COL’s online course ‘Understanding Open Educational Resources’ (OER) won a prestigious Brandon Hall Group Silver Award for excellence in the Learning Management Measurement/Business Impact Tools category. The win was announced on 10 December 2020.

Initially developed in 2015 as an open course via Moodle learning management system, it was later converted into a stand-alone platform – with a view to monitoring usage and motivating learners to complete the course. Since the re-launch in 2018, the course has been used by over 13,000 people worldwide. It caters to the need of teachers and policymakers to quickly learn about the merits of openly licensed educational resources. The platform provides a dashboard for analysing the registration, completion and real-time return on investment.

A panel of independent industry experts, and Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives evaluated the entries based on the following criteria: product’s breakthrough innovation, unique differentiators and value proposition, as well as the benefits customers can expect as a result of using it.

Dr. Sanjaya Mishra, COL’s Education Specialist: eLearning, COL said: “The course supports a worldwide need to build capacity for using and creating OER as envisaged in UNESCO’s 2019 Recommendation on OER. This short course caters to the needs of busy professionals. The Silver Award for COL and EI Design , a learning experience design company, is a recognition of the collaborative work needed to develop appropriate technologies for teaching and learning.”

COL’s course can be accessed at https://learnoer.col.org/