An Online Writing Lab (OWL) is often an extension of a university

writing center Writing centers provide students with assistance on their papers, projects, reports, multi-modal documents, web pages, and other writerly needs across disciplines. Although writing center staff are often referred to as Tutors, writing centers are p ...

. Online writing labs offer help to students and other writers by providing

literacy Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...

materials, such as handouts and slide presentations. Writers may also submit questions electronically for feedback. Many OWLs are open to people unaffiliated with the specific institution. Online writing labs play an important part in writing center assistance by allowing writers to use some of the center's resources remotely.

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and money ...

, in

West Lafayette, Indiana West Lafayette () is a city in Wabash Township, Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, about northwest of the state capital of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. West Lafayette is directly across the Wabash River from its sister city, ...

, launched the first OWL, in 1994. Its OWL is freely available online to all, and includes handouts, specific subject information, resources geared towards students in grades 7-12, and citation formatting help with MLA, APA and other forms.

OWL history

In 1976, the Department of English at Purdue University asked Muriel "Mickey" Harris to establish a writing lab, a

campus A campus is traditionally the land on which a college or university and related institutional buildings are situated. Usually a college campus includes libraries, lecture halls, residence halls, student centers or dining halls, and park-like se ...

-based service designed to assist learners in their rhetorical writing processes. Harris began the writing lab by collaborating with a team of graduate assistants, who worked one-to-one with student writers, often authoring handouts to reinforce lessons in the writing lab. Harris and the tutors sent paper copies of their materials to individuals beyond Purdue University who had contacted the writing lab, requesting information on writing, citation, or research; these resources later became available electronically, through

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

requests and through

GOPHER Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They are ...

(a precursor to the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web se ...

), in 1993. Harris and the Purdue Writing Lab launched its OWL on the web, in 1995, then among the first OWLs on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

. Having made its library of resources available electronically, the Purdue OWLThe Purdue OWL
/ref> became accessible to millions of users worldwide.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

The International Writing Center Association's list of OWLs
1994 establishments in Indiana Academia Composition (language) Computer-related introductions in 1994 Purdue University