Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group Charter (draft)
The mission of the Open Web Education Alliance Incubator
Group, part of the Incubator Activity, is to enhance and standardize the architecture of the World Wide Web by educating future generations of Web professionals. The means of accomplishment are
- fostering open communication channels for knowledge transfer
- curriculum sharing between corporate entities, educational institutions, Web development professionals, and students.
The goal of this Incubator Group is to bring web standards and best practices to the education process by
- facilitating the spread of approved curricula
- encouraging cutting edge training for educators and students
- coordinating educational programs with the needs of industry.
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 often does not meet the needs of the industry. Because of drastically 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' 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, and students can establish a mutually beneficial educational standard that will foster a more comprehensive scope for Web developer education. This group intends to:
- Create and assemble a standards-based curriculum that fosters best practices in the classroom
- Distribute these teaching materials into high schools, two-year degree programs, and four-year colleges/universities
- Bring together a broad group of industry and education organizations to endorse and evangelize the curriculum
- Provide up-to-date teaching resources on an ongoing basis
- Support the open education of educators, to keep their knowledge and skills current
Wherever possible, financial considerations for software, hardware, and services will be taken into account in these curricula, with a general emphasize on technique over tools. This group will attempt to collaborate with government and educational entities to ascertain appropriate materials, and to meet various local and federal regulations for teaching criteria. Any lesson plans will be developed in a modular fashion, with redundant approaches, to allow educators to tailor the order, focus, and pacing to their particular needs, in order to foster adoption.
Success Criteria
The Open Web Education Alliance Incubator Group will be considered successful if it can pull together broad agreement by industry and educational leaders to establish a base-level curriculum for the Web development profession, and can facilitate adoption of this curriculum in a significant number of diverse educational institutions, as appropriate to an international context.
Out of Scope
This Incubator Group does not intend to directly certify professionals. The development of a concrete curriculum is also 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 a more expansive and comprehensive effort. As such, this Incubator Group intends to publish a white paper on guidelines for the development of a Web Standards Education curriculum, which may include a proposed set of basic lesson plans and scope of materials, and a plan for deploying these materials into educational institutions. The Incubator Group also intends to document details for an ideal and pragmatic forum for producing and promoting a curriculum (perhaps within W3C), to identify the relevant organizations and individuals who should be involved in ongoing work, and to explore the possibility of professional education credits for participation in such a framework.
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-xg-WebEd@w3.org (archive). The group's Member-only list is member-xg-WebEd@w3.org (archive).
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
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