Celebrating ten years: Reflections on COL’s Journal of Learning for Development

In March 2023, COL published the first  issue of the tenth volume of the Journal  of Learning for Development (JL4D) — a  forum for the publication of research  with a focus on innovation in learning  and its contribution to development.  As explained by Dr Sanjaya Mishra, it has three main  characteristics:

• it showcases how learning for development works
• it focuses on innovation, with a special emphasis on, but  not exclusively limited to, open and distance learning
• it provides a space for publications by both established  and early career scholars.

In the last four years, some of the most engaged themes have  been: how OER can be leveraged to support technology-enabled  learning; the concept of learning for development; and the  innovative ways technology can be harnessed to address the  needs of different contexts.

According to Dr Tony Mays, COL’s Education Specialist: Open  Schooling, the use of appropriate technology tailored for context is a recurring theme, but we need to keep thinking about the  why (learning for development) and the how (technology-enabled),  and keep evaluating what we are achieving (lessons of experience and research) in order to close the feedback loop into improved practice.

Professor Alan Tait was the founding Editor-in-Chief and  stepped down from that role in 2016 (although remaining  involved as Emeritus Editor thereafter).

Ms Anne Gaskell took over as Chief Editor from Volume No. 2 in July 2016, and her final editorial was in 2019.

Professor Santosh Panda became Chief Editor from the  first issue of 2020. He has noted a growing emphasis on  understanding better how technology-enabled learning can  contribute to learning for development.

In 2022, COL updated to the latest version of the Open Journal  System. It has been linked with ORCID (a persistent digital  identifier), has registered with Scopus (in addition to several  other databases with which the journal affiliates) and added permanent links for each article.

COL thanks our Chief Editors for their guidance, the authors for entrusting us with their publications and our growing list of  reviewers for their support of the journal and its authors.

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Contributions are invited for the Journal of Learning for Development, which focuses on innovations in learning — in  particular, but not exclusively, open and distance learning and  its role in development. Contributions can take the form of research articles, case studies, commentaries and reports from the field. Please visit the journal’s website for more details and to submit work: www.jl4d.org