MERLOT II

In early October, California State University unveiled MERLOT II at the EDUCAUSE annual conference in Anaheim. MERLOT II is a totally revamped version of their former resource collection, hosting their 40,000 open educational resources in a more user-friendly way. The newly redesigned version has essentially the same functionality, the same collection of resources, but a new look. Where as the old site had a text-heavy, column-based interface, the new look is all pictures and panels:

The inner workings of the site remain essentially unchanged: the search function, which will be the most important part of the site for most users' purposes, look and work the same way as before.

One of the bigger changes is the new emphasis on community and community resources. The new MERLOT seeks to highlight its social aspects, such as the new MERLOT blog, their Facebook page, and their Twitter feed. How much these newly emphasized features will improve the user experience is unclear, but it's obvious that MERLOT is working hard to modernize their approach. You can watch the official unveiling video below.