Emory Writing Program Domain Pilot Orientation

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

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.”

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.”

ELEMENTS OF A DOMAIN PROJECT

o Intentional Publishingo Tools & Platformso Multimodal Content

o Culture of Digital Literacyo Facultyo Students

o Infrastructure of Supporto Writing Programo Other Centers

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.”

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.

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 too Develop assignments suitable for digital publicationo Select platforms, acquire domains and publish course websiteso Curate examples and illuminate good practice

o Fully support participating students by providing o In-class visits to introduce platforms & toolso A rich array of support documentation, FAQ and how-to videoo 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

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.

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

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, embedded 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, performance, guide, join/donate/

crowdsource interactive features

Striped Mussel experiment w/lit

review, 12pp

Poetry, 90 web pages

Photo Blog & Travel Diary,

60 entries

Different site tour and letter for grad school. Temple service

project, 14 pages with video and forms

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?

World Without OilArchitecture Without Oil Car Culture Without OilDating Without Oil Eating Without Oil HealthWithout OilImmigration Without Oil Jobs and More Jobs Without OilKnowledge Without OilMusic Without OilNeighborhoods Without OilReal Estate Without Oil Soldiers Without Oil Teens and More Teens Without OilUrban Adventure Without Oil Vision and More Vision Without OilXtreme 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.

“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?

NEW MEDIA & DIGITAL

PUBLISHINGSharing with a community of

persons working on

the same suite of problems.

Original

contributions can be

very modest.