The Founding Propositions of WAOE (August 1998)
You might also like to browse through the Articles of Incorporation
and the FAQ:
Incorporation pages. Please note that the "Proposed WAOE Committee
System" set up a framework within which WAOE has been able to get started. Its
details are not carved in stone. In fact, different ways of achieving the stated purposes
of the Online Course and Resource Evaluation Workgroups (OCREWs) are already being
proposed. Watch out for more information in the Crows Nest or WEB Ideas and Issues
sections of later numbers of WEB.
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The Meaning of Membership in WAOE
The question whether people who have registered to join WAOE wish to become voting members
came up with a bit of a rush just before the February Special Members Meeting and ballot.
Some members were understandably uncertain about what voting membership entails, or
whether voting status applied only for the February ballot, or other matters. So
itâs worth making room in this Bulletin to spell things out a little more clearly.
WAOE is a 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.
Associate Members
At this stage, there are only two defined categories of membership of WAOE: associate
members and voting members. Associate members benefit from membership without making
any commitment to participate directly in WAOE's activities or coordination. For
example, they may subscribe to WAOE-Views and the WAOE
WebBoard, participate in WAOE special events, or join committees and other groups, but
they would not exercise a formal or deliberative voice in WAOE's decision-making
processes. Associate members are not counted as "members" during elections
or in meeting quorums.
Voting Members
Voting members are those 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. (See Article 12 of the Bylaws for more
information about membership.)
Becoming a Voting Member
People who register to join WAOE by completing the membership forms are automatically and
immediately recognised as associate members. Associate members may become voting
members by subscribing to the waoe-news listserv and by informing the Membership Committee
Chair email that they wish to be recognised as voting members. This conversion of
membership is effective within 10 days after the request is received. Once
conferred, voting-member status will continue for as long as each designated voting member
wishes to retain this level of participation in WAOE.
Any associate member who wishes to become a voting member may do so at any time by
sending an email to the Membership Chair, David Wyatt <dwyatt@camtech.net.au>, with
no subject heading and pasting or typing in the text "I wish to be recognised
as a voting member of WAOE" (without the quotes).
Relinquishing Voting Membership
Voting members may revert to non-voting status (ie associate members) 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 from a voting
membership 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).
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Communications in WAOE
Ever since the global launch of WAOE in November last year, we have been trying hard to
establish a rational system of communications and discussion opportunities, but still with
only partial success. All new registrants are asked to subscribe to WAOE-News in
order to confirm their associate membership and to provide WAOE officers with a forum for
sending important messages that we can be confident members will see. Lately, the
take-up rate has increased, but the number of subscribers to WAOE-News still falls far
short of the total number of registrants.
An obvious solution is to auto-subscribe members to the listserve. There are some
technical and other problems with doing this, but these are gradually being
overcome. In the meantime, we need to keep explaining the communication and
discussion arrangements we have set up, and urging all members to take full advantage of
them.
Voluntary Effort
It is most important for members to realise that the often very time-consuming and
technologically challenging work of WAOE officers is completely voluntary. Behind
what we hope presents to members - not always convincingly! - as a smooth and efficient
system of electronic communications lies a continuing effort to find simple and low- or
no-cost ways of maintaining good email links and data transfer across a far flung and very
loose cluster of some 700+ 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.
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 spell
out once more the arrangements that we have made for members to be able to participate in
WAOE, and to urge you all to use them for their intended purposes.
You can get a total picture of the communication and discussion system from the Communication page of the WAOE Website.
You can also help by making a donation to WAOE.
WAOE-News
WAOE-News is the official venue for major announcements of interest and concern to all
members. We are trying to use this listserve sparingly, so that, when something does
come to members from that source, it will be recognised immediately as significant.
If you haven't yet subscribed, please don't wait for automation of the process.
