WAOE Policies and
Procedures
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Respect and Support the Voluntary
Effort
It is most important for all members to appreciate that the often very
time-consuming and technologically challenging work of WAOE Officers is
undertaken on a completely voluntary basis. Behind what we hope
presents to you - perhaps not always convincingly! - as a smooth-running
and efficient system of electronic communications lies a huge and continuing
effort to find simple and low- or no-cost ways of maintaining good communication
links and discussion methods across a far flung and very loose cluster
of some 900 computers which use a wide variety of not-always-compatible
operating systems and browsers and other software. The processing
of registrations and applications for voting membership, for example,
takes place mostly by email, for lack of resources and time to put automated
systems in place.
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How Members Can Help
Members can help reduce this effort significantly by falling in with WAOE's
communication and discussion arrangements. If we can be confident that
all members are linked to WAOE-News, for example, we won't feel that we have
to send copies of important announcements to WAOE-Views, the WAOE WebBoard
and perhaps even individual email addresses in order to be sure that we've covered
everyone. A lot of extra typing work and computer time gets used up in
such a scatter-gun approach. So, we'd like to direct you to the summary
of the communication and discussion arrangements
we have provided for new members, to assist them to participate fully and rewardingly
in WAOE, and to urge all members to use each component of the communication
system for its intended purposes.
The Meaning and Exercise of Membership
in WAOE
WAOE is incorporated in the State of California as a non-profit and public
benefit membersâ organisation. The membership owns it. We want all
members to be active in the Association in all the ways and to the greatest
extent that they wish to or can manage to be involved.
And because we are an incorporated professional organisation - as well
as a globally spread association of professionals - there are various policies,
rules and procedures that we are obliged to follow in order to maintain our
official standing under Californian law. Observance of these requirements
is an all the more sensitive matter for us because we are engaged in the delicate
process of securing recognition as a tax-exempt organisation for the purposes
of receiving grants, sponsorships and donations. Some of the most important
expectations of and obligations on our members are summarised below.
No doubt, many members will not be especially interested in the details of
the conduct of WAOE's affairs according to our legal obligations, and certainly
our hope is that this bulletin and other WAOE elements and activies will always,
ultimately, strike the balance of focus in favour of matters concerning the
best professional practice of online education rather than somewhat dry questions
of organisational policy and procedure. However, WAOE is an organisation,
a legal entity - and necessarily so in order to be able to fulfil its objectives.
In this still very early period in our establishment and growth, we are inevitably
pre-occupied with such questions - which are not necessarily dry to every intellectual
taste, of course, nor lacking in their own intrinsic interest. Please
bear with us and look to where we are headed, and not just at the sometimes
painstaking and tedious little steps we have to take along the road!
Becoming a Member
If you're reading this article, you've already joined, of course. This
means you have filled out and submitted the registration form found through
the Membership link on the home page of the WAOE
Website. And, from this month on, it will also mean that you have
paid the annual subscription fee of $US10. We're still finalising the
procedure we will use to collect the fee as efficiently and conveniently as
possible, but we'll be advising everybody of the arrangements by email very
soon . We'll also tell you then about current policy on waiver of fees
and how to apply for this exemption.
At this stage, there are only two categories of membership of WAOE: associate
members and voting members. Have a look at Article
12 of the Bylaws
for more information. Also, our Incorporation
FAQ page maintained by Treasurer, Jenna Seehafer,
sets the rights and responsibilities of members within the context of Californian
law. (Jenna is responsible, with help from Parliamentarian Mike Warner
on the organisation and conduct of meetings in particular, for liaison with
Californian authorities and for ensuring we observe all legal requirements in
our policies and procedures.)
Associate Membership
Registration and payment of the fee automatically makes you an associate member
of WAOE. This basically means you can do or read or join anything and
everything that WAOE has to offer, except stand for office, nominate other eligible
members for office, or vote in our constitutional forums or occasional ballots
on issues of policy. As an associate member, you will receive an email
notice when the WAOE Electronic Bulletin (WEB) appears on its Web site every
two weeks or so, along with a list of the contents of the current issue.
You'll have access to JOE, our refereed Journal of Online Education, and you'll
be able to join any of the Committees or one or other or more of the Online
Course and Resource Evaluation Workgroups (OCREWs) that are currently active.
In fact, as we become more established in our ways of operating - we have to
remind ourselves sometimes that we're less than one year old, for all the amount
we've grown and distance we've travelled - we'll push our constitutional expectation
that every associate member should belong to at least one OCREW or similar group
as a minimum commitment to active participation in the Association's affairs.
