Pretty sure no one from IATEFL reads, but maybe someone knows someone who knows someone who can pass my message on. Actually, not sure anyone at all is reading anymore, what with me aiming to be the last blogger not on Twitter, but here goes anyway…
As I have documented repeatedly in other blog posts, the name “IATEFL” is used over and over again to add a layer of respectability to dodgy TEFL courses, often is ways that is a complete lie and/ or in direct contravention of how IATEFL says their name and logo should be used. Although I’m happy to help tackle this when I can, as IATEFL is there to raise standards in this industry I think it is a matter that they should take into their own hands. Here’s my idea for how it could be done in a few easy steps:
1. Google “accredited by IATEFL” and write to the people who use this on their website to remind them that no such thing exists and asking them to remove such statements.
2. Create a page on the IATEFL website where organisations that do not respond to that and other warning emails below will be blacklisted
3. Do the same with anyone using the IATEFL logo
4. Change the rules so that organisations cannot state “Institutional member of IATEFL” on their websites, in the same way as they are not supposed to use the logo now
5. Do the same with abuses of that rule, including searching the websites of all institutional members who are TEFL training course providers every time they send their membership fee in to make sure they aren’t breaking this rule
6. Change the rules so that organisations that abuse the name and/ or logo can have their membership revoked
7. Create an email or website page listing abuses and punishments that is sent automatically to all training organisations when they send their membership fee
8. Start Google Alerts to instantly inform IATEFL when anyone does any of those naughty things above
TESOL Inc. basically need to do exactly the same thing, but starting with the rule that IATEFL already has of no use of their logo except by international affiliates such as TESOL Spain.
For two examples of how easy it is to get TEFL course providers into line on this, see here.
TEFLtastic 
I’m not “from IATEFL”, but I’m the webmaster of the IATEFL Teacher Development SIG, and a member of the SIG committee. I’ll raise this issue as part of a current debate about our web presence in general – I think it’s important. Cheers.
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It’s good timing to raise the issue, now, Alex. This way people can put it on their agenda for meetings at the upcoming conference in mid-April. Let’s hope.
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Thanks Mark, that would be great
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Alex,
Thanks for this. As Chair of the newly-formed ElCom (Electronics Committee) of IATEFL – and past Honorary Secretary – I should, perhaps respond.
We do spend time trying to deal with abuse along these lines, but here’s the rub: we have a very small full-time staff, limited resources, and can’t afford to get embroiled in expensive legal action to take these people down. It’s not a good use of our members’ money.
So we do try – we contact people and we explain the rules (which are clearly explained on our website) and we ask them to go quietly into the night. Most do, some don’t – the ones who don’t cause us more grief as we simply can’t afford, generally – in terms of human resources and monetary ones – to take them through the due process to force them to remove the logo, etc.
It’s not quite as simple as it may appear…
Gavin
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Gavin,
How’s it going?
I know there’s a small paid staff, but IATEFL has a lot of enthusiastic members who get involved in all sorts of projects on a voluntary basis. I’m sure if asked, there would be a fair number of web-savvy members willing to keep an eye out for transgressors (using the Google Alerts method for starters), and sending out friendly warning emails. A blacklist wouldn’t be that difficult to maintain, and would show up in a web search of the miscreant’s business name, warning potential customers that they were a bit iffy.
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Mark,
Do you want to put together and lead the team? Serious question, by the way…
We actually have a shortage of volunteers, generally, in IATEFL. And they tend to volunteer for a SIG with which they feel an affinity, rather than for more administrative duties. But if you think you could make a team like that work, we’d be delighted :-)
Gavin
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Hi Gavin
I don’t think you can solve it completely and I don’t expect IATEFL to sue anyone, but I do think there is more that could be done. Although it was a little time consuming, I managed to get two out of the three organisations that I found were claiming to be accredited by IATEFL to change those statements on their websites. I did that without having any connection to IATEFL with the simple threat of publicizing their misdeeds online. I’m pretty sure I would have the same level of success with telling people to take the IATEFL logo down, but that is indeed too time consuming for one person to take on. I wonder if you could create a standard template for a warning email that you could then ask your members to send out whenever they spot some abuse. Alternatively, maybe you could have a simple way of reporting abuse.