Click on <majordomo@uidaho.edu> right now. When the email form opens, send the
text "subscribe waoe-news," without any subject heading and without the
quotes. WAOE-News also provides an archive of past messages for
those of you who would like to delve more deeply into our formative period.
WAOE-Views
WAOE-Views is an unmoderated and unthreaded listserve intended to be used very openly and
freely for exchanging information, sharing ideas, expressing opinions, and so on about the
core business of WAOE - the continuing improvement of the quality of online
education. Now that WEB has started, its Your Say section
will be the venue for members to raise questions or make comments about various aspects of
the organisation of WAOE as such. This will leave more room than at present for
discussions on WAOE-Views to concentrate on the broader concerns members have about online
education. If you have not yet subscribed to WAOE-Views, click on
<majordomo@waoe.org>. When the email form opens, send the text "subscribe
waoe-views," without any subject heading and without the quotes. WAOE-Views
also provides a searchable
archive of previous postings.
WAOE WebBoard
This is a secure, moderated and threaded discussion board used to facilitate structured
discussions about specific topics. Topics will usually, but not necessarily, be
related to important aspects of the running of WAOE. Topics will be put onto the
WebBoard by the Manager, Mike Warner, when doing so would help to streamline discussion
and relieve the clutter and congestion that might otherwise be caused on WAOE-Views.
In this way, topics that generate substantial discussion after members raise them
originally through the Your Say section of WEB, WAOE-Views or
other WAOE forums - all of which are regularly attended and monitored by WAOE officers -
will be singled out for more focused attention and due consideration.
If you have yet to explore the current topics on the WAOE WebBoard, you could click on the link,
or bookmark it for later. When you get to the site you will see that it is is secure
and restricted. Use the first part of your email address (before @) to login and
"waoe" (without quotes) as the password. If you accept the cookies, you
should not need to go through that process again. For assistance or queries or
feedback etc, write to Mike Warner at <mwarner@embryriddle.k12.az.us>.
Asynchronous Meetings and Time Conversion
WAOE officers are learning - the hard way! - the vital importance for open communications
and good discussions of coordinating the times at which people located all over the world
might conveniently be enabled to "meet" online, in real time. This is far
from an easy task and so all WAOE formal meetings and other forums will be held on an
asynchronous basis. Participants in meetings, or smaller sub-groups, might agree
among themselves to confer for a designated period by MOO or Webchat or some other
electronic means within the total time frame provided for any meeting, but members will
always be given sufficient notice and time to facilitate participation in key discussions
via email.
Occasionally, it will be necessary to set a deadline for members to vote or otherwise
respond on a particular matter. The recent ballot was a case in point.
Nominations of and subsequent voting for office-bearers would be another recurring
example. For such purposes, WAOE will work on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) as the
global standard, and a link to an excellent, user-friendly time zone converter will be
provided in every number of WEB and in all announcements of online meetings.
Time Conversion: <http://155.43.48.225:2020/timew.html>
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Donations
WAOE is committed to the principle of volunteerism, which means essentially that the
affairs of the Association will be conducted and managed as far as practicable by the
active and voluntary commitment of time and energy on the part of all members and the
officers they elect from time to time to take on specific organisational roles. This
approach has taken WAOE a long way, but operational costs are increasing for unavoidable
items like server access, domain names, incorporation fees, account keeping charges,
etc. The Coordinating
Ring, WAOE's elected management executive, has agreed that a small membership
subscription of $US 10 per annum will be introduced from July 1 1999 to help offset some
of these costs. More information about this fee and payment arrangements will be
presented in a later Bulletin, when these matters can be set into the full context of
policies and procedures on renewal of membership. However, it should be emphasised
at this stage that, small as the fee is, it will be possible for members to seek exemption
from it in return for making a significant contribution to the running of the Association,
or on the grounds of severe financial hardship.
