About OurDMU

Vision

OurDMU is a shared place for the production of learning and research that is personally and socially transformative. OurDMU will connect the social world of DMU to the resources, artifacts, networks and conversations that emerge from our thinking. The OurDMU platform will nurture, stimulate and enhance respectful and generous learning conversations, within and beyond the University. It will help us to realise our ambitions through co-operation and our shared labours. The Platform will be open, and will encourage generosity, respect, tolerance and sharing. OurDMU will enable permeability and fluidity in collaboration, supporting autonomy in our shared production of DMU as a University committed to engaging with useful social reproduction. OurDMU will help shape DMU as a “knowing University”, where thinking is shared in public, in order to enable society/communities to solve problems, develop alternatives and innovate.

Organisation

OurDMU can be as open or closed as its users demand. It is a democratic space, where users have control over their own place(s)*. Users can have their own blog, or space on the Platform, but we will also support project work with dedicated spaces.
Any member of the DMU social world is able to login and create their own space. This will enable staff, students and by request, external members of our world, to access, create, share and think in private or public.
OurDMU will be managed by the Centre for Enhancing Learning through Technology (CELT). The technical infrastructure will be maintained by ITMS.
Users of OurDMU will be expected to follow the guidelines for appropriate use given below, and have a duty to respect the Platform as a shared space.
We expect OurDMU to be an open, inclusive, democratic, deliberative space. We expect that the users will make their working and thinking open to encourage sharing, unless there are clear issues to do with data, security, copyright etc.

*Important notice

There is an expectation that users own and administer their own site/space. OurDMU support will help where possible, but we expect users to self-help.

Users agree to this expectation by choosing to host a site on OurDMU.

Guidelines

These guidelines have been established so that everyone can get the most out of authoring/commenting on OurDMU.

By registering on OurDMU you are agreeing to abide by these guidelines.

About postings/comments

Contributions should be professional and relevant to the thematic focus of the site. DMU is committed to providing an atmosphere in which professional dialogue takes place. This means that postings should not be indecent, disruptive, disorderly, threatening or offensive. Equally they must not be fraudulent, deceitful or dishonest.

Posting: Do not flame in any context, e.g. in a posting or comment. Unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually-oriented, racist, or otherwise objectionable material is not acceptable. Please keep your postings and comments to a reasonable length for the material at hand.
Privacy: Never reveal personal information about yourself (for example: your telephone number, home address or email address). If you have helpful information to share, it should be relevant to the on-line task in-hand. Email addresses are required for commenting, and they are neither published on the blog nor shared anywhere else. They may be used by the OurDMU team to privately contact the commenter, for instance to commission a blog post.
Copyright: You agree to post only those materials to which you have the copyright or other permission to distribute electronically. Do not violate, plagiarise, or infringe on the rights of third parties including copyright, trademark, trade secret, privacy, personal, publicity, or proprietary rights.
Take-down: You may not post any defamatory or illegal material of any nature. This includes text, graphics, video, programs or audio. Posting a comment or message with the intention of committing an illegal act is strictly prohibited. It is our policy to respond to clear notices of alleged copyright infringement. If you feel that your copyright has been infringed please contact us immediately.
Licensing: Unless otherwise stated, the content on OurDMU is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Some content within OurDMU may be licensed differently; the license information for such content will be clearly displayed.
Blocking: Don’t cross-post comments to more than one posting, or post off-topic messages or adverts for personal gain. This is classed as spamming. Impersonating someone else, or adopting an inappropriate username is unacceptable. Anyone who violates this Comments Policy may be blocked from or commenting on OurDMU.
All Rights Reserved: The OurDMU team reserves the right to edit, delete, move, or mark as spam any and all comments, blogs or sites. They also have the right to block access to any person(s) or group(s) from commenting on particular blogs or sites, or from the entire OurDMU Platform.

About your privacy

DMU will not publish or provide your personal information to anyone. Our registration process requires you to supply us with certain enrolment details, but we will only use these to create your account and to validate your access to the site. DMU complies with the 2018 Data Protection Act.

IMPORTANT ADVISORY

OurDMU is a WordPress installation. As WordPress is a global open source platform it relies on site users to develop/support/maintain/and future proof its tools (themes, plugins, widgets, etc). To this end, there is no guarantee that a theme, tool, or plugin that is installed on OurDMU today will remain compatible with future upgrades and updates of the OurDMU Platform. This may result in certain themes, tools or plugins no longer functioning at some point in the future. The consequence of which might be that some sites lose certain functionality.

When registering on OurDMU and hosting your content on OurDMU, site users do so with an understanding and acceptance of the above advisory.