COSL/About

At the Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, we believe that all humans beings are endowed with a capacity to learn, improve, and progress. Educational opportunity is the mechanism by which we fulfill that capacity. Therefore, free and open access to educational opportunity is a basic human right. When educational materials can be electronically copied and transferred around the world at almost no cost, we have a greater ethical obligation than ever before to increase the reach of opportunity. When people can connect with others nearby or in distant lands at almost no cost to ask questions, give answers, and exchange ideas, the moral imperative to meaningfully enable these opportunities weighs profoundly. We cannot in good conscience allow this poverty of educational opportunity to continue when educational provisions are so plentiful, and when their duplication and distribution costs so little.

The Center is doing what we can through a of mix research, development, and teaching. COSL is part of the Department of Instructional Technology in the College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University in Logan, UT. The Department of Instructional Technology provides an environment in which graduate students and faculty explore, develop, and disseminate technologies of instruction and information impacting education, business, industry, and government. USU's College of Education and Human Services has been ranked as a top-tier program by U.S. News and World Report for the past nine years and is recognized for its developments in research.