During the Spring 2016 Semester, three instructors at UMW collaborated on an open pedagogy experiment, all teaching a section of "DGST 101: Introduction to Digital Studies." With over 100 students over four sections, we wanted students in each of our sections to benefit from participating in that larger peer community and share their experiences and work with an authentic and supportive audience. To accomplish this, our students blogged on websites created through the Domain of One's Own Project, used resources and assignment modules on a central website (DGST101.net), and shared their work through discussions in the messaging and productive app, Slack. The faculty also used the Canvas LMS for logistics and communication specific to each of our sections. We also incorporated the web tool Hypothes.is to allow students to annotate spaces online, and to promote discussions around data and online presence. Each of these tools and platforms provided opportunities for students to share and interact with each other and the instructors in different ways with varying levels of openness and privacy that students were given agency to engage with at their discretion. The purpose of our presentation is to explore how these different technologies promoted openness and at the same time supported student's agency to decide how open they choose to be, while protecting their privacy and promoting safe spaces to experiment. Finally, this presentation will discuss the underlying pedagogical philosophies that informed our decisions and what we learned from the experience.
