Looking at a Domain of One’s Own

Middlebury has a Domain of One’s Own initiative. We only dabbled in it a bit at VCU with one of Andrew’s web design courses. I’ve seen bits and pieces and worked with people on various aspects of this over the years but I haven’t paid attention in the same way I do when I’m actually doing the thing. Now that I am, I’m doing some research.

First I wanted to find a bunch of DoOO institutions and see how they were talking about things. So I did a Google search (site:.edu “domain of one’s own”) and then following a URL I found on the OU site, I ended up on the Reclaim Server uptime site¹ and started doing some patterned searches based on this. Then I found the Reclaim page I should have looked at originally.

So I went and got a bunch of the language used on the sites to talk about what the DoOO was going to do. Many of the institutions kept with three items and so I logged the item title and the description. You can see that raw data in this spreadsheet.

You can see a tag cloud of common words in the descriptions below.² You can also mess around with Voyant and see what you might find that’s interesting.

Maybe the phrases start to point to something.

This is kind of fun.

There are some options in the word tree that I like. It’d be a fun way to present the multifaceted options available in a DoOO.

There are some fun things to play with. Maybe there are larger understandings to be had. Maybe it’s just a thing to do as you think about things- dataviz as worry stone or mental fidget spinner.

I did find that certain sites broke out of the mold in particular ways that interested me or had particular ideas that are worth considering.

WakeSites

I liked the focus on deciding if WakeSites was right for you and their focus on accessibility up front.

LMU Build

This site led with technology in a way that most did not.

Cron Jobs, FTP/SFTP, Git Version Control, JetBackup, MySQL Databases, MultiPHP Manager, Perl Modules, phpMyAdmin, PHP PEAR Packages, RubyGems, SSH, Terminal, unlimited subdomains, user metrics …and more?!

They also let you know up front that you cannot “[s]ell products or otherwise benefit commercially from your domain.” So that’s something we may need to consider.

While it looks like the Creaties hasn’t run in a bit. I still love this idea as an energy input for the project. I did something similar back in my K12 days. It takes a lot of energy to do it but I think it’s worth it.

I have missed seeing the OU crew during all this mess. I feel like I used to see them in person at virtually every conference I went to.

Agnes Waypoints

I liked the metaphor. It’s just a neat concept of digital artifacts charting a path that you’re following and maybe other people could follow as well.

BYU Domains

Their support videos are pretty slick. That’s some serious work. I have no idea how many people and hours this took but it’s considerable.

Conventry Domains

This is probably the most unique DoOO homepage I saw. I like how early on they’re pushing you to “go beyond WordPress.” One of the things I’d like to look at across our DoOO is how often we do go beyond WP. They also split up the conversation between students and faculty in a way that I think is useful. Their support page also feels really nice. It’s easy for those pages to feel overwhelming and I think this one avoids that.

Fleming Domains

I’m including this one because it was interesting to see their take on the ownership aspect.

“Learn to take ownership and control over the content you put on the web instead of handing it to third-party publishers.

They have supported us well to get us this far!!”

That final line was interesting. Two exclamation points. Is it an apology to third-party publishers? Maybe I’m misreading it It doesn’t matter really. Live how you want to live. I do think it’s part of how you’re setting the stage for how you use the DoOO.

I’m trying to think through whether we should and how far we can push certain boundaries. What’s the feeling the site gives people arriving? Currently Middlebury uses the garden metaphor. Do we want to go more hardcore? We do a lot of work with digital detox, critical technology evaluation, data privacy . . . maybe we want to make the site feel a little more aggressive? Is it a powerful reaction to the established norms? Would that be attractive to students and faculty? Can we do that without alienating people? I feel like a powerful position is useful and interesting. I just don’t know how far to push it. I’ll be relying on other people at Middlebury to help me figure out where the line is.

Examples

There are a number of sites showing examples of DoOO work. I like that OU also focuses on people with their “Featured Creators” section. It personalizes it and subjugates the tools appropriately. I did find myself wanting to know more but again it’s hard to keep that sort of thing updated and it’s a chunk of work to do it initially. I want to revisit some of the work Matt, Jeff, and I did with the ALT Lab site and the combination of people and projects. That has some potential here in terms of sustainable workflow patterns. I often end up going back to the TPACK model for these types of examples. How do you let people find the same projects through a variety of lenses? You want to find examples with a tool. You want to find by pedagogical strategy. You want to find them by discipline. Seeing how those things mesh together helps create a more complete picture of the how and the why embedded within the discipline.