Photo: EduCloud Alliance’s organisation model
EduCloud Alliance’s (ECA) EDU community is an open network for all who are interested in ECA’s activities, and which pedagogical views and experiences guide ECA’s operations and create a foundation for technical implementation. EDU community’s operations include, for example, a variety of expert webinars, live meetings, workshops and online discussions.
The EDU community was founded in the spring of 2015 to bring practical experience and hopes as part of ECA’s development work. By collecting and listening to the community’s views, it is ensured that ECA’s technical development work corresponds to the actual needs of the education field. The aim is to enable the digital leap of education by enabling the introduction and integration of digital study material as part of the teachers’ own teaching style.
Operational objectives
ECA’s charter defines the structure of ECA and the objectives of activities. The aim of ECA is to...
- Promote the digitalisation and development of the education sector
- Promote cooperation in the spirit of openness in the education sector
- Create prerequisites and promote the export of education; operate as the door opener, if necessary, in international projects.
- Contribute to achieving national centralised user management and authentication
- Develop and guide national service architecture to support standardised services of the education sector
- Define the architecture of components included and supplementing ECA's standard, including the architecture of example implementation
- Develop an example implementation for the validation of the standard, for demo use and as a portal to actual trade locations and materials
- Bring the definition of ECA’s standard to a level where the developer of the trade platform can produce a trade location in accordance with the standard, and the content of content producers works in all these trade locations
- Thus, promote on its own behalf the production, internationalisation and business of commercial learning materials and educational services
Members
Anyone can become a member of the alliance with the ECA Accession Agreement. The different membership types have been defined in more detail in the Charter. ECA's membership fees. Since a wide range of operators belong to the alliance, the guidelines of competition law define the limitations, which the alliance's discussions shall comply with.
Parties that have signed the Accession Agreement and paid the membership fee shall be considered members of the EduCloud Alliance. Membership types have been divided into six different groups:
A strategic member shall gain a place in ECA’s management team. This type of membership is primarily for enterprises, communities and authorities, to whose strategy ECA belongs to.
A business and operational member is entitled to participate in the working groups’ activities, and the priority is leading the working groups. These members may, if necessary, also be invited to the management team. This type of membership is aimed for enterprises and communities that benefit from ECA and are actively involved in developing it.
A community member can be invited to working groups and the community is entitled to vote for one of its members to represent in the management team. A community member may be an entity or person, who has contributed to ECA and applied for community membership.
An Edu member may participate in working groups upon the request of the management team. This membership is aimed for users, customer representatives and other stakeholders, who are involved in determining ECA’s objectives and piloting the productions and materials of ECA and its members.
Municipalities and cities can be invited to working groups. This membership in aimed for cities and municipalities that are interested in promoting the technology standards used in education and want to influence the overall development of educational technologies in Finland (incl. authentication, standards, information transfer across learning platforms, interoperability of contents).
A startup member can be invited to working groups. The startup membership is aimed for startup companies that have operated less than 4 years that benefit from being a part of ECA, want to develop it further and be involved in international cooperation.
Coordinator for Open Source Technology
Management Team
EduCloud Alliance’s management team's duty is to be responsible for decision-making to the extent that the decision is not the responsibility of the chairman, transparency coordinator or the main architect. The management team shall appoint, for example, in addition to the chairman, deputy chairman and the transparency coordinator, the main architect and other necessary roles. The management team shall also convene the necessary working groups by selecting a leader from among the strategic or operational members, members or third parties, according to this priority order.
In addition, the management team decides on the budget and the tools to be used, as well as is responsible for the materials to be used in ECA’s official communications. The management team meetings’ protocols and all ECA’s working groups’ final productions are public.
The management team includes ECA’s strategic members, as well as the management team -appointed chairman and transparency coordinator. In addition, the community members may elect one representative for the management team from among themselves, and the business and operational and Edu members may participate in the meetings upon invitation.
Management Team Members 2023
Timo Väliharju (Chairman, Coordinator for Open Source Technology)
- Executive Manager, Centre for Open Systems and Solutions – COSS
- timo.valiharju @ coss.fi
- +358 50 330 3339