Jim Groom (2008) threw out an interesting idea yesterday regarding the notion of digital identity and how it relates to student blogs, suggesting that a university might buy each student a one year domain license for a personal URL, rather than forcing student blogs under the umbrella of the institution’s domain. I find this to be a fascinating idea and think it bears a great deal of merit.
Hosting a blog or website within a university domain typically means your URL references the institution – such as myschool.edu/community/people/~jdoe in Groom’s example. This is an institution-centric approach that places the individual beneath the organisation in the hierarchy, and focusses on the role rather than the person. The implications of this impact upon both digital identity and continuity of activity.
Digital Identity
Groom quotes Brad Kozlek as defining a blog as “a tool for students to craft their digital identity with intention.” In my view digital identity revolves largely around the holistic view of the individual – or perhaps more accurately the view that they wish to convey – not simply their role or activities at the institution. Subsuming a student or staff’s web presence within an institution’s domain serves to disproportionately focus on a narrow band of activity, and incorporating mandates, control measures and requirements that would not exist were the blog to stand on its own – at least to the same degree. These include policies concerning the institution’s web presence, codes of conduct, potentially even restrictions on content.
My intent in mentioning the latter, incidentally, is not provide commentary on mandates or requirements, but rather to highlight the notion that in a university domain, a student’s blog is much less their own than when it’s hosted on a personal domain – as such the sense of personal ownership in the former is less than the latter. Individual’s will arguably feel far more empowered in a space that’s located at theirname.net, than myschool.edu/community/people/~jdoe.
Continuity of Activity
Of equal importance is preserving the continuity of activity, and the notion that “[a] digital identity should be an online address one can have no matter where they are, a space where you can track that person as they move not only from being a freshman to a sophomore, but from an undergraduate to a graduate and beyond.” (Groom, 2008)
Particularly in the case of students, individual’s are at an institution for only a limited period of time, after which point they move on to new endeavours. Use of a personal domain enables continuity of activity throughout their journey – wherever they go, their reflections, discussions, and content goes with them. In the context of life-long learning this is particularly important, since the more seamless the continuity, the greater the opportunities for continued engagement and ongoing learning.
This extends in no small way to the development and maintenance of learning networks. Lifelong learning is not simply about preservation of content, but preservation of connections with other learners as well. If digital identity is indeed an extension of personal identify – which I believe it is – it’s critical that learning networks develop around people, rather than the roles they adopt within institutions. That way, when institutional roles no longer exists, the networks remain intact.
In a university-based presence, by contrast, things are more complicated. Often times when a student graduates or otherwise leaves the institution, their access to services and programs ends. Unless functionality is in place to export their blog content, this could mean a complete loss of data. Furthermore even if their data is exported, moving content from one domain to another will result in links to their content breaking.
For example, if Student A contributes a post that Student B finds insightful and references, when Student A’s domain changes, the link in Student B’s blog will no longer work. This represents both a literal and figurative break in the connection between the two students.
To be realistic though, a blog hosted at Blogger or WordPress.com could address the same issues of continuity and to a lesser degree personal ownership. So in that sense it could be considered to be a middle ground which is easier to set-up and requires no financial investment (for either organisations or individuals). The significance, at least in my mind, is in planning for the long term implications of interacting and learning on the web and recognising the fact that schools and institutions are just one aspect of our identity.
References
Groom, Jim (2008). “A domain of one’s own”. 29 November 2008. Accessed 1 December at http://bavatuesdays.com/a-domain-of-ones-own/
Hey Mike,
This idea you suggest is important:
And I think you are right, folks could and should do this already with their own blog space at a free service–or ideally host their own. The issue about mapping it on UMW Blogs as opposed to mapping their domains on wordpress.com or typepad almost seems like we are trying to pull them into our creepy tree house. As I imagine it the option for them to use another service would be open from the outset of such an experiment. We already enable and encourage students and faculty to blog from where they are (not necessarily UMW Blogs) and use plugins like FeedWordPress to pull their work into our community. Though, by creating UMW Blogs, we have also created the impetus for them to create their blogs on our platform, partially out of convenience and partially out of control–I freely admit that.
I think of this as a kind of intermediary space to push the power of these tools and show what is possible, and I think ultimately UMW Blogs will become less and less a focus as more and more students and faculty start thinking along the lines you frame here. Keeping a consistent URL so that conversations aren’t broken, and connections aren’t disrupted is absolutely key in this regard. I think this experiment (if it happens) is really to get at that fact, and make it apparent why having one’s own space that follows one’s work over time (well beyond their time at our school) is so important. So, it is far more of a conceptual opportunity to re-enforce how important it is for folks to have their own space in this day and age to frame their online identities which are an amalgam of the work they do and who they are.
But, you say this all far better then me in this post. This is a really great example of taking a half-baked idea and focusing on the issues that matter to make it that much more coherent and powerful–so thank you!
Hi Jim,
Please don’t interpret that portion as criticism of the idea – as I said I think it’s a fascinating proposal. I included the reference to 3rd party services as more as more of a contingency in the event the first one was knocked back.
Having used WordPress.com in particular I know that there are fairly strict limitations on which plugins you’re able to use, and what you can or can’t embed in the blog. Seesmic is a prime example there. You can’t even embed the player – let alone the video comment plugin. So you might say that use of the free service comes at a price.
In the case of UMWblogs, its nature as a hub or portal to a wider community is a real strong point too – and one that you wouldn’t have to nearly the same degree in an external host. Sure WP.com has thousands of blogs, but there isn’t the same sense of a shared wider experience or perspective (e.g. students of UMW) to help draw people together.
And as you say, the exercise: “is far more of a conceptual opportunity to re-enforce how important it is for folks to have their own space in this day and age to frame their online identities which are an amalgam of the work they do and who they are.”
The knowledge of how you map a custom domain to a personal blog may not be widely apparent as well, so having it be done by the university might be the only way it actually is. Sort of planting a seed that leads to further inquiry and exploration.
I’m late for work right now though so I’d better cut this short.
Great idea!
Cheers,
Mike
Mike,
Didn’t take your ideas as a criticism at all, just a smart examination of the implications of the project and the value of it. I was really just applauding how much better you framed the power of such an experiment than I ever could. Having someone like you pick up on an idea like this just gives me that much more ammunition to take to the higher-ups–so thank you! And forgive me if I always respond to everything, it is a compulsion i am learning to deal with
All I did was paraphrase
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