All associate members are expected to subscribe to the announcement listserve,
WAOE-News, as a matter of course.
Voting Membership
Voting members are those associate members who have formally identified themselves
as people who wish to participate in the governance of the Association.
They would attend formal meetings of the Association, make nominations and cast
votes in general elections for WAOE, and participate in the ballots through
which key decisions affecting WAOE are taken. Voting members are the "members"
referred to in the WAOE Bylaws in compliance with the requirements of Californian
incorporation law, which recognises voting members only, as we define them.
Thus, only voting members may be included in the quorum for formal meetings
of WAOE such as the recent Annual General Meeting, and have their votes counted
on motions proposed or in ballots conducted during such meetings or other official
events.
An associate member may become a voting member by the simple act of sending
an email message to the Membership Officer (officially
titled the Chair of the Membership Committee) - stating that he/she wishes to
be recognised as a voting member. Fo convenience, you could just copy/paste
the following text into that message: "I wish to be recognised as a voting member
of WAOE" (without the quotes). No additional fee payment is required.
Conversion of membership becomes effective within 10 days after the request
is received. Under this rule, the eligibility of voting members to be
included in the quorum count for any formal meeting or ballot is declared and
announced 10 days prior to the notified starting time for that meeting or ballot.
Once conferred, voting-member status will continue for as long as each designated
voting member wishes to retain that level of participation in WAOE.
Relinquishing Voting Membership
Voting members may revert to non-voting status (ie associate members) simply
by writing a letter or email to WAOE's President
or Executive Secretary explaining their
intention to become less active in WAOE and their wish to end their membership
or to convert it to an associate membership.
Annual Renewal of Membership
Both associate and voting members are required to fill out a membership renewal
form between July 1 and July 30 of each year, commencing in 1999. Failing to
submit this form will be understood as resignation from WAOE membership (WAOE
Bylaws, Article 12, Section 9).
Release of Personal Information
You might recall that the top of the registration form in the Membership pages
of the WAOE Website contains
the statement, "This information will be stored in the WAOE database, and will
not be made publically available without your prior consent." This
gives a clear indication of our commitment to respect members' privacy and to
maintain strictly the confidentiality of personal details provided through the
registration process. Unfortunately, however, it would be a nearly imposible
task to apply the statement literally at the individual level of membership.
No addresses or other personal information about members will be released to
persons or organisations outside WAOE. However, to make the various parts
of WAOE functional, it is essential that Officers are able to communicate freely
with members, and members are able to contact each other. This necessitates
the distribution of personal information within the organisation, but normally
only names and email addresses will be required. It would obviously be
a wasteful and unmanageable burden for the members of WAOE's Coordinating
Ring to have to seek permission on an individual basis for the release of
some 900 members' names and email addresses. Therefore, we need to obtain
permission in a more efficient way for lists containing your first and last
names and your email address to be distributed to members of the Ring, in the
first instance, and thereafter to the Committees or OCREWs in which you have
expressed an interest; to project, discussion and other groups that are started
from time to time; and to members of WAOE at large. All other information
in the membership database will be kept confidential, accessible only by the
Coordinating Ring, as WAOE's executive management
body.
We are (still) in the process of finalising a new registration form which will
automatically authorise the release of names and email addresses according to
the policy described above. Until that form comes into use as part of
our totally re-organised registration, database management and fee-payment procedures
for the new 1999/2000 financial year and beyond, we need to take a simple collective
approach to securing the authorised release of limited personal information
within the Association.
This article constitutes a notice to all members of WAOE requesting the release
of personal information within the Association, normally limited to members'
names and email addresses. If, after reading the notice, you have an objection
to these details being made known or distributed to other officers and members
of WAOE than the Directors and the Coordinating Ring, please advise the Membership
Officer immediately. If you do so object, the Membership Officer
will need to discuss with you some other appropriate way or ways in which you
will be able to participate fully in the main activities of WAOE. Any
suggestion you can make when sending your message of objection would be very
welcome.
WAOE Committees and OCREWs
When you filled in the membership registration form, you identified which of
the various Committees and Online Course and Resource Evaluation Workgroups
(OCREWs) you are interested in. This article is concerned with providing
members with more information about these major components of the structure
and organisation of WAOE, but it will concentrate mainly on OCREWs. The
article is based to some extent on an item about OCREWs originally included
in WEB Volume 1, Number 2 (March 28 1999).
