Orientation for Domain of One's Own at Emory, lead by Emory Writing Program

1. WHAT IS “DOMAIN OF ONE’S OWN?”
[Most campus digital publication] is premised upon an individual’s
enrollment in a university or college, and when they leave that
school this space will often disappear. [What] if we actually
purchased everyone* on campus a domain for one year and
framed the experience in such a way that all students, staff, and
professors were able to easily set up and control their online
identity through their own domain? The key here is the crafting of
an identity with a purpose, the conscious consideration and
creation of one’s professional/academic identity online: a domain
of one’s own! –Jim Groom, bavatuesdays (blog) November 29, 2008

2. DIGITAL LITERACY:
As part of the first-year orientation, each student would pick a
domain name. Over the course of the first year… students would
build out their digital presences (and) assemble a platform to
support their publishing, their archiving, their importing and
exporting, their internal and external information connections.
They would become, in myriad small but important ways, system
administrators for their own digital lives. In short, students would
build a personal cyberinfrastructure, one they would continue to
modify and extend throughout their college career — and beyond.
–Gardner Campbell, A Personal CyberInfrastructure (2009)
At the heart of Groom & Campbell’s vision is curriculum and a
pedagogy of civic engagement. Campbell asks higher ed to
“change curricula” so as to “empower the strong and effective
imaginations that students need for creative citizenship.”

3. REALIZING THE VISION AT UMW: 5 YEARS
In 2012-2013, UMW ran a pilot with 400 students.
In Fall 2013, all entering first-year students will be
issued domains.
“Instead of giving our students
the latest gadget or gizmo out
of Cupertino we’re offering
them a chance to build their
own space on the web that
they take with them when
they leave.”

4. ELEMENTS OF A DOMAIN PROJECT
o Intentional Publishing
o Tools & Platforms
o Multimodal Content
o Culture of Digital Literacy
o Faculty
o Students
o Infrastructure of Support
o Writing Program
o Other Centers

5. AUBURN: CURRICULUM DRIVES BEST USE
Auburn’s University Writing Program is rolling out its portfolio
support on an application-only basis in “cohorts” of 5
individual departments programs plus 2 other organizations.
Each group has to present a detailed plan for integrating
digital publication into the curriculum.
“The Year 1 Cohort included the
academic programs in the
Departments of Art, Building
Sciences, Pharmacy, Nursing, and
the MA Program in English, the co-
curricular program of Study
Abroad, and the student New Media
Club.
“For Year 2 (2013-2014) we aim to
add up to 5 additional academic
programs, 1 additional co-curricular
program, and 1 additional student
organization.”

6. At Auburn, curating sample projects and portfolios helps
students and faculty to re-imagine the curriculum.
Auburn’s program supports four
different easy, visual composing
tools: Weebly, Wix, Google Sites and
Wordpress.

7. HOW WILL EMORY’S PILOT WORK?
During AY 2013-14, the pilot will serve about 20 faculty, 25+
sections, and at least 450 students. We estimate another 100
students (mostly LGS) will request walk-in digital portfolio support in
connection with presentations at TATTO, or partnerships with LGS
initiatives such as the Three-Minute Thesis and public abstract
competitions.
o Fully support participating faculty by helping to
o Develop assignments suitable for digital publication
o Select platforms, acquire domains and publish course websites
o Curate examples and illuminate good practice
o Fully support participating students by providing
o In-class visits to introduce platforms & tools
o A rich array of support documentation, FAQ and how-to video
o One-on-one tutoring that integrates digital literacy with other
compositional considerations
The Emory Writing Program, with support from ECIT, DiSC and
other partners will

8. SUGGESTED SUMMER TIMELINE FOR FALL PARTICIPANTS
We’ll schedule sharing sessions once a month during the fall term.
We’ll keep an index page linking to your course websites and
student projects. If you’re willing, we may send graduate students
in a pedagogy course to observe one of your sessions. In the
spring, we hope to launch a THATcamp/Domain incubator.
May 14- June 1 Brainstorm assignments suitable for digital publication.
June 1- 30 Acquire domain, choose platform, create course website.
Typically users of an unfamiliar platform schedule two or
three visits with WP staff.
July 1-30 Finalize course calendar with detailed assignment sequences
and examples for students. Share with Domain-L for
feedback.
Late August Optional sharing session.

