The Domain of One’s Own initiative at University of Mary Washington is a unique way for universities to encourage the ability of students to take control of their digital footprint. Audrey Watters investigated UWM’s movement of students’ information to be held in a central web domain. Unlike most undergraduate work which generally ends up in recycle bins at the end of a semester, UWM is promoting a way for students to keep a digital “hard copy” of academic work for the student to have unlimited visibility for potential higher education or employment. This offers a much better view of student scholarship, along with orienting students to keep their digital identity professional and secure. Indeed, the CORVID-19 pandemic has now forced higher education into the digital arena at an unprecedented rate. With most educational institutions being up and running online within the time-span of a week due to CORVID-19, the future of education is being built by this pandemic. Society will be forever changed by CORVID-19, but not by death rate like Spanish Influenza. The cultural response instead is a revolutionary moment in history with all levels of employment and education being forced into a brave new world of digital identity. It is a prudent investment for educational institutions to follow a model similar to UWM to prepare students for this new era of online information integration.
