The development of electronic content and formats has occurred in a
fragmented manner, with a wide variety of providers and an equally wide variety of content
and format quality. This is both natural and understandable in a new, evolving field. Through
a process of organization and evaluation, a relatively new resource community, MERLOT,
hopes to remedy this with its "continually growing collection of online learning materials,
peer reviews and assignments." (http://www.merlot.org) MERLOT's resources are both free
and open and are designed primarily for faculty and students in higher education. In this
month's DESIEN FOCUS article, Gerard L. Hanley, Ph.D., MERLOT Program Manager,
discusses this valuable resource. (Rosemary Lehman)