edna.edu.au

Selection criteria are applied to identify quality content that actively enhances education and training.

Accessibility

Content should be accessible, readable, easy to use and navigate, and freely available to the public. Commercial content should be limited to recognised professional learning events, and advertising should not be prominent.

Authority

Content should be authoritative, predominantly from educational organisations, government agencies or from reputable groups and organisations focused on education and training.

Currency

Content should be of current interest to Australian educators, and cover new and emerging issues. Sites should include dates of publication and review to demonstrate updating occurs on a regular basis, and should contain working links to external sites.

Ethics and legality

Content must uphold social justice, equity and human rights principles, comply with copyright and legal regulations and must conform to the edna code of practice.

Objectivity

Content should be objective, impartial and unprejudiced. Overall the balance of sites and resources included in the edna collection should demonstrate a range of representative views and positions.

Reliability

Content should be free of error in terms of both site content and site performance, containing information that is reliable, correct and verifiable. The content should be well-written, well-maintained and functional.

Uniqueness

Content should be directly relevant to education and training in Australia, provide key education and training content and contain significant information that is not available from other sources.

The edna code of practice reflects the federated, collaborative nature of edna services and encourages educators thoughout Australia to collaborate and contribute quality content to edna. This code applies to all edna content contributors and to all participants in edna collaborative activities.

All content contributions for the edna repository will be reviewed by edna staff before inclusion.

Content of edna collaborative services is the responsibility of the individual owners and facilitators of these services. These owners are expected to:

• establish with members the norms and practices for dialogue and interaction
• ensure all contributions including email and forum postings comply with the edna code of practice and monitor the quality of contributions to ensure continuing compliance
• create a policy on the process of how grievances will be handled and resolution attempted

Registered users of edna's login service can contribute directly to Groups, Lists and me.edu.au of which they are members, depending on the policies of each service.

The code is based upon the principles of limiting the exposure of edna users to harmful or unsuitable materials while protecting the freedom of expression of all individuals in society.

Contributions to edna should:

• make a positive contribution to education and training
• foster constructive exchanges.

Contributions to edna should not:

• use obscene language
• harass, insult or attack others
• be defamatory
• involve or advocate illegal activities
• violate human rights
• contravene copyright laws
• display offensive and pornographic images
• harm or disturb users
• have depictions that condone or incite violence, particularly sexual violence
• portray any person in a demeaning manner.

edna registration may be revoked if an individual or group fails to:

• meet the criteria for registration with the edna service
• uphold the edna code of practice, or
• meet edna content standards.

Typically, a grievance is likely to be in response to a decision that certain submitted or contributed content is unsuitable.

The status quo will apply to the content under review until the grievance is resolved.

4.1  Reconsideration

The initial grievance will lead to reconsideration of the content by the initial contributor. Reconsideration should be based on the edna content standards and the stated basis of the grievance.

4.2  Conciliation/negotiation

If the reconsideration of the content does not result in a resolution acceptable to the grievance instigator, the edna management team will be asked to attempt a solution or compromise acceptable to both parties.

4.3  Appeal

If conciliation fails an appeal may be lodged with the Chief Executive Officer of education.au, who will lead the appeal process outlined below.

An appeal group will be convened which may be constituted from other  advisory groups operating with edna. The group should be small and quickly convened, with the following membership represented:

• original content contributor
• expertise in the content area
• a community representative
• recent education and training experience

The deliberations of the appeal group will be based on the edna content standards and code of practice.