Assembling Resources on Domain of One’s Own

A year ago, I was hired to come to DTLT at University of Mary Washington, to join this community of dedicated scholars and pedagogues. I applied in no small part because of the people I knew who worked here, but also because of the Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) initiative originally launched at UMW. I was excited to contribute to a larger project and to help nurture and grow the initiative. I didn’t really understand how much larger the project had become, as well as the size and scope of the extended DoOO community I was stepping into.

And how could I? We’re a new team at DTLT, and we all came to UMW knowing different pieces about DoOO, understanding it in our own way by learning about it from the outside. This past year has been all about getting a better understanding of the project both at UMW and also the national and international iterations the work here has inspired.

Pete Rorabaugh put it best in his own post about researching and understanding DoOO:

Because of the DoOO community’s bootstrap, DIY ethic, it has evolved organically and locally. Domain work isn’t particular to a tool nor does it use a set of prescribed guidelines. Instead it’s a methodology, a “way of seeing” teaching, learning, and digital citizenship that I’ve always found consistent with my own foundation in critical pedagogy. However, I see that the community needs some research support — more engaged scholarship in documenting its growth, history, application, principles (broadly defined), pedagogy, and administration.

We agree with this statement, and I am pleased to share the collection I’ve gathered of resources and articles on DoOO as well as a list of DoOO schools. This research informed the first two pieces (a brief history and an infographic) of our ongoing series on Domain of One’s Own, and we look forward to continuing the series, as well as seeing how the larger community contributes to this initial work.

My methodology was rudimentary (Google) and, admittedly, limited. For example, in the interest of space and time, I only included the first post I could find from Jim Groom that was tagged DoOO, and then a link to the rest of his tagged posts on the topic. There are also many faculty members and students working within DoOO-type initiatives who may not be publishing as visibly about the project. Conference presentations, as well, are not always archived on the web and harder to find through a Google search.

If you have a favorite piece on Domain of One’s Own, or have written one yourself, and you don’t see it in the list, please add it using the DoOO resources form.

I would also be remiss not to thank Tim Owens at Reclaim Hosting for keeping our list of schools up to date. However, if your school has a DoOO-type initiative and it isn’t listed here, please add yourself to the list using the DoOO schools form, so that we can stay connected to each other and grow this community, supporting each other as we take critical digital pedagogy in all kinds of exciting directions.

Watch this space for more and join the conversation on #DoOO.

Image by Roger licensed CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0