15 December 2011: Current drafts of COL’s Three-Year Plan 2012-2015 and related Logic Model are now available for review by stakeholders. The drafts benefit from wide consultation and results of surveys and evaluations.

Open educational resources (OER) are materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared. These Guidelines outline key issues and make suggestions for integrating OER into higher education. Their purpose is to encourage decision makers in governments and institutions to invest in the systematic production, adaptation and use of OER and to bring them into the mainstream of higher education in order to improve the quality of curricula and teaching and to reduce costs.

COL's report to to the 2011 CHOGM was this wrap-around to a brochure on "COL and the Millennium Development Goals" (www.col.org/MDG).

Achieving the MDGs will require a massive expansion of human learning. Traditional methods of education and training cannot address the scope and scale of the task. Technology has already revolutionised other areas of human life; the world must now harness it to learning and teaching.

A summary of the key issues as FAQs: to provide readers with a quick and user-friendly introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) and some of the key issues to think about when exploring how to use OER most effectively. Plus: A comprehensive analysis of these issues. And: A set of appendices, containing more detail.

This Instructional Design Tool (IDT) was developed as a rigorous, yet simple tool to support the development of quality courses and learning materials. Through this tool the Commonwealth of Learning is encouraging institutions to maximize the effectiveness, efficiency and appeal of the learning experience.