A long time ago, I blogged about some code I had written for ds106 that made it possible to show how many comments had been left on a post that was being syndicated (via FeedWordPress) from elsewhere. The code was pretty simple — it was based on the fact that some feeds (including ones originating from WordPress) pass a parameter called “wfw:commentRSS” which contains the RSS feed of the comments on an individual post. FWP stores this as a custom field for each syndicated post. So, it’s pretty easy to grab that RSS feed URL, fetch the feed, and then count the number of items in it.
When I came up with this technique back in 2011 I implemented it by editing the theme for ds106. Eventually, however, we removed the code. I seem to remember we thought it was impacting performance on the site. Depending on how many posts were displayed on the home page, that was a lot of RSS retrieval that needed to be done before the page could be displayed.
Now that Tim and I have successfully built a site at community.umwdomains.com that aggregates the activity of the project, I’ve been focussing my efforts recently on what we can do to visualize and expose that activity. Every site that is created (as long as it uses Installatron to install a Web application) on the server as well as much of the content on those sites (as long as the content is available via RSS feed) is being pulled into the WordPress install that runs Community. That means currently we have information about 800 sites and almost 3000 pieces of content from those sites. For sites, we ask users to self-report the course they’re building it for as well as their “status” (student, faculty, staff). From the course data, we’re able to glean instructor and department. We’re also tagging sites with semester information. Content from these sites is similarly tagged with course, instructor, department, and semester information.
Which was very nice except that I didn’t really think my post did much to describe ways that faculty could use DoOO in their classes — it was more a rundown of our successes and challenges in getting the project up and running over the last six months. So, I told Mark that I would try and do a post that dealt more specifically with how Domain of One’s Own is being used by faculty in actual classes.
This one is for you Mark — never say I never do anything for you!
Last week, Jim and I presented in Richmond at Open VCU about the experience of teaching #ds106. It was a lot of fun — but talking about #ds106 with Jim is always a lot of fun. We prepared a different kind of presentation, in which we examined the course/community through three different lenses of openness, and we used it as an opportunity to circle through a number of ideas while looking through those various lenses. You can find the presentation here, though I’m told the audio leaves a bit to be desired. We’ll just have to do it again at some point. 🙂
During the Q&A Jeff Nugent of VCU’s Center for Teaching Excellence asked a question about how other schools can push forward with the “community design process” that we described as being so critical to the success of #ds106. It’s a good question, and it echoes questions I hear a lot when I speak to others about the successes that we’ve enjoyed at UMW with our work in DTLT. Jeff’s question was specific to a particular aspect of #ds106 that we had brought up in the presentation — the notion that the “course” wasn’t designed by a single person nor was the design process even led by a single person — and my response was what I often say to similar questions which is that a) we’ve enjoyed tremendous success in DTLT over the last decade with projects we’ve worked on and developed, and b) I’m incredibly proud of that work we’ve done, but c) I can honestly say we absolutely never sit down and engineer our project design. Our approach is organic and messy — the projects that have become huge successes have all percolated up naturally through our community, our shared interests, and our individual passions. I spoke to this a bit in my recent post about organic project development.
It’s been months since I did my first status report on Domain of One’s Own, and it’s definitely time to revisit the topic. As it turns out, a few weeks ago I completed a interim report about the project to share with our University’s Board of Visitors. So, I actually have spent a fair amount of time over the last month or so considering the first semester of Domain of One’s Own as well as thinking about the next year or so of the project.
Over on his blog, Tim is talking about some very exciting work we’re doing with Domain of One’s Own right now, and he’s inspired me to add my own post to the conversation. Tim’s outlined beautifully some of the initial steps we’re taking to build a community space around Domain of One’s Own — a space that can capture information about the various installations that our users are doing in the system, and display that information in ways that allow us to easily filter and expose the work that’s happening. I truly believe we’ve only just begun to imagine what we could do with a space like this, and I can’t say how exciting it is to be working on this with Tim right now.
What I want to talk about specifically is the approach we’ve taken to Domain of One’s Own and how the work we’re doing is informed by that approach.
A few weeks ago (actually, I think it’s more like months at this point), I blogged about publishing my first plugin on the WordPress Repository. I thought I’d take a moment to write about what that plugin is — and the projects I’ve been working on that inspired it.
We’re not quite a week into the start of the semester at UMW, but I thought I’d take a moment to reflect upon the launch of A Domain of One’s Own — as much to record for myself some lessons I’ve learned over the last few days.