How you do the blacklisting would also include something else that occured to me might need some thought, which is SEO. I just Googled “institutional member of IATEFL”, something that people searching for TEFL courses might see written and wonder what it means. Unfortunately, no IATEFL pages appear in the first page of results.
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I started writing that comment before the two comments above appeared. Great to see we are all thinking along the same lines!
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As Mark said, what you want is a search for abusing companies’ names to end up on your blacklist page. The most Google-friendly way of maintaining a blacklist would also be the easiest to maintain, which would be a blog which had one entry per abuser, with that post being taken down when they no longer abused.
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If I get to call it something like “fighting evil” instead of “administrative duties”, I’ll do it.
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Mark,
Job’s yours – write your own job title…
G
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OK, as the newly appointed IATEFL [insert invented job title here] I think Alex’s action plan is a good starting point. Do you see any problems with it, Gavin? How would IATEFL feel about a blacklist, for example? What about revoking membership? Let’s set out some “rules of engagement”.
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How about “IATEFL enforcer” Mark?
If you need volunteers for collecting names for the blacklist and/ or emailing offending schools, put me first on the list and I’ll use this blog to try to get more once the systems are set up. Not capable of anything more technically demanding than that though…
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Mark,
It’s a good action plan. The real issue is that we have to ensure that nobody goes on the blacklist who shouldn’t be there. I don’t think there would be any great objection to having a blacklist (though I would have to run that past the Coordinating Committee as a recommendation from ElCom – yes, I know, it’s slow and ponderous, but them’s the rules) as long as it was easily updateable and didn’t increase workload at Head Office.
Gavin
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As I said above, the easiest and best way is probably to have it as a blog with one entry per abuse.
When you find any kind of abuse, you contact the people asking them to take it down from their website. If there is no response or an inadequate one, you write to them again telling them of your plan to put them on the blacklist. After a couple of weeks with still no (adequate) response, you put them on the blacklist and send them a link to it. Whenever they take some action, you amend that entry (if it is some kind of improvement but not quite there) or delete the post.
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Sounds reasonable to me :-)
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Me too. Gavin, can you get sign off on this and permission to set up an IATEFL-hosted blog? A standard letter would also be useful. I suggest using a Google Spreadsheet between the members of the Enforcer team to log the names, URL and email addresses of perps for further investigation. Or a wiki. We could call it “IATEFLeaks”.
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Oh, and it’d be great to have you as one of the team, Alex :) And, no, I haven’t forgotten the review.
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Thanks Mark, Alex and Gavin for the discussion. The suggested way forward sounds potentially good to me. My main gripe would be that we would thereby be inadvertently be giving those schools free PR who least deserve it, and the old saying of there being no such thing as bad PR certainly does hold true. But Gavin, please do put it forward for discussion and let’s see how we can deal with this.
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I feel some ideas above are good, but if someone writes on their website “Institutional Member of IATEFL” and they are an institutional member of IATEFL, why would this be misrepresentation?
It’s very common for individuals and companies to publicize their professional organization memberships.
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Billy, if someone writes Insitututional Member of IATFEL on a page headed Accreditation and promoting a teaching qualification, isn’t that a misrepresentation? Many do this. If it’s on a page about professional organisation membership, it’s different.
Alex, as well as blacklisting them, might it be a good idea to get other places to promote the information, so that results pages show multiple sources for this, which would lend it credence? This would also avoid publicising the schools and require less maintenance.
