The increasing emphasis on Higher Education standards has created a shift in the mode Universities deliver professional development. Universities have answered the call of professional development by redesigning curricula and structuring tutorstextquoteright training programs. Open and Distance Learning Standards in Higher Education promote educational content reusability and modularity so as to adapt in various subject domains.  Communities of Practice (CoPs) have constantly posed challenges to Higher Education Institutions (HEI), in particular those engaged in open and distance learning. These communities develop their practice through problem solving, requesting information, seeking experience, coordination and synergy, discussing developments, documenting project mapping knowledge and identifying gaps. This paper presents design framework, methodological aspects and preliminary data analysis of research conducted in (3) Thematic Units of Hellenic Open University with the volunteer participation of (9) Tutors, in forming Communities of Instructional Design  in Open and Distance Learning settings.

Systematic investigation of e learning technological tools and resources to support tutorstextquoteright design of educational content is at the core of the ongoing research in Higher Education. Data mining is one step at the core of the knowledge discovery process, dealing with the extraction of patterns and relationships from large amounts of data. Today, most enterprises are actively collecting and storing large databases. Aim of this paper is to present basic characteristics of \emph{Design for Pedagogy tool (D4P), }asa learning- design- oriented tool developed in Hellenic Open University (HOU) which provides support on HOU tutors for designing learning activities and space for storing educational material and activitiestextquoteright structures. This paper outlines the scope, methodology rationale, background design of D4P, reporting on preliminary user testing. The application presented aims to provide scaffold and support to educators for embedding Learning Technology tools into their Open and Distance Learning courses.