materials in the translated language.  Simply go to the left side of the footer on the MERLOT site and click the English link.  You will get a pop up with over 30 different languages to translate the pages. For more information, go to http://taste.merlot.org/Language.html

• Language ISO codes were added to better identify a material when adding it to MERLOT.  The list is from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639-2_codes.
  

For more information on language and translation in MERLOT, visit http://taste.merlot.org/Language.html

• A text editor was added to the Description field of the Contribute Material wizard.  This will allow users to insert special characters and hypertext links into their descriptions.  A counter was also added to identify the character limit in the text field while typing.
  
  
• Over 500 material links were updated in the repository.
  
  
• Keywords can now be added to better describe a material when it is added to MERLOT and those words appear on the detail view page of the material.
  
  
• Now it is even easier to find members in MERLOT.  The Affiliation selector you used to identify your affiliations on your profile is in the member advanced search to extend the functionality of finding other members in education.  
  
  
• RSS feeds can now be obtained for members in addition to what's new in materials in MERLOT. All feeds can be found at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/rss.htm. In addition to the new RSS feeds, any search - material or member - can be turned into an RSS feed by clicking the orange RSS button at the bottom right of the hitlist page.
  
  
• Added 'Date Last Modified" to the assignment page so it is obvious the date of an assignment to determine how current the information is.
  
  
• Now when you are looking for a material and find a bad link, there is a “Report Broken Link” link on every material detail page.  An email will be sent to the MERLOT Webmaster, capturing the item material name and URL.
  
  
• Phase I of accessibility changes incorporated into MERLOT. This includes being able to tab to each field in a form, alt tags for all images, redesign of Home Page links, images and buttons so it is obvious what is a link and what where the cursor is on the page. Links have a consistent look and feel; Some images that appeared to be links are now text links.  In addition,  Added labels to form fields for more descriptive forms when using a screen reader; as much as possible, made lists into HTML lists (using <ul> and <li> tags); made headers into HTML headers (using <h1>, <h2>, etc); added tabindexes to pages with forms for easier keyboard navigation.

MERLOT Enhancements as of December 2008

• When browsing for materials, you can see them displayed by subject category and by material type on the learning materials hit list page. 

• Once on a material detail view page, you can clilck on the material type link at the top and see all materials in MERLOT with a particiular material type.

• Find out about a member by where they are from.  On any member profile page, their aAffiliations are listed and include the city, state or country they are from.
  
  
• MERLOT has added serveral new subject category taxonomies to help better catalog materials added to the collection. These include, English, Faculty Development, Institutional Initiatives, and Health Sciences.

• A new and improved Federated Search is available at http://fedsearch.merlot.org. For more information, go to http://about.merlot.org/merlottechnology.html. Part of the new Federated Search is the ability to search NSDL.
  
  
  
• A new and improved Web Service was released. For more information and to get a key to access the code, go to http://about.merlot.org/merlottechnology.html#webservices

• Quickly conduct a search of members, materials or a Federated Search from the search box at the top of the website pages.

• A new material type for catalogging mateials - Open Journal-Article

• You now have the ability to add others personal collections as your own. When you see one from a MERLOT member, click the link at the top of the personal collection page that says, Copy Personal Collection. It will then be put in your list of collections which you can see when on your profile page. Once the collection is one of yours, you can add to it or remove some that you dont want included. At least this way now, you can 'jump start' your collections. 
  

• We have included the ability to reorder materials listed within a personal collection. By clicking the little burgandy arrows to the left of any material listed in a collection, you can move the items up and down in the list.  Previously they were listed in the order they were put in to a personal collection.
  
  
• Materials on MERLOT's website can now be listed with the Creative Commons license that describes the material.  When contributing a material to MERLOT, you can specifiy if a material has a Creative Commons license associated with it and what that particular license is.  The result will be an icon on the detail view page which describes that license and a link to the Creative Commons website.
  
  
• Trying to locate a member in MERLOT? From any member directory page, you will see a member search box at the top. Just enter the name of the person you are trying to find and if they are in the directory, you will seem them listed in the search results hit list.
  
  
• Member comments for a specific material can be sorted by member type.  So if you only want to see comments by students or by faculty for example, you can sort them to see what a group has said about a material.
  
  
• With the collection growing for MERLOT, so do the types of materials being contributed. Technical Allied Health is a new taxonomy within MERLOT. See all the new materials and sub-categories.
  
  
• At our MERLOT International Conference each year, we recognize authors of materials found in MERLOT with a discipline award for their work.  Some of the winners have been highlighted in videos that can be found in the About Us section at http://taste.merlot.org/merlotvideos.html
  

For more information on current enhancements, go to http://taste.merlot.org/MERLOTEnhancements.html

We hope you are finding your visit to the new MERLOT website intersting and useful and easy to find all the new features. We welcome your comments or questions to the Webmaster at webmaster@merlot.org

revised 1/16/10 - bbs