Good Monday, everyone! This week we start out by exploring a story – a podcast, actually – about providing university students and faculty with their own personal web domains. University of Mary Washington has piloted A Domain of One’s Own to hand over “digital citizenship” to their co-eds and integrate an online presence to their 4-year college experience and beyond. Though Tech Therapy’s Jeffrey Young points out that early adopters and the tech-savvy may self-select into the program, UMW’s Jim Groom hopes it will encourage a majority of incoming freshman to explore agency and their digital identities beyond…let’s say…Facebook?

Giving Everyone at college a ‘Domain of One’s Own’ (The Chronicle – Tech Therapy)

Open Access to Research Can Save Lives (The Chronicle)
You can go ahead and picture us standing on a soap box for this one. Jack Andraka, 15, invented a diagnostic test for pancreatic cancer using the web and openly licensed scientific journals, research and data. The test is significantly cheaper than its predecessors and is extremely accurate. Beyond this breakthrough in both science and OA, the article goes on to map out suggestions for open access and distribution of scientific research on a wider scale . Check out the comments for some lively discussion and debate!

Grading the Online Courses (Knox Weekly)
We literally can’t get out of our Google Reader queue without seeing an MOOC related article, so in this week’s roundup there’s talk of actually measuring the success rates of MOOC students. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has put some research money to put MOOCs to the test and initial findings aren’t too shabby.

Amherst College Introduces Open-Access Press for the Liberal Arts (The Chronicle)
Our open access theme continues – Amherst College is introducing a publishing arm through their campus library and all publications will have Creative Commons licensing. A small team will work on liberal arts disciplines and publishing on most e-reader platforms. Presumably, arch-rival Williams College will even things out on the athletic field…

Logo Revolt (Insider Higher Ed)
If the University of California’s marketing department had a Facebook page, they’d be down about 30,000 friends at the moment. Students and alumni are petitioning for the abandonment of the university’s new logo in favor of the more traditional seal – in use since 1868. However, we’re suckers for YouTube over here  and wonder if there are any UC identities out there with some thoughts?

photo credit: ivanpw via photopin CC BY 2.0