One of the major motivators behind Domain of One’s Own is providing students with the opportunity to take critical control of their digital identities and to develop advanced digital fluency skills. It can be challenging, however, to incorporate DoOO into courses in an organic and meaningful way, and not just as an “add-on.” How can we help students and faculty to think about DoOO beyond a digital repository for projects and blogs, starting it as a digital portfolio but then leveling it up to a robust tool for digital identity and fluency?
One way we are trying to do that is through the development of flexible, adaptable modules — a series of Domain of One’s Own Building Blocks. A collaboration between DTLT and the DKC, we brainstormed a number of introductory topics, and decided on seven preliminary module topics. Each module includes a handful of carefully selected readings, discussion questions, and activities for students. The full list can be found under Domain of One’s Own on our Modules page, but are as follows:
- Digital Identity
- What is a Domain?
- Understanding the Web
- Copyright, Fair Use, Creative Commons
- Digital Citizenship
- Data Ownership & Usage
- Representation (gender, race, culture, orientation)
These are just the beginning. We hope to expand the topics offered, but also refine the current modules. We want faculty to “remix” these modules in ways that make sense for their courses, their students, and their disciplines, and we want them to share those remixes with the larger UMW community and beyond.
We invite feedback, suggestions, and remixes, as well as future topics that we might cover, in the comments.
Image by Katie Walker licensed CC-BY-SA 2.0