Learning for Development is the theme of COL's Three-year Plan for 2006-2009. Conceiving of development as a process of increasing the freedoms that people can enjoy, the plan addresses an agenda that includes the UN's Millennium Development Goals, the goals of Education for All (Dakar), and Commonwealth's objectives of peace, democracy, equality and good governance. Increasing and improving human learning is the key to fulfilling most aspects of this development agenda. Conventional instructional approaches simply cannot expand quickly enough to meet the challenge. COL's role is to help countries use a range of appropriate and available approaches and technologies to foster learning at scale.

Sectors

COL's 2006-2009 Plan groups COL's work into three sectors of activity:

• Education
  COL helps countries increase access to education of quality at all levels by focusing on quality assurance, teacher development, alternative forms of schooling, new approaches to higher education and the creation of expertise in eLearning.

 

• Learning for Livelihoods
  COL helps countries to identify where livelihoods can be improved, and to create matching learning opportunities. Successful approaches to improving rural and peri-urban economies draw on COL's close relationship with international agricultural bodies. The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth is a collaborative network for creating open educational resources for work-related learning.
  
  In this sector of activity, COL brokers proven distance learning programmes already offered around the Commonwealth, including COL's International Organisations Programme. As well, COL develops and delivers eLearning courses to staff in agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank and transforms technical guides developed by these organisations into effective learning materials.

 

• Human Environment
  Sustainable development occurs when people can live peaceably and equitably under democratic government in healthy environments. COL helps countries use learning technologies to make a difference in the areas of gender, health, environment and governance and can advise on the educational use of media and ICTs.

 

Cross-cutting themes: Gender and Knowledge Management

Gender equality and knowledge management are integral to COL's work in all three sectors. Because technology-mediated learning is particularly helpful for women and girls, COL uses it to help promote gender equality. And because access to knowledge is central to development, COL is committed to deploying the most modern methods of knowledge management.

Partnerships 

COL works in close association with Commonwealth governments and operates though a wide range of partnerships undertaken in a spirit of equality and participation. It seeks to create mutually beneficial linkages, especially of a "south-south" character, between Commonwealth countries. Key partners are the organisations linked to the United Nations (e.g., UNESCO, WHO and the World Intellectual Property Organization) and the Commonwealth, as are regional governmental organisations such as the Caribbean Community Secretariat (CARICOM), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Southern African Development Community (SADC). COL has had a long-standing Memorandum of Agreement with UNESCO and in July 2007 the two organisations updated their Workplan Agreement.

COL also has strong networks of partners in its various areas of activity. In education, these include the Commonwealth's distance-teaching universities, open schools, SchoolNets, and regional centres for distance education such as the Regional Training and Research Institute for Open and Distance Learning (RETRIDOL) and SADC Distance Education Centre (SADC-CDE). For its work on rural livelihoods, COL has productive links with the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and its associated bodies. It sustains links with NGOs in many countries and has an important relationship with the Hewlett Foundation for developing the use of open educational resources.

Results

The outputs and outcomes of COL's activities can be grouped into three categories:

• Policies
  Educational technology is most effective when its use is set within a policy framework. COL advises on, and facilitates, policy development by governments, agencies and institutions.

• Systems
  COL aims to enhance capacity and capability as the surest way of nurturing organisations to achieve greater impact in the implementation of technology-based learning systems.

• Models and Materials
  COL develops and promotes models for the use of technology in learning that are self-replicating and sustainable. It fosters partnerships for developing learning materials and extending their use around the Commonwealth. The Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth is a network focused on the collaborative development of open educational resources.

Three-year Plan 

COL's Three-year Plan, 2006-09 is available by clicking on the link to the right. It is the result of the most comprehensive planning exercise in the history of COL, which included consultation with stakeholders across the Commonwealth, commissioned environmental scans from all regions and an external evaluation of COL's work. Included in the Plan is a Corporate Logic Model that summarises the strategic framework for COL's work in 2006-2009 and the performance indicators that will be monitored in order to evaluate achievement of the outputs, outcomes and impacts that COL seeks.

 

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