OWLs, Interfaces, and Policies

People's Writing Centers

These WC people talk about having a wide variety of systems that foster synchronous tutoring. UNC-Chapel Hill has a system that was written by the instructional-technology office; students login to submit papers and they always have access to their submissions and the feedback they receive from tutors. They do not advertise this service because they would not be able to handle a deluge of students seeking help in the online system. The director of this WC manages the system because she does not have resources to maintain it. However, since the technology office built it they are going to help her share it with U. of Iowa.

U of Minnesota has document sharing service for the asynchronous and synchronous tutoring. At this institution, the tutors read the submissions before the synchronous session. The interface is user-friendly, too. At the end of a line you will see a green check when a participant is finished with the message and is ready for a reply. A student worker (!!!) built this system with Java. The tutor can search the online submission, too. Somtimes the tutors look up the students on Facebook to learn about who they are working with. The synchronous portion of the tutorial is mandatory; the student must show up for the chat tutorial. With MySWS the students are going to be able to keep copies of students' work. *Both tutor and student can get into the uploaded document and insert comments.

At Oklahoma, they have a website where they can make an appointment, and they can submit a paper. They cut and paste their paper into a web form. Trillian is the client they are using.

At Iowa we have e-mail tutoring. Form is filled out in the website. Students get e-mail to respond to and attach their message. Consultant's response in the document. We use a commenting letter that precedes the document itself; tutors also insert marginal comments with the commenting feature. It is called the E-mail Tutoring Program, but Matt is trying to call it the Online Tutoring Program.

One possible problem with e-tutoring is that the commenting feature is so easy touse that it's easy to overdo it and provide too many comments that can overwhelm the students. Purdue's new system is going to put papers into PDF so tutors will only provide a long text comment. This way, the tutors keep their hands off the paper.

One issue: OWLs need to tell students what kinds ofinforamation we are holding onto and how we might use that information. After all, we are going to be keeping student work for a long time.

The Ideal World
People would like to see some place where writing groups can gather. People can meet together and have their work stored.

Would like to have video options where cameras can show the student working on a draft.

Digital Writing Environment OWLs

Social Presence must be present in this environment in order to negotiate meaning.

Knowing your audience only through their writing can be a big strength because it highlights the importance of communication

Can I become a partner with the library's online services and invite their tutor into a chat room with me and a client. In my ideal world the online writing center is going to partner heavily with the library.

Check out 43things.com for the social networking site. Tutors at University of Manitoba use a similar service to contact people who say that they need help with certain areas of writing.

Could you formcommunities of writers in the way that gamers in 3-D worlds build communities. Are Writing Centers going to be in these worlds with tutor avatars??

The Daedalus Group
This company provides a tool for students who are generating ideas for their writing topics. It's developed in .NET. Can this tool be used online by students in a way that leads them to the writing center? Is using this tool infringing on the territory of instructors? But maybe instructors would want to have access to such a tool. This tool provides a citation manager like Bedford Bibliographer, which is free.

Usability and Accessibility
A university may have guidelines for your website to make it accessible. You can use the W3C to find guidelines about usability and accessibility. Looking at it in a broad sense, the standards for W3C might not mean true accessibility. (Purdue, for example, needs to consider developing nations with old modems.)

We want to generate questions to