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Purdue OWL Engagement

Introduction

Welcome to the Engagement area of the Purdue OWL. This area houses resources dedicated to - and often developed with - local organizations in greater Lafayette and Indiana. We work with a number of different organizations from the local community: non-profit organizations, Purdue University, industry, and government. The goal of our work is to foster engagement with local organizations and OWL users worldwide. Another goal of the Engagement area is to provide an interactive space for Writing Lab staff and members of the English Department to continue working with local communities.

Engagement is an important part of the Purdue land-grant state university mission, and it is an important part of the Writing Lab's history. We believe the projects included here build on these ideas, and we hope these efforts foster sustained work with local and global partners.

Spring 2009 Semester Engagement Events

2009 19th Annual Spelling Bee for Literacy benefiting the Lafayette Adult Resource Academy (LARA) - Saturday, February 28, 1:00 PM at Sunnyside Middle School

Pronouncer: the 2008 National Spelling Bee Champion, Sameer Mishra. Teams of three will compete to win prizes, but more importantly, to have fun helping support LARA and literacy in the greater-Lafayette area. Sponsors include:

Engagement Projects

Community Writing and Education Station (CWEST)

Partner: Lafayette Adult Resource Academy (LARA), WorkOne Express Lafayette

Support: Purdue Writing Lab, Purdue Liberal Arts Community Engagement (PLACE), Student Engagement Grant

Overview: The CWEST (pronounced "quest") is a sustainable, collaborative civic engagement literacy project that works in close cooperation with LARA, a local adult basic education program. Specifically, the CWEST contains GED preparation resources, ESL resources, and workplace and personal finance literacy resources. The goals of the project are to integrate local civic engagement as part of the OWL's mission, to investigate local engagement and public discourse, and to work with LARA in developing helpful literacy resources.

Purdue Professional Writing Students Engagement and Activism (@sea)

Partner: Purdue Professional Writing Program, Tippecanoe County Historical Association

Support: PLACE

Overview: The Semester @ SEA emulates elements of a study abroad semester and of a service learning project. Like study abroad, the students work with others in their major, taking a set of intensive thematically linked classes. Following the model of service learning initiatives, the students work locally, engaged with a community organization. For our inaugural project, we worked directly with the Tippecanoe County Historical Association to restructure the exhibits at Fort Ouiatenon in ways that will highlight the Fort’s importance to both migration and immigration in 18th century Indiana and to retain it as a vital space of learning and exploration for visitors and scholars in the 21st century.

Indiana Department of Transportation Civil Engineering Workshop Series (INDOT Workshop Resources)

Partner: INDOT

Support: INDOT, Purdue Civil Engineering

Overview: The INDOT-Writing Lab Workshop Series grew out of a cooperative project between Purdue Civil Engineering, the Writing Lab, and the INDOT Office of Research and Development in West Lafayette, Indiana. Three professors in the Department of English worked with Tommy Nantung, the Section Manager at INDOT, to develop resources to help civil engineers at INDOT write clear, concise, compelling documents. Dr. David Blakesley, Dr. Linda Bergmann, and Dr. Richard Johnson-Sheehan composed a six-week workshop series and led class sessions using PowerPoint presentations and handouts. Tutors from the Writing Lab then worked closely with INDOT engineers on technical research documents for publication within INDOT and in peer-reviewed journals.

One Laptop Per Child "Buy One, Give One"

Partner: OLPC Foundation

Support: Purdue Writing Lab

Overview: The OLPC project began in November, 2007, when the Writing Lab placed its order for an XO laptop, also known as the “$100 laptop,” through the Give One Get One program. The Give One Get One program (which ran through November 26, 2007) allowed donors to purchase an XO laptop and contribute a second XO to a child in a developing country. The Writing Lab’s interest in the OLPC program stems from the OWL’s long history of global engagement and literacy education, which in turn aligns with Purdue’s land-grant state university mission. The Writing Lab wanted to develop a relationship with OLPC and contribute to its program while at the same time ensuring OWL usability on the XO. We anticipate that our large library of educational material may be useful to the millions of students, teachers, and administrators using the XO. We also believe that our graphical and user-centered design will work well with the XO’s child-friendly operating system and interface.

The Writing Lab's OLPC project also informs undergraduate work in professional writing, technology, and engagement. In the fall semester of 2008, an English 421 student group worked with local teachers to develop a feasibility study on using the XO laptop in the greater-Lafayette area. Through this project, the Purdue Writing Lab hopes to connect global engagement and education efforts with local engagement and undergraduate writing pedagogy.

Words on the Go (WOTG)

Partner: Friends of Words on the Go, Creative Writers in greater Lafayette

Support: Purdue Public Radio WBAA FM 101.3 and AM 920, CityBus of Greater Lafayette, Tippecanoe Arts Federation

Overview: Words on the Go is a group of volunteers working in collaboration with staff at CityBus to mount poetry on board our local buses. Our aim is to celebrate language and to encourage the use of public transportation. And in the process of soliciting and showcasing local poetry, we hope to build a rich sense of community. Although poetry-on-the-buses is an international phenomenon, Words on the Go is somewhat unique in its focus on community participation.

Background

Community engagement in the Writing Lab first started as a paper-based handout system organized in filing cabinets. Paper handouts were mailed to users in response to questions about writing, citation