The Common Wealth of Humankind

Asian Association of Open Universities Conference, Wawasan Open University, Penang, Malaysia, UNESCO-COL Workshop on Open Education Resources, 1 October 2011 “The Common Wealth of Humankind” Welcome and introductory remarks, Sir John Daniel, Commonwealth of Learning // On behalf of the organizers of this workshop, UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning, it is a pleasure to welcome you and to thank you for adding a day to your schedule in Penang for the AAOU conference to attend this event. We hope that by the end of the day you will be pleased with your decision to stay on. // It is a pleasure to thank Professor John Arul Phillips of the Asia eUniversity for facilitating this workshop. John is a person who ‘walks the talk’ on OERs. As you will hear, the Asia eUniversity has made the use of OER fundamental to their course development process. // This workshop is part of a joint project between UNESCO and COL whose aim is to spread awareness and understanding of Open Educational Resources, or OERs, beyond the community of practice that has already grown up around them. It is coordinated by our colleagues Zeynep Varoglu at UNESCO and Trudi van Wyk at COL, although neither of them can be here with us today. // We are doing this because UNESCO and COL believe that OERs have considerable potential to widen access to higher education – both numerically and geographically – and to improve the quality of curricula and teaching. Very importantly, in these austere times, OERS can help to achieve these goals at low cost.