Merrill Cook is an SEO, developer, course developer, and journalist who has focused primarily on online and open education for the last 5 years. He's acquired many of his skills through online and open education opportunities, but not without pitfalls. That's why he wanted to start Online Course Report, to provide quality commentary and a solid resource base for the online course-seeking commuity.

Since its inception, Online Course Report has striven to provide actionable, insightful, and original research on open and online education for corporate, individual, and lifelong learning applications. We are an editorially independent organzation that does not offer paid or sponsored posts, or partner input into our rankings of academic programs. With that said, we do present opportunities for site visitors to connect with universities or online course providers that may be a good fit for their needs. No visitors are required to request information from these entities. Though opportunities for connecting with partners exist throughout the site. When site visitors do ask for information from third party educational providers, Online Course Report sometimes gians a small marketing fee. This is our primary method of keeping our site running financially, and we appreciate all potential students that use our portals to find academic programs. In an effort towards transperancy, all such partner programs listed on the site are marked as "sponsored." Additionally, our process for ranking universities and selecting and researching content is independent of partner universities. Online Course Report does not offer paid placement in rankings or posts from partner schools.