About the HBCU AL$ Program

In 2017, MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching www.merlot.org) and SkillsCommons (www.skillscommons.org)  partnered with the leadership at Southern University (Moustapha Diack) to launch the first annual HBCU Affordable Learning Solutions Summit at the MERLOT-Online Learning Consortium INNOVATE Conference in New Orleans, LA.  Each year the HBCU AL$ Summit has grown through the efforts of the HBCU AL$ leadership team at Tennessee State University and with the support of a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.  With the COVID pandemic in 2020, the transition to free, online, and open educational resources and practices became an imperative.   

In 2020 and 2023, the Hewlett Foundation awarded Tennessee State University additional grants to expand the community of HBCUs developing and implementing their campus-centric Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) initiatives and strengthening the organizational infrastructure of the HBCU community to grow the successful adoption of AL$ to all the HBCUs who wish to participate.

Our Purpose: The HBCU AL$ community will be sharing our resources and exemplary practices as well as conducting research on how best to serve the needs of the HBCUs in making higher education more affordable by reducing the cost of course materials.  The HBCU Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) Community is planning and conducting a number of activities to:

• Strengthen the collaborative relationships between HBCUs
• Share exemplary practices for reducing the costs of course content for students
• Support leadership of HBCUs in the management and shared governance of the AL$ program

A critical goal of this project is to also facilitate the sharing of Open Educational Resources (OER) developed by HBCUs for their own academic programs. Building a collection of culturally inclusive curriculum that is free and open for teaching and learning will benefit our diverse students.

• Explore the SHARE tab to learn about the different ways you can contribute to the MERLOT collection with HBCU resources.
• Explore the HBCU Cultural Collections to find free and open educational resources for programs in Africana/African American/Black Studies as well as for programs across the disciplines.

Our mission is to enhance the educational experience by providing accessible, high-quality resources for our faculty, students, and staff.     At Simmons College of Kentucky, we are proud of our ongoing initiatives to support open education: (1) Training and Workshops: We offer a variety of training sessions and workshops to help our community effectively use and create OER, (2)  Collaborative Projects: Our team collaborates with other institutions and organizations to develop and share open resources, and (3) Events and Webinars: Join us for our regular events and webinars, where we discuss the latest trends and best practices in open education.

Our Team:  Meet the dedicated members of our team who are committed to fostering an open educational culture:

• Kevin McMahon - [Director of Library Services]
• Adam Kremer - [Access Services Manager]
• Dr. Janice Poston - [Curriculum Designer]

Get Involved!

We invite you to get involved with our Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) Initiative. Whether you are a faculty member looking to integrate OER into your curriculum, a student interested in using open resources, or a staff member wanting to support our initiatives, there are many ways to participate:

• Join a Committee: Participate in one of our committees focused on various aspects of open education.
• Contribute Resources: Share your own educational materials and resources with our community through your Merlot Account.
• Attend Events: Stay informed and engaged by attending our events and webinars.

Contact Us:   For more information about our Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) Initiative and how you can get involved, please contact us at library@simmonscollegeky.edu.

In 1997, The Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT, www.merlot.org) is an international cooperative formed for the purpose of aggregating and making freely accessible high quality online resources to improve learning and teaching within higher education.  MERLOT’s organization and services are administered by the California State University and connect higher education systems, consortiums, and institutions, professional societies and organizations of academic disciplines, corporations, and individual members to form a community of people who strive to enrich the teaching and learning experiences with technologies.

MERLOT provides: 

• An open, online catalog of thousands of online learning materials.
• Quality assurance processes for the evaluating the learning materials
• Open community tools for its members to manage and personalize their use of MERLOT resources and services
• A directory of people with common interests in teaching and learning with online materials across a wide range of disciplines
• Technologies for customizing services for our partners
• Professional development services for our partners
• User-friendly authoring tools to create open educational resources
• Leadership opportunities for individuals and institutional to put educational innovations into practice

Visit MERLOT and its Programs

Funded by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2014, California State University and MERLOT designed and implemented the national, open library of workforce programming and training materials called SkillsCommons at www.skillscommons.org. The SkillsCommons library is open for educators, workforce development staff, human resources staff, and individual workers and provides free and easy access to the innovative training materials across a wide variety of industry sectors that can be adopted and adapted for the local use. Learn more...

Partner with SkillsCommons Programs | Visit the SkillsCommons Repository