A highly tentative projected
budget for the first year of operation was included in the documents submitted as part
of the incorporation process. While this projection is really just a
"guesstimate," waiting to be informed and modified by actual experience, it is
clear that membersâ subscriptions alone will fall well short of the funds needed to make
WAOE really work (indeed, there will be no such income at all in the budget for
1998/1999). Consequently, WAOE officers are constantly looking out for external
sources of finance, such as donations, grants and monies for special projects.
Against this background, we would like to ask WAOE members to:
1. Make a donation towards current running expenses, and/or
2. Provide any information which might be helpful to the quest for external funding.
If you are in a position to do either or both of these things, your contribution will
be most gratefully received. Please contact the Treasurer, Jenna Seehafer,
<seehafer@csus.edu>.
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Forthcoming Meetings
Each fortnight, this section of WEB will include information about meetings of WAOE
committees, OCREWs and other groups that are coming up within the ensuing fortnight.
All members of WAOE - both associate and voting members - are welcome to attend these
meetings and contribute to discussion. Of course, only the duly elected or otherwise
designated members of WAOE's organisational committees may take part in any formal voting
on matters for decision.
Planning and Finance Committee Meetings
The Planning and Finance Committee (PFC - <www.waoe.org/pfc.html>) is an advisory
committee whose purpose is to make recommendations to the Board of Directors
regarding issues concerning incorporation, bookkeeping, accounting, banking, currency
exchange, tax status, and financial planning for WAOE.
PFC meetings are held entirely online over a 48 hour period on the third Friday and
Saturday GMT of every month. The next PFC meeting in March will begin at 0001
GMT on the 19th of March and end at 2359 GMT on the 20th of March.
The agenda will be posted and meetings will take place at the WAOE WebBoard (contact Michael Warner
<mwarner@embryriddle.k12.az.us> if you need a password for the WAOE WebBoard).
Meetings will be held by email addressed to all members of the committee if the Web-board
is not
available.
If you wish to make donations to WAOE or if you are interested in participating on this
committee, please send email to the Treasurer, Jenna Seehafer, <seehafer@csus.edu>.
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News Briefs
Results of the February Ballot
The Special Members Meeting (Feb. 11- 16, 1999) included a ballot which asked voting
members to
1. affirm that the elected officers of WAOE as an organization are the elected officers
and directors of WAOE as a corporation - passed unanimously
2. call for the First Board of Director's meeting within 45 days of the close of the polls
- passed with 97% Yes votes and 3% Abstentions
3. ratify the Bylaws - passed unanimously
4. approve waivers of formal notice of meetings and ballots to the waoe-news listserve -
failed to receive the desired unanimous vote: 85.7% Yes, 5.7% No, 8.6% Abstentions
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Establishment of the Educational Standards OCREW
The newly formed Educational Standards Online Course and Resource Evaluation Workgroup
(ESOCREW - http://www.waoe.org/edst_ocrew.htm)
is a voluntary workgroup associated with WAOE's Online
Educators' Development Committee (OEDC). Its primary purpose is to develop
and/or adopt a set of general criteria for measuring the efficacy of both the pedagogy and
design of online education. Members will investigate, research, compile and post,
discuss, and eventually recommend a set of general standards for online education
applicable to all levels in all fields of study. Subject Area OCREWS may then use
WAOE's general recommended standards as a starting point in establishing more specific
criteria for online pedagogy in their own particular fields.
If you are interested in joining this OCREW or contributing to our efforts,
please contact Jenna Seehafer <seehafer@csus.edu>.
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Crows Nest
The purpose of the Crows Nest section is to give members a foretaste of important
developments that are taking place in WAOE, and to provide early notice of major events or
meetings that are coming up. It would be good if the section were not dominated by
announcements of various kinds by WAOE officers which are not sufficiently important to go
to WAOE-News, so if you can see something coming down the online education track
that you believe all WAOE members should be aware of, send an email about it to the WEB
Editor, David Wyatt <dwyatt@camtech.net.au>.