Committees
The purposes of the various Committees and how these might work towards the
fulfilment of WAOE's objectives is perhaps fairly
readily understood from their titles and composition, as they appear on the
membership registration form:
Membership Committee
Finance Committee (now the Planning and Finance Committee)
Dissemination Committee
Records Committee
Web Design Committee
Online Educator Development Committee
Affiliate Liaison Committee
Research & Publication Committee
Online Academic Conferences Committee
Online Parliamentary Procedures Committee
At this stage, with the notable exception of the Planning and Finance Committee
(which meets monthly) and the Online Educator Development Committee, none of these
bodies is active, and not even the exceptions are in fact completely established
and operational as yet, with a full complement of members networking to discuss
issues and proposals relevant to each Committee's brief, and making recommendations
to the Coordinating Ring and the Board of Directors. There are several probable
reasons for this:
- The list of Committees derives from a constitution drafted before WAOE
become incorporated and held its inaugural elections. Now that we are
learning from experience what kind of internal structure and organisation
will best suit the Association's needs, some aspects of the putative committee
system may well be adapted, coalesced or even abandoned. We think it
would be wise not to consolidate too soon a mode of operation that in the
long run may not prove the best for us.
- To make WAOE's structure and organisation operationally effective requires
the development of a quite sophisticated database of the names and addresses
of the members who expressed interest in different Committees and OCREWs at
the time of registration, and a system for generating mailing lists and searching
connection among sub-group members and between different components WAOE that
will facilitate communication, discussion, networking, conferencing, voting
and all other activities required to make the Association work. Database
development has long been a major priority for management action, but
it has also been thwarted by inadequate resources and by a variety of practical
difficulties in the way of coming up with the most appropriate combination
of server facilities, database design, technology services, hardware and software
compatibility among different operating systems and software. However,
it seems likely that significant headway will soon be made through the Board
of Directors' Meeting.
- WAOE has barely got off the ground. We have only just conducted our
first Annual General Meeting and our second meeting of the Board of Directors,
and our first global celebration of cultural differences was held just in
February (the second of these members' events is proceeding now, as a follow-on
from the AGM). Partly because of the sheer organisational challenge
of making these things happen according both to constitutional requirements
and as smoothly as we can, the energies of the Board of Directors and the
Coordinating Ring have been highly focused in those directions. It will be
time to turn our full attention to other more specific aspects of WAOE's operations
when we begin to distinguish the forest from the trees!
Online Course and Resource Evaluation Workgroups (OCREWs)
According to the Archive
of Founding Documents, OCREWs could be described, at least in intention, as
the heart and soul of the Association. (Extending the metaphor, Committees
might be thought of as the bones and sinews.) OCREWs provide the main locations
and focal points for members to contribute in practical ways to the enhancement
of online education as a professional discipline. And that's WAOE's core
business.
In conception, OCREWs comprise groups of members interested in particular aspects
of online education and training who meet and work together online - sharing
ideas and information, discussing issues, making representations to relevant
agencies and other forums, pooling resources, and so on. And in doing
all this, such groups will make the strongest possible and most useful contribution
to realising the central purpose of WAOE. This is because the contribution
will be coming from professionals across the complex and rapidly developing
field of online education and training who are directly testing and extending
the possibilities of the field as they confront the problems posed by their
online students and clients, experiment with workable solutions to them, and
share what they learn with colleagues around the world.
Although OCREWs are given a defined place in WAOEâs structure and organisation,
and a list of them appears on the memberâs registration form, there are no set
ways by which their role can be carried out. The groups are being set
up which are not listed on the registration form (though they may cover some
of the territory) - the Education Standards OCREW,
and the Educational Software and Courseware OCREW,
the Industry and Academia OCREW - and an invitation
by Mihkel Pilv for members to join a "learning by teaching OCREW initiative"
stands on the home page of the WAOE
Website.
You could use the lists of the Directors and
the members of the Coordinating Ring to find
out more about a particular structural group or an initiative which interests
you - better still, to make contact with a view to joining an OCREW or other
body - or perhaps to suss out how members who have started groups went about
it and what agenda and processes they are establishing. Vice-President
Mihkel Pilv carries particular responsiblity
for encouraging and supporting OCREWs and other action groups. He will
be glad to answer any queries you may have.
Members of the Coordinating Ring, WAOE's elected management executive, are
looking at ways of revising the registration form to better reflect the flexibility
that actually exists in the formation and operation of these vital groups.
