[*draft*] Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group Charter
The mission of the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to help enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by facilitating the highest quality standards and best practice based education for future generations of Web professionals through such activities as
- fostering open communication channels for knowledge transfer
- curriculum sharing between corporate entities, educational institutions, Web professionals, and students.
The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring together interested individuals, companies, and organizations with a strong interest in the field of educating Web professionals, to explore the needs and issues around the topic of Web development education. This Incubator Group will detail the options for establishing a group dedicated to bringing Web standards and best practices to the process of educating future professionals in Web professions, no matter where this training and education might be provided, and will define the goals, activities, and a clear mission for such an organization, and will seek to establish this organization's viability and role.
This Incubator Group has been initiated by various independent projects and organizations such as the Opera Developer Community, Yahoo! Developer Network/Juku, Web Directions, Web Standards Project (WaSP) InterAct Curriculum, World Organization of Webmasters (WOW), and other groups, as a united forum within which to pursue their shared goals of improved Web development education.
Join the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group.
| End date |
10 February 2010 |
| Confidentiality |
Proceedings are public |
| Initial Chairs |
John Allsopp |
| Initiating Members |
|
| Usual Meeting Schedule |
Teleconferences: Every two weeks
Face-to-face: 2-3 per year |
Scope
The current educational climate for Web development technologies and practices often does not meet the needs of industry. Because of significantly differing curricula and standards of quality between educational facilities, students are often not adequately prepared to immediately enter the Web development profession, and prospective employers do not have sufficient information to judge applicants' knowledge and skills. This is exacerbated by the rapidity of changes within the Web development industry, and by the varying implementations of technologies. Additionally, there is sometimes a disconnect between a theoretical approach, and the direct experience of professional developers who must adapt to the real-world capabilities of browsers. Finally, the wide scope of the profession, ranging from presentational design, to user interface design, to client-side and server-side programming, makes comprehensive education more difficult. The Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group is intended as an open forum within which educators, employers, professionals, students and other interested parties can explore and recommend a mutually beneficial peak organization that will foster a more comprehensive scope for the education of Web professionals. This group intends to consider and make recommendations regarding the nature and activities of such an organization including
- the appropriate type of organization (W3 working group, incorporated not for profit, or other entity) for carrying out the long term mission of furthering standards and best practice in Web education
- sustainability and resourcing for such an organization
- the charter or constitution for the organization
- membership criteria for such an organization
- executive and board positions, their election or appointment
- intellectual property policies
The group will publish a detailed white paper outlining options and recommendations in relation to these issues. It is hoped that these recommendations will be adopted and enacted within a relatively short time frame.
Success Criteria
The Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group will be considered successful if it can establish broad industry agreement as to the nature, goals and activities of a peak industry body to further the adoption of standards and best practice as the foundations of the education of Web professionals, leading to the formation of such an organization in a reasonable timeframe (ideally by early 2010), with broadly representative membership of companies, Web and educational professionals, educational institutions, and other organizations with a strong stake in the Web.
Out of Scope
The development of a concrete curriculum is outside the scope of this Incubator Group, though such deliverables are the ultimate goal of this activity.
Deliverables
The Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group is intended as a forum to lay the groundwork for more expansive and comprehensive efforts to harmonize and promote standards and best practice as the foundation of the education of future Web professionals. As such, this Incubator Group intends to publish a white paper detailing an ideal and pragmatic forum for producing and promoting Web education curricula, and other activities for furthering the education of Web professionals (perhaps within W3C), and to detail the nature, membership, activities, goals and mission of such an organization.
Dependencies
W3C Groups
- eGovernment Interest Group
- The eGovernment Interest Group is expected to have insight, contacts, and resources to help establish and review a curriculum, and to disseminate and promote teaching materials.
- Education & Outreach Working Group
- The Education & Outreach Working Group is chartered to develop strategies, and awareness and training resources, to educate a variety of audiences regarding the need for Web accessibility and approaches to implementing Web accessibility.
Participation
Educators, industry professionals, Web development employers, and students are encouraged to participate in this Incubator Group. Participants must be willing to actively develop and donate materials towards the group deliverables, as well as attend the majority of the group's teleconferences and face-to-face meetings.
Communication
This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-owea@w3.org (archive). The group's participant-only list is public-owea-xg@w3.org (archive) [Note: should this be a public list, or a member-only list??].
Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group home page.
Decision Policy
As explained in the Process Document (section 3.3), this group will seek
to make decisions when there is consensus. When the Chair puts a question and observes dissent, after due consideration of different opinions,
the Chair should record a decision (possibly after a formal vote) and any objections, and move on.
- When deciding a substantive technical issue, the Chair may put a question before the group. The Chair must only do so
during a group meeting, and at least two-thirds of participants in Good Standing must be in attendance. When the Chair conducts a formal vote to reach a decision on a substantive technical issue, eligible voters may vote on a proposal one of three ways: for a proposal, against a proposal, or abstain. For the proposal to pass there must be more votes for the proposal than against. In case of a tie, the Chair will decide the outcome of the proposal.
- This charter is written in accordance with Section 3.4, Votes of the W3C Process Document and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.
Patent Policy
This Incubator Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on the topic addressed by this charter. W3C reminds Incubator Group
participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Incubator Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Incubator
Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.
Incubator Groups have as a goal to produce work that can be implemented on a Royalty Free basis, as defined in the W3C Patent Policy.
Participants agree to offer patent licenses according to the W3C Royalty-Free licensing requirements described in Section 5 of the W3C Patent Policy for any portions of the XG
Reports produced by this XG that are subsequently incorporated into a W3C Recommendation produced by a Working Group which is chartered to take
the XG Report as an input. This licensing commitment may not be revoked but may be modified through the Exclusion process defined in Section 4 of the Patent Policy.
Participants in this Incubator Group wishing to exclude essential
patent claims from the licensing commitment must join the Working Group created to work on the XG Report and follow the normal exclusion
procedures defined by the Patent Policy.
The W3C Team is responsible for notifying all Participants in this Incubator Group in the event that a new Working Group is proposed to
develop a Recommendation that takes the XG Report as an input.
For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy
Implementation.
Additional Information
About this Charter
This charter for the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group has been created according to the Incubator Group Procedures documentation. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter
and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.
Doug Schepers, W3C
Copyright© 2009 W3C ¨ (
MIT , ERCIM , Keio), All Rights Reserved.
$Date: 2009/05/23 18:41:08 $