SU System receives MERLOT Stewardship Award

The Southern University System received a MERLOT Stewardship Award at the INNOVATE 2017 International Conference, co-sponsored by the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) and the Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) global organization, April 5-7, 2017 in New Orleans.

The SU System was recognized for its leadership role in launching the partnership with the California State University MERLOT, an Affordable Learning Solution (AL$) portal, and the Southern University Open Library for Education (SUOL4Ed) on April 19, 2016.

The SU Open Library provides access for open education resources to the University and enables SU System faculty to develop online courses and programs using free and quality Open Education Resources (OER). It also helps faculty develop educational multimedia resources and open textbooks to contribute back to the OER and Open Access (OA) global movements.

As part of its adoption model the System declared the week of Thanksgiving in 2016 as "Open Education Week" to raise awareness through discussion panels involving faculty, students and librarians, and provided expert training to leverage the open library, and advocated a video channel authored by faculty and librarians.

Southern University was the first institution in Louisiana and the first historically black college and university (HBCU) in the U.S. to deploy an affordable learning solution technology. Because of these significant efforts and leadership role, the University co-hosted with OLC and MERLOT an HBCU Summit on AL$ and Quality Online Program as part of the International INNOVATE conference.

SU System President Ray Belton inaugurated the HBCU Summit, chaired by Moustapha Diack, professor and chair of the SU Doctoral Program in Science/Mathematics Education and director-MERLOT Africa Network. The summit targeted 104 HBCUs in the U.S. and Higher Education in Africa (HEIA) and will be an integral part of the INNOVATE conference set to be held every April in different states in the U.S. Next year's summit, April 2018, will be held in Nashville, TN.