Citation
(2009), "Whats on the web", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 23 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2009.08123eag.001
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Whats on the web
Article Type: What’s on the web From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 23, Issue 5
A lot of merlot
Nothing to do with grapes, MERLOT is an online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy. Their strategic goal is to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning by increasing the quantity and quality of peer reviewed online learning materials.
The site is fast, effective and really useful in all sorts of fields. The only slight criticism being that it is very north-American focused – especially given its world wide aspirations.
The MERLOT Business Portal, shares tips for using technology to teach business courses, a selection of learning materials and a showcase featuring some award-winning websites in the business discipline.
This is mainly aimed at the HE market; web sites are peer-reviewed by fellow experts in higher education. It is however an excellent community resource for quickly finding high quality “educational” websites.
Shop on
The Training Shop (UK) Ltd is a training company established by trainers for trainers specializing in creative training, multi-sensory and accelerated learning techniques.
They offer training toys, books, music and a whole area called Prompt Box full of activities designed to enhance learning and retention of information.
The web site is a little too “primary school” for our liking lots of bright colours and smiley faces. We do recognise that getting the balance right between appealing to learning professionals and sales razzmatazz is not easy.
Of more concern is that there is no “try before you buy” element to any of the products – not even some free samples. We would be loath to pay £15 for a “box of daily quips” for example without some idea at least of their relevance and quality.
Progressive education
“Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I may remember. Involve me and I will understand,” so says the familiar Chinese proverb.
Experiential education is a philosophy and methodology in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills and clarify values.
The Association for Experiential Education (AEE) is a non-profit, professional membership association dedicated to experiential education and the students, educators and practitioners who utilize its philosophy. Their avowed aim is to connect educators in practical ways so that they have access to the growing body of knowledge that fuels their growth and development, publish and provide access to relevant research, publications and resources, raise the quality and performance of experiential programs and increase recognition of experiential education worldwide.
It is quite an ambition. However if this highly professional and well laid-out site is anything to go by then these may well be the people to visit. Certainly worth checking out if you are at all interested in practical learning improvement.
On or off track?
OnTrack International is “dedicated to optimising the effectiveness of people and businesses, specialising in designing and running in-company training and development programmes, which ‘radically transform’ the performance of individuals, teams and organizations”. Their approach combines customised workshops and training programmes, coaching, mentoring, two-hour PowerLearning Sessions, e-learning, and indoor and outdoor experiential learning.
The site is quite friendly, clean and straightforward. We liked the learning management system and, in particular, the blog. Some of the text is a bit jargon heavy – but then isn’t everything these days?
Style guide
www.Learning-styles-online.com
This site provides free information and tools to help you understand and use learning styles effectively.
The Memletics learning styles inventory provides you with a guide to your own personal learning styles. By asking a series of questions, and then scoring the results, it indicates which your dominant and secondary styles are.
The Memletics learning styles inventory (quiz, questionnaire, test) is free and available on this site. You can do the test online, or download the test in Microsoft Excel or Adobe PDF format.
They do state that you should only use styles inventories as a general guide to your styles – not as an absolute answer.
And finally
Lecturer: “George Washington not only chopped down his father’s cherry tree, but also admitted doing it. Now do you know why his father didn’t punish him?”
Student: “Because George still had the axe in his hand?”
Best of all
For a particularly interesting and useful site you could always try the Emerald one!
If you have any favourite (or otherwise) sites that you would like us to review on these pages, or wish us to consider your own site, please drop us an e-mail and we will ask our reviewers to check them out.