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I think that having a blacklist is a great idea. Organizations that abuse IATEFL tend to be multiple offenders, meaning that they also tend to slap up the other logos of others organizations as well. Putting them on the ‘radar’ would be useful in helping everyone to crack down.
Thanks Gavin and Mark for already taking some action with this. Are any of you also involved with TESOL, as the same thing needs to be done there. And again, this should be brought up soon, as there big conference is also just around the corner.
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Eric, I think the “no bad publicity” saying really only applies to pop stars and Charlie Sheen. A bad write up on a distinguished IATEFL blog would do vastly more damage than good to any organisation claiming to be professional and trustworthy. In case you don’t know, by adding
rel="nofollow"to links, this prevents search engines from taking the link as a recommendation. There’s a handy WordPress plugin which makes it easy.Tdol is right to say that “the more the merrier”, and we could also use other channels too.
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Oops. The previous comment about
rel="nofollow"was aimed at all cranky, complaining bloggers, not just Eric. Not that Eric is cranky or complaining.(Reminder: I must not comment before breakfast)
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Me, too. My last post had about five typos and five misspellings! OMG. Coffee first!
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To explain my original idea behind just banning organisations from mentioning their institutional membership in more detail:
– It doesn’t prove anything about their professional standards
– In fact, it is almost always mentioned most prominently by the least professional outfits, in a no doubt deliberate attempt to “prove” their respectability to people who, on the whole, are thinking of doing a basic TEFL course and therefore know nothing about the industry
-There are also no doubt people who are claiming to be institutional members without even bothering to pay their membership fee, and that would be a lot harder to track down than to just ban the whole practice wholesale
Banning that would not be exactly the same as banning use of the logo, because a logo is copyright (I think), whereas mentioning membership is not quite the same. If it is clearly written on documents people receive when they pay their subs, however, along with punishments such as revoking membership and/ or listing on blacklisting sites, I don’t see why IATEFL can’t make any rules they like about how their members use their name.
An alternative would be to impose a link to a page which quite clearly explains what institutional membership is and is not on any organisation which mentions it. I’m quite neutral on which of those two would be better.
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Folks,
Before anything, I think this is exactly the sort of input that we need in IATEFL, and – on behalf of the organisation – I’d like to thank you for all the input on this page. It is a serious matter, and we would certainly like to do more about it. The steps proposed here are all logical and reasonable and I’m sure we’ll be able to move forward with them.
But (and of course there had to be a but), I need to take this plan to the Coordinating Committee and Head Office to ensure that:
a) A majority are in favour
b) There are no major disagreements as to how things are done
c) Head Office feel they can be involved in a meaningful way
So, apologies for the but… but we do have an organisational structure and checks and balances are in place to ensure that nobody like me goes rogue and pulls the organisation down with mad decisions or actions!
So, the next step is for me to present the action plan to CoCo and see if we can get majority agreement to take it forward.
This may take a little time, but I just want you all to know that we do try to listen, we are grateful for the time and effort people put in to thinking about these issues, and we will try to put this into action as soon as possible.
Best,
Gavin
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Standing by…
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Thanks Gavin, much appreciated
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I can’t imagine there will be too many TEFL training courses who will want to be seen to have any sort of association with IATEFL after reading the above. If they mention on their website they’re an institutional member, they’ll be put on the self-proscribed blacklist above.
Misuse of their logo and name is a different issue which I don’t think has been dealt with by the all-encompassing posts above.
I think this page on IATEFL might stay empty for a while longer:
“…Do you have something you would like to advertise to your fellow ELT professionals? If so, then why not place an ad here? Whether it be a training course you are running…”
Billy Whizz
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Billy,
I think you misunderstand the nature if IATEFL. Quoting contextually from the website:
“IATEFL does not act as an accreditation body for organisations offering language or teacher training courses, or teacher development services of any kind. The appearance of the IATEFL name, acronym or logo on any organisation’s website (including IATEFL affiliates and partner associations) – either with or without permission – does not imply the endorsement of that organisation’s work, products or services.”