9. A WORD ON PLATFORMS: WHY NOT JUST WORDPRESS?
Wordpress is an amazingly powerful and useful publishing tool. It’s simple to
use, offers thousands of looks in different themes, and is constantly evolving in a
massive developers’ community.
In addition to Wordpress, however, Auburn supports three visual drag and drop
editors in its e-portfolio project. Why? For one thing, Wordpress isn’t an ideal tool
for creating static web pages.
For another: Capacious portfolios, and many personal domains, are likely to contain
many artifacts with different purposes, architecture and looks. It can be expensive
and complex to start a new domain for every class project! So for most users it will
be useful to have platforms that allow you to establish subdomains with different
themes and navigation.
In addition to Wordpress, we’ll support at least one major drag and drop
WYSIWYG editor, Weebly, and document how to use subdomains to apply
new themes & navigation. In special cases, ECIT will support Dreamweaver.
We have evaluated Google Sites, Wix and Webs and if you have a strong
preference for one, it is probably possible for us to support it for your class.
We’ll share some reviews regarding their different approaches

10. THE ANATOMY OF A DOMAIN
A vital, growing domain can’t be tied to a single push-button theme out of
a box. It has to support many different entry points for different
identities, purposes, and affiliations.
Joecollege.net
Site tour, job letter
and cv.
Collation of
tweets with
analysis
Autoethnography,
14 web pages
Film project, 8 web
pages: treatment, first
draft, shooting
script, storyboards, emb
edded final
project, distribution
narrative, final reflection
Archive of 1920s texts
on animal cruelty with
curatorial notes and
white paper, 35 ppActivist website:
map, interviews, analysis,
tactical media—
remix, parody, performan
ce, guide, join/donate/
crowdsource interactive
features
Striped Mussel
experiment w/lit
review, 12pp
Poetry, 9
0 web
pages
Photo
Blog &
Travel
Diary, 6
0
entries
Different site tour and
letter for grad school. Temple service
project, 14 pages
with video and forms

11. SYLLABUS PLANNING
Do you prefer to have students introduced to the technology in your class
or in supplemental sessions? //Do you have room in your course calendar
for studio time, sharing of work in progress, collaboration and peer
review?// Do you want to include low-stakes starter projects in which
students are free to make mistakes? //What is the relationship between
your less traditional coursework and more conventional writing?
What difference does publishing
make in assignment design? What
makes an assignment a good fit for
digital publication?

12. World Without Oil
Architecture Without Oil
Car Culture Without Oil
Dating Without Oil
Eating Without Oil
HealthWithout Oil
Immigration Without Oil
Jobs and More Jobs Without Oil
Knowledge Without Oil
Music Without Oil
Neighborhoods Without Oil
Real Estate Without Oil
Soldiers Without Oil
Teens and More Teens Without Oil
Urban Adventure Without Oil
Vision and More Vision Without Oil
Xtreme Partying Without Oil
Your Mama Without Oil
Zoom Zoom Without Oil
Good civic-engagement
assignments use real-world issues
to offer multiple contact points for
different students.

13. “Citizen Science”
has become
synonymous with
the crowdsourcing
of unpaid labor for
big data, as at
scistarter.com But is
there a real citizen
science out there?
Can your class
scaffold
legitimate, modest,
yet original
contributions to
academic
discourse?
If publishing is sharing to a
community with an interest in a
common suite of problems, what
does it take for the shared text—
the writing– to matter?

14. NEWMEDIA
& DIGITAL
PUBLISHING
Sharing with a
community of
persons
working on
the same suite
of problems.