ABSTRACT
The Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) initiative, begun at University of Mary Washington (UMW) in 2013, is an obvious outgrowth of the grassroots spirit of DIY Internet culture. Under the direction of Jim Groom, UMW's Division for teaching and learning technologies opened a server upon which students and faculty could obtain hosting for their own web domains. Although “digital literacies” is a contested and continually evolving term, it is necessary to work through definition in order to discuss transferable skills that self-hosted domains may offer. Academic discussions of “digital literacies” have often included multimodal literacies, media literacies, and new media literacies. Although digital literacy itself has many discrete components and definitions, the ability to create content using variety of platforms is an essential skill. Faculty who may be interested in trying classroom assignments could be stymied by a lack of institutional support or adequate professional development. This is where the grassroots ethos of digital culture and DoOO are most valuable.