So, you see, no TEFL training courses can be seen to have any sort of association with IATEFL because we don’t do that at all. The full terms of IATEFL logo use are as follows:
“Use of IATEFL Logo
Use of our logo is restricted to the IATEFL website, SIG websites and official publications, stationery and communications from IATEFL itself.
The IATFL logo and “linking, developing and supporting English Language Teaching professionals throughout the world” word marks are forms over which we exert prior usage claim. Other product and company names featuring on the Web Site may be the trademarks of – or subject to prior usage by – their respective owners.
All contents of this Web Site, including any logos, text and software, are protected by copyright, database right and other intellectual property rights. You may, however, reproduce parts of the website by prior agreement with us.
IATEFL Affiliates
IATEFL has a number of affiliates worldwide which have agreements with the main body covering international cooperation and the support of teachers in countries specific to each affiliate. Use of the IATEFL logo by affiliates should be accompanied by a short text such as ‘an affiliate of IATEFL’ or similar. It should be noted that the use of our logo on any affiliate site is not an endorsement of the content of that site, any officers of the affiliate or any actions or transactions carried out by that affiliate, but rather a reflection of the working relationship between the two organisations. Any communication related to the affiliate website or the affiliate organisation itself should be directed to the affiliate in question, and the main IATEFL office.
IATEFL does not act as an accreditation body for organisations offering language or teacher training courses, or teacher development services of any kind. The appearance of the IATEFL name, acronym or logo on any organisation’s website (including IATEFL affiliates and partner associations) – either with or without permission – does not imply the endorsement of that organisation’s work, products or services.”
Best,
Gavin
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Gavin,
I think you misunderstood my point. I understand that the misuse of the logo and text from your website is abuse, breaks your rules and must be stopped. I totally agree with you. However, are you saying that an organization that doesn’t use your logo, doesn’t use text from your website but merely describes themselves as an ‘Institutional Member’ is breaking your rules? ‘Institutional Member’ is the description IATEFL uses when it accepts membership fees from organizations.
The above list contains organizations that clearly break your rules. However, there are also some that seem to me aren’t breaking your rules. However, it seems to me that you, as a spokesperson for IATEFL, feel they should be publicly blacklisted.
IATEFL is a professional organization. Is it wrong for an institutional member of this professional organization to say publicly that they are an institutional member?
One of the websites above describes itself as an institutional member under the heading ‘Professional Organization Membership’. Is this wrong?
I think you are saying that organizations that are members of IATEFL should be publicly blacklisted if they mention publicly they are members of IATEFL.
I look forward to your clarification.
Billy.
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As I’ve explained above, mentioning that they are institutional members is not presently against the rules, but it is often abused by:
– Having the logo when doing so (which is against the rules)
– Having a page of “Accreditation and memberships” or such like which mixes the two up without any explanation of which is which
– Saying that when it is not in fact true (not verifiable because there is no public list of IATEFL Institutional Members)
– Not giving any explanation of what institutional membership does and doesn’t mean (which also isn’t presently mentioned by the rules)
– Not linking to a relevant page on the IATEFL website
The result of all that is that at the moment some people who don’t know the industry well assume that particular courses which mention their institutional membership of IATEFL in some way have a badge of quality on them. We could perhaps say that it is their own responsibility to do some research and find out that IATEFL doesn’t check anything about their organisation before letting them become members. Nonetheless, I think this is something we should do something about if we can.
Although I agree that there are issues with the idea, I still believe that simply banning the mention of IATEFL institutional membership on websites is the way that entails the least admin. And what would the world of TEFL lose by the end of the this practice? If you mean that IATEFL would have something to lose, e.g. some of those organisations no longer paying their membership fees and perhaps a loss of status due to being mentioned less, you may perhaps be right and I’m sure they’ll want to consider that and think about other options such as forcing all people mentioning it to link to a particular page of the IATEFL site.
