Yesterday we celebrated the diverse work of the Domains of One’s Own community across Coventry University campuses. A little while ago we put out a call for people to nominate themselves, colleagues and students for a Coventry.Domains Award for their work developed through use of Coventry.Domains in 2018-19. We met together to share how those selected have developed their learning, teaching and research practice through use of their web hosting and subdomain provided through the Coventry.Domains initiative.
The Coventry.Domains Awards recognise inspiring practice and outstanding engagement with this initiative aimed at fostering digital fluency and innovative practices. Coventry.Domains has been running since 2016, and this is our third awards (read about last year’s winners here). There are over 2850 people and 30 courses actively developing their own online spaces with Coventry.Domains for a wonderfully diverse range of uses. These include reflective blogs, interactive media projects, project communications, open education resources, and facilitating open communities of practice.
Here you can find a brief overview of the awardees’ achievements and links to their websites.
Student awardees
Seven students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and the Faculty of Engineering, Environment and Computing won awards for inspiring use of Coventry.Domains:
Amber De-Terville (BA English and Creative Writing) created her website as a 1st year student for an assessed piece of work on Discourse and Digital Media. Benet Vincent (Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics) said: “Anyone who visits the site will be able to see that it is a real achievement in terms of design. It has given her the opportunity to display her excellent work in a very presentable format. As far as I know, she had not created a website before, so creating the whole thing was something new and clearly she has learned a lot of website design skills along the way”. Amber wrote a post on her experience of using Coventry.Domains to manage her online personal professional presence, available online here.
Website: amberdeterville.coventry.domains
Diya Chopra (BA English) created her website as a 1st year student for an assessed piece of work on Discourse and Digital Media, and has continued to publish further work to her blog throughout her second year of study. Her lecturer Benet Vincent said: “This has allowed her to showcase the academic work she has been doing at Coventry and learn some impressive skills in terms of presenting this work … developed thanks to Coventry.Domains giving students like Diya the opportunity to create their own online spaces.” Alongside the further publishing of academic work, Diya has begun to build out her online space to reflect her wider interests and professional practice, including art exhibition management and curatorial practice.
Website: diyachopra.coventry.domains
Savraj Sandhu (BSc Computer Science) created his website as a 2nd year student for an assessed piece of work on DMLL Add+vantage module ‘Develop Your Online Presence and Own Your Web Domain’. His website communicates his professional skillsets and interests as a programmer “obsessed with open-source software”, with visual design and written content giving a playful insight into Savraj’s work. Here he links out to his GitHub repo for work developed during his studies, and other projects such as an automated version of Conway’s Game of Life and his work with Voluntary Net.
Website: ssandhu.coventry.domains
Richard Horton (BSc Computer Science) created his website as a 2nd year student for an assessed piece of work on DMLL Add+vantage module ‘Develop Your Online Presence and Own Your Web Domain’. His website communicates his professional skills and interests, acting as a hub for many projects and talents. The site includes an overview of Richard’s software development projects, creating writing and editorial work, and the games journalism site Game Overlook which he co-founded and launched last year.
Website: richardhorton.coventry.domains
Sandra Levander (BA Animation and Illustration) created her website as a 2nd year student for an assessed piece of work on DMLL Add+vantage module ‘Develop Your Online Presence and Own Your Web Domain’. Her website forms an impressive portfolio of her illustration work, including commissioned artwork and a sketchbook area for works in progress. Sandra provides context for her professional work alongside her social media presence and personal interests including a detailed artist statement on her ‘about me‘ page.
Website: levander.coventry.domains
Ooi Wei Yan (BA Automotive and Transport Design) created his website as a 2nd year student for an assessed piece of work on DMLL Add+vantage module ‘Develop Your Online Presence and Own Your Web Domain’. Through his site he presents automotive design work developed during his studies alongside personal interests including art, design and music. Wei also played with the concept of a ‘home’ page using the landing page of his site to discuss his sense of home. This includes an introduction to Malaysia and its multifaceted national identity made up of many languages and dialects. This ‘home’ page ends with a fab photo of the Coventry University Malaysian and Singaporean Society.
Website: aom.coventry.domains
Staff awardees
Four staff members won awards for inspiring projects developed through Coventry.Domains:
George Haughie (Lecturer in Business English and Technology Enabled Learning, Faculty of Business and Law) created a website to support incoming students from China prepare for the culture shock they will face when coming to the UK. George has created a vlog series where he chats with staff and students at Coventry campus about various aspects of life in the UK, particularly from a Chinese point of view. His site collates these together through easy to navigate blog posts. George said: “In order to host and share in China I have had to avoid using the usual video hosting sites and learn how to navigate Chinese social media and embed Youku videos into the page. This page has supported colleagues in China to have ‘real world’ cultural chats to prepare students for study abroad. It has also helped provide language materials for teachers in our partner colleges who may not have much experience in UKHE.”
