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Taking Flight with OWLs: Examining Electronic Writing Center Work James A. Inman and Donna N. Sewell, eds. 2000. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [ISBN 0-8058-3172-X. 240 pages, including indexes. $27.50 USD (softcover).]
Technical communicators are becoming increasingly involved with online education in one form or another. In some cases, they are involved in the design and development of online help, which uses digital media to provide users with instructions. In other cases, they might be developing instructional materials for their company's own intranet or Internet site, or even be developing materials for a company's online educational programs. And in yet other cases, technical communicators could be involved with university or college projects involving online courses.
For these reasons, resources that provide information on various aspects of online education can be of great value to technical communicators. One such resource, the book Taking flight with OWES: Examining electronic writing center work, offers several different perspectives on online writing labs (OWLs). These perspectives provide interesting information and valuable insight for technical communicators or technical communication instructors who are developing online instructional materials.
OWLs are not online courses. Rather, they are digital forums in which student writers and writing tutors can discuss the writing process. In essence, OWLs provide an interface for exchanging information and participating in discussions (both synchronous [real-time] and asynchronous [independent of time]) related to that information. Examinations of this particular kind of interface, in turn, can provide technical communicators with information on how online media can facilitate distance-based collaboration and communication.
Taking flight with OWLs, edited by James A. Inman and Donna N. Sewell, uses five different yet interrelated approaches, or sections, to overview the various benefits, problems, and nuances related to student-- tutor interaction using online media. These five sections include discussions of what...