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Let’s add a little context.
The use of adding logos and names is widespread in marketing. Companies hope an association will be made. I agree that the realtionship should be clearly described between the organization and the company.
I Googled Gavin’s name and discovered within 2 minutes that he’s an investor, founder and technical director of net languages. As technical director, I guess he’s responsible for content. On these page
http://www2.netlanguages.com/info/english/educational/index.php
are the logos of these universities:
Chinese university of Hong Kong
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong Baptist University
Hong Kong Institute of education
Lignan University
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Universitat De Barcelona
University Pompeu Fabra
I do not see an explanation of the relationship between the universities and his company. Alex suggests there should be links to the organization’s websites as well, but I don’t see that. On other pages there are the logos of organizations such as Cambridge University Press, Siemens, Audi, Credit Suisse etc.
In addition, Gavin’s company is part of International House (IH) which is one of the largest CELTA course providers in the world. IH is also in direct competition with independent TEFL courses such as the ones listed above.
Billy
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These are all good points, but I still wonder why anyone would feel so strongly about organisations no longer being able to say that on their websites. Also, are you saying the linking to IATEFL page idea is too much to ask as well, just because other people don’t do the same thing?
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Alex,
If companies stay within the rules of IATEFL, I don’t see a problem. If IATEFL want to change their rules and/or contact companies to inform them not to publicize that they are ‘Institutional Members’, I don’t see a problem there either. I think linking to a page on IATEFL’s website that explains what ‘Institutional Member’ means is also a good idea. I think having a blacklist on IATEFL’s website of companies that break IATEFL’s rules after repeated warnings is a good idea. However, I felt this thread was becoming a witch hunt.
I appreciate that you allowed my posts which I feel add a little balance to the screams of ‘burn the witch’.
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Billy,
Your Google skills are fine, but you need to work on your information handling skills. I have no relationship with Net Languages any longer, neither in professional nor economic terms, nor am I in any way responsible for the content of their website.
Similarly, my company has absolutely no relationship with International House, and never has…
A simple read of my bio on my company website would have cleared that up in seconds…
Best,
Gavin
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The current Institutional Membership page doesn’t mention accreditation of courses:
Meanwhile, perhaps the following (from the above) could also be added:
IATEFL does not act as an accreditation body for organisations offering language or teacher training courses, or teacher development services of any kind. The appearance of the IATEFL name, acronym or logo on any organisation’s website (including IATEFL affiliates and partner associations) – either with or without permission – does not imply the endorsement of that organisation’s work, products or services.”
There shouldn’t be a need for a vote on this one, as it’s already an existing IATEFL policy.
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Now all three schools that I found were actually claiming to be accredited or recommended by IATEFL have changed their websites due to a bit of online pressure:
So, blacklisting does work!
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Kind of in a different league, but this was kind of funny: http://bit.ly/fDRta7 (self-proclaimed TN SOM winner)
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SEE TEFL (from my list above of 15 or so course providers that came up in a Google search) has now also removed it completely.
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Spoke too soon, as it’s still listed on one of the two pages, but the logo is gone and it’s now under the title of ‘organizational membership’. Looks like some of the others have removed logos as well. At least that’s a start…
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Thanks TEFLista. We should point out perhaps that having the IATEFL name (rather than logo) under “organizational membership” is well within the IATEFL rules as they now stand.
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Gavin said: “Similarly, my company has absolutely no relationship with International House, and never has…”
But on his website is the logo of International House under the heading ‘Our Clients’.
He said: “I have no relationship with Net Languages any longer, neither in professional nor economic terms”
But on his website is the logo of Net Languages under the heading ‘Our Clients’.
There are one of the many he has on his website. There are logos for ‘The Scottish executive’, ‘University of Strathclyde’, ‘The BBC’, ‘The British Council’, ‘University of Cambridge ESOL exams’, ‘The Europen Union’, ‘London School of Economics’ and it goes on and on.