Website: georgehaughie.coventry.domains/CovCultureChats
Luis Pereira (Academic Developer) created a website to curate in a single place essential information for new academic members of staff. “If we think of all the policies (Education Strategy, Assessment Strategy, etc.), digital tools and units, or the idiosyncrasy of the Coventry University approach to Teaching and Learning , it can be bewildering. So, similar to a survival toolkit, the design of the website intended to focus on the practical aspects of T&L. The website supports the academic induction session and it allows everyone to get back to the information whenever they need it. The feedback on the website has been very encouraging and it seems that its main goal of assisting new colleagues to feel more supported in their T&L activity has been achieved. In order to reach this, it was essential to use Domains, as it allowed to create a dedicated website and not only a single section in another existent website. Also, I feel quite pleased as it increased my WordPress skills, thanks to the valuable support I got from colleagues who run the Coventry.Domains project.”
Website: newtocu.coventry.domains
Gareth Jones (Course Leader, Coventry University Online) has used Coventry.Domains to create and host learning activities to extend content available on the FutureLearn website to include interactive activities using H5P and other interesting features. “Using Coventry.Domains and embedding activities from Moodle allows me to host student data completion data in Moodle whilst creating a more attractive and engaging page for the learners. I’ve really enjoyed using Coventry.Domains and learning about WordPress, the PSE Online Award has received some really good feedback from students as a result of being able to use H5P in this way and match the professional look of the FutureLearn content. The complete course is far from finished yet but using Coventry.Domains has opened up a world of possibilities for creating more engaging and attractive content for our online learners. Students are now able to complete a step on FutureLearn and click on a ‘launch activity’ link and be directed to the Coventry.Domains page hosting further content. The content is only visible to users logged in to cuonline.coventry.ac.uk.”
Website: academicskills.coventry.domains (content not public)
Martyn Wyres (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences) created a website to form a student placement preparation resource. “It is designed to help students prepare for placement or when struggling on placement. It has been made completely in my own time and mainly advertised on Twitter so far. People have engaged from all over the world and positive feedback received. Students have volunteered to write blog posts for it and these are on the site. I have also engaged with qualified staff to write ‘a day in my role’ posts and ‘placement settings’ to help student prepare for the workplace. Positive feedback has given me the motivation to continue to develop this and it has been accessed by a full range of multi disciplines at a range of universities across the world via social media. The next stage is to add video content and interactive preparation elements.”
Website: placementblog.coventry.domains
Thirteen members of staff won awards for inspiring engagement with the initiative through embedding use in teaching and learning, all from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences:
Elizabeth Horton (Associate Head of School, Research), Jo Hankey (Assistant Professor) and Mike Price (Reader in Exercise Physiology) were awarded for their work in designing assessment and teaching delivery through use of Coventry.Domains in BSc Sport and Exercise Science. Students undertook a professional practice module where they had to develop a website to represent their professional practice online, thinking through who their audience is and how to present relevant information to this audience. The students were then assessed on a written piece which reflected on this process.
Afthab Hussain (Assistant Professor), Ellen Hatch (Assistant Professor), Bernard Burke (Assistant Professor), Tim Aldsworth (Assistant Professor), Sarah Siverns (Assistant Lecturer in Biosciences), Laura Roden (Assistant Professor), Phillip Gould (Associate Head of School, Enterprise & Innovation), and James Dayus (Lecturer) from MSc Pharmacology and Drug Development, MSc Biotechnology and MSc Molecular Biology course teams, and Imran Ali (Learning Technology Manager) and Timothy Matthews (Learning Technologist) of the Learning Enhancement Team, were awarded for their work in course design, assessment and delivery of teaching through use of Coventry.Domains.
Colleagues from the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences made special mention of Timothy Matthews who supported all students across the four courses to get started with their new web hosting space, a linchpin in the successful delivery of Coventry.Domains with students in the School of Life Sciences.
Many thanks to everyone who nominated colleagues and students and to those that attended the awards to support! It’s amazing to see how the Coventry.Domains community of practices evolves year to year, and we very much look forward to seeing where the mentioned projects go next and new uses developing over the next year. If you would like to discuss how to get involved with the Coventry.Domains initiative or training and support available, please contact the Coventry.Domains team at: dooo@coventry.ac.uk.