Project eSankofa at MSU’s African American and African Studies (AAAS) launched the first Massive Open Online Community conversation (MOOCc) via Canvas Network Tuesday, August 4, 2015. (Canvas Network offers open online courses taught by educators globally and provides a place and platform where teachers, students, and institutions worldwide can connect.)

A new take on the MOOC, or Massive Open Online Course, the MOOCc encourages ongoing global access to and utilization of engaged community scholarship and research in Black Studies. Funded by Michigan State University’s Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives, the Project eSankofa MOOCc digital platform will serve to generate new questions and pioneering approaches regarding the Black/African Studies The eSankofa MOOCc is designed to increase multicultural viewpoints, foster community collectives of discussion, help participants navigate difficult race questions, as well as challenge their thoughts and perceptions about the Black experience.

The experience of Sankofa is to give rise to a “call of action” within participants as learners to be inclusive of the entire human race.

For more information, visit: https://www.canvas.net/browse/michiganstate/courses/e-sankofa

The Sankofa bird symbol is translated through Akan (Ghanaian) oral tradition as a proverb that means, “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” The African value embedded in the Sankofa Adinkra image (Akan visual symbols that represent concepts), and its associated proverb, informs a core curricular mandate and teaching and research method for the Black/Africana Studies discipline undergirding African American and African Studies.

Thank your to our partners: Michigan State University MOSAIC Multicultural Leanring Center, MSU Journalism, and Project 60/50.