Have these logos been used with the permission of their copyright owners?
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Billy,
I was trying to correct your original assertions – let me just remind you of them, because I think you’re confusing certain key terms. In your original post you claimed the following:
“I Googled Gavin’s name and discovered within 2 minutes that he’s an investor, founder and technical director of net languages. As technical director, I guess he’s responsible for content. (…) In addition, Gavin’s company is part of International House (IH)”
In answering you I was merely pointing out that the relationships you suggested were, in fact, non-existent.
Yes, I have done work for both Net Languages and IH since forming The Consultants-E, but I have no relationship with either, nor am I director of anything for either, nor does my company form part of International House. It is worth being accurate here, I think.
I do hope that’s clearer now…
Gavin
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Gavin,
Have all those logos on your website – The Consultants-E – been used with the permission of their copyright owners?
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Billy,
I’m quite happy to continue talking about my company and our relationships with our clients (as far as confidentiality allows) for as long as you want to – but I’m certainly not going to continue it in a public forum. You’ll find my email address on our company website, so please feel free to write.
As for the IATEFL logo, the difference is clear, I feel – where institutions are using it to claim validation of courses or services, they are not within the logo guidelines.
Gavin
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According to Alex above there’s only one course that uses the IATEFL logo and claims that it is accredited by IATEFL. All the other courses on your black list are ‘guilty’ of using the logo and claiming they are Institutional Members of IATEFL. In most cases this is true.
However, you are using around 40 logos on your website without the copyright owners’ permission. You also claim that they are your clients. This may be true, but in many cases it’s also unlikely. According to Alex you are a market leader in online teaching and should be compared to the British Council, but according to Alexa your website is ranked 2,932,370. IE there are nearly 3 million websites more popular than your site.
I wouldn’t normally care what you put on your website or how you run your company, but you have come here as a spokesperson for IATEFL to attack courses that are in competition with your clients (IH and UCLES logos on your site under ‘Clients’).
If Bruce used just one of the logos on his site you’ve used, TEFLista and Alex would now be running blogs on it and calling him names.
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IATEFL already has a specific policy banning anyone but affiliate teaching organisations using their logo. However, I do believe that most people who do or did so (e.g. your organisation, billy) do or did so because they don’t or didn’t know that, and that it is IATEFL’s responsibility to spread the word more. Nonetheless, even if Gavin didn’t ask permission (which I don’t know one way or another), unless you can show that one of those organisations has a similar rule on use of their logo, it isn’t the same thing at all.
Also, in my opinion International House etc. choosing to use his services does prove something about the quality of his services. Someone paying IATEFL a membership fee proves nothing, and saying they have done so is almost always an attempt to insinuate that it is a proof of quality. It is nothing of the sort.
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Alex,
Happy to continue discussing this off list, but I’m not prepared to sit here on the blog whilst ‘billy’ carries on his ill-informed forensic research into my company and continues to make erroneous assertions about us (e.g. “You also claim that they are your clients. This may be true, but in many cases it’s also unlikely.”). Not sure what ‘billy’s’ grudge is, but I can’t waste any more time on it.
Best,
Gavin
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Fair enough Gavin.
Billy’s problem is easy to guess. He runs a course that claims it is internationally recognised despite there only being one centre, and attempts to use its institutional membership of IATEFL to hint that that is a kind of international recognition. Why they don’t list their subscription to ETP and MET I don’t know, because IATEFL membership doesn’t necessarily mean any more than that.
I’m investigating the other claims on his school’s website, and might do a piece on it if I get time.
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For any logo you need permission to use it. That’s just the law. The permission may be as informal as an Email but permission is necessary.
[EDITED and one reply by TEFLista deleted. I will not have this turning into another TEFL International thread. Other attempts to hijack threads will lead to people being banned, as will discussion here of this decision. You can of course email me though]
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