As a result, the current request to check an OCREW box will be replaced by a
more open-ended invitation to identify interest in various aspects of online
education and training, perhaps using a checklist with scope for members to
add their own topics.
Although we plan to improve the information-gathering mechanism, notional commitments
to particular OCREWs already suggested through the registration process already
provide a useful basis for clustering members into potential participants for
WAOE officers and others starting up new groups to contact in exploratory ways.
In a still broader approach, personal contact with members could be used, as
time permits, to tease out more specific information about what they are interested
in, as well as what they hope to gain from joining WAOE, and how they would
like the organisation to run.
To an extent, the same organisational priorities and difficulties that have
slowed implementation of the committee system have inhibited the formation of
OCREWs, particularly the delays in setting up electronic communications among
members linked to a comprehensive and relational database. However, OCREWs
by their nature and intent are not so constrained, in structural and organisational
terms, as designated Committees. The W in the acronym stands for Workgroup,
after all, and there is great flexibility in the number and kind of OCREWs that
could be set up, as the presently active groups amply illustrate. In fact,
working groups of members that get established need not necessarily be called
OCREWs at all. They might be project teams, for example, or action research
groups, or discussion forums with specialised agenda like Web access for people
with disabilities.
The most important point to make about the specific action and discussion groups
that come into operation - whatever they may be called - is that, like everything
else in WAOE, they both belong to and depend on the membership. The field of
online education and training is wide open for effecting vital changes and improvements,
and WAOE needs the active participation and thoughtful contributions of its
members in order to carry out its part in this vital work.
All that is required to get an OCREW or other group started is for a member
to devise and promote a specific purpose for having a group and then to enlist
at least three other members to join him or her in the enterprise. That's
exactly how both the Education Standards and Industry and Academia OCREWs began.
WAOE-Views or the Your
Say section of WEB could be used to canvass interest and recruit like-minded
colleagues. The next step is to announce the formation of the group to
the Vice-President, Mihkel Pilv, who will give
all the advice and assistance he can.
So, itâs over to you. The agenda is yours. Its your Association.
Go to it!
Notifying Change of Email Address
It can sometimes be a real headache keeping track of members who change their
email addresses, or who occasionally use a different email address for corresponding
with us than the one through which they registered and which therefore is listed
on the official database. Such changes or differences of address account
for at least some of the "permanent fatal errors" that get reported with each
large-scale mailing that goes out to members. No doubt time wasted in
contact the members concerned double-checking WAOE's membership records and
various mailing lists is greater now - while such details are captured and maintained
on an essentially manual basis - than they will be once our systems become fully
automated. However, it seem very probable that effective communication
within WAOE will always be reliant to a significant extent on the willingness
of members themselves to keep us informed of their whereabouts.
As soon as we are able to attend to this matter among the various priorities
for action to improve the database and query system, an electronic form for
notifying changes of email address will be provided on the WAOE Website and
in each issue of WEB. In the meantime, we request members who change their
contact details to take the initiative and trouble to notify us as soon as possible.
Procedure: Send an untitled email message to the Membership
Officer containing the text (without the quotes): "I wish to advise that
I have changed by email address. My new email address is < insert details
>."
How to Unsubscribe from Listserves or
Resign from WAOE
For a quick check-list of the procedures for getting off WAOE's listserves
or the mailing list for WEB, or for resigning from the Association altogether,
go to the WAOE's
Communications page of the WAOE Orientation Course. Scroll down to
the heading "How to Unsubscribe from Listserves or Resign from WAOE," or use
the link in the frame on the left hand side of the page.
About WAOE Policies and Procedures
In this still early formative period for WAOE, it is
probably inevitable that items for information and discussion put out by WAOE's
elected and appointed Officers will predominate in our information venues and
discussion forums, because we are all very keen to help members to understand
and reflect on what the Association is about and to encourage them to be active
in its work. In past issues of the bulletin, there has been a tendency
- in the absence of another column better suited to that purpose - for managerial
matters to take up a larger share of the space under the WEB Ideas and Issues
heading than they should. This has tended to squeeze out other topics
of broader interest to online educators which might have appeared there, and
perhaps even discouraged members from contributing to discussion of those topics,
or raising topics of their own.
From this issue onwards, we will dedicate space in the
WAOE Policies and Procedrues column to updating information about WAOE as an
organisation, and encouraging the active involvement of members in our online
meetings, Committees and OCREWs, discussion forums, projects, special events
etc and to take all other opportunities that present themselves for making a
contribution to WAOE.