When MERN was first formed in the fall of 2002, the organizing group felt that a web site could be the primary vehicle for facilitating connections among Manitoba's educational researchers, administrators and practitioners. A Brandon University professor, who was on sabbatical during the 2002/3 academic year volunteered to design, develop and maintain the web site. The site was designed with a great deal of input from MERN's affiliates. The initial simple, static design evolved into a dynamic, database driven design with the assistance of a Computer Science student from Brandon University during the summer of 2003.

From the summer of 2003 until just recently the site was based around the concept of MERN members and guests. To become a MERN member you completed a profile that specified your research interests and contact information. As a member you could search the site to find others with similar research interests.

Over the years, the MERN has sponsored a series of research fora where researchers could present their findings. These have become very popular with researchers and practitioners as a way of meeting and networking with others similar interests. As a result, the need for the MERN web site as a means of networking has declined.

In early 2007, the web site was substantially modified to focus more on the presentations that have been delivered at the MERN research fora and the new MERN Journal. The old member research profiles and contact information has been eliminated. The search function now hunts for keywords in the titles and descriptions of forum presentations and abstracts. It does not search the content of the papers stored on the MERN site but these should be found when using a normal Google search.

MERN webmaster.