Online Course and Resource evaluation Workgroups (OCREWs)
We mentioned earlier that the WAOE Committee System is not carved in stone and that some
re-thinking is taking place about the OCREWs side of the Association, in particular.
WAOE Officers are looking for an approach which will, at one and the same time,
¨ assist us to bring members with like interests in online communication into effective
touch with each other
¨ remain consistent with the basic structure and organisation which we promulgated at the
time of incorporation
¨ but not necessarily lock our development into the specific components described in the
outline of the Proposed WAOE Committee System in the Archive of Founding
Documents file on the WAOE Website.
You might like to look at that file and reflect on those important objectives now, in
anticipation of the article about canvassing and catering for membersâ specific
interests in online education which should appear in the WEB Ideas and Issues section of
the next Bulletin.
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Online Educator Course
The idea for an online educators course has been welcomed by the WAOE Coordinating Ring
and is now under active consideration, under the general auspices of the Online Educators' Development Committee.
The course is envisaged as a vehicle for addressing the need for online collaborative
experience in both a tutoring and a learning role. This is reflected in an
inter-generational design that allows participants to embed their emerging skills gained
in a learner role by going on to participate in the tutoring team for the next delivery of
the course. More news will follow once plans are further advanced.
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Your Say
The idea of this section of WEB is to offer a specific forum where members can ask
questions or raise concerns or make comments about any aspect of the organisation and
running of WAOE itself. So, if anything is bothering your - or even if you'd like to
pay us a compliment! - send an email to the WEB Editor and Membership Chair, David Wyatt
<dwyatt@camtech.net.au>. If the message is printable ;-)), it will appear in
the next available number. And, depending upon the responses generated, it may help
to start up a thread of discussion on the WAOE WebBoard.
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WAOE Links
This section lists URLs for key Websites within WAOE itself, and other URLs related to
online education which have been identified by members.
WAOE Organisation and Communication Sites:
WAOE Home Page: <http://www.waoe.org/default.htm>
WAOE-News: <majordomo@uidaho.edu> [Without a subject heading, send the text
<subscribe waoe-news>]
WAOE-Views: <majordomo@waoe.org> [Without a subject heading, send the text
<subscribe waoe-views>]
WAOE WebBoard: <http://www2.ec.erau.edu:8080/~waoe>
[Use the first part of your email address (before @) to login and <waoe> as the
password. For queries or assistance, write to Mike Warner
<mwarner@embryriddle.k12.az.us>]
WAOE Journal: <http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/waoe/waoej.html>
WAOE Committees, OCREWs and Other Groups
Online Educator Development Committee: <http://ifets.gmd.de/waoe/oedc/>
Planning and Finance Committee: <http://www.waoe.org/pl-fin-committee.htm>
Educational Standards Online Course and Resource Evaluation Workgroup (OCREW):
<http://www.waoe.org/edst_ocrew.htm>
Online Education Development and Discussion Sites
Links-Sharing Page: <http://155.43.48.225:2020/walnklst.html>
[This is an organised set of links relevant to online education which various
members of WAOE have provided. If you know of other useful links that you would like
to share with other members, please comment on them via WAOE-Views
<majordomo@waoe.org> or send them directly to <waoe@waoe.org> for
inclusion on the Links Sharing Page.
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Feedback
Your comments on WEB would be most welcome. In future Bulletins, a selection of
members' feedback will be printed here. Please send email to the Editor, David
Wyatt, <dwyatt@camtech.net.au>.
For this particular issue, we would like to hear from any member who had any trouble in
receiving the bulletin, either in email (text and html) form or as an attachment, and to
take suggestions on how the problem might be overcome.
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####################
Copyright
Copyright in the contents of this Bulletin is held by the World Association for Online
Education (WAOE), incorporated in the State of California, United States of America as a
non-profit organisation. For enquiries, contact WAOE at <waoe@waoe.org>.
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End of WEB Vol1, No1, March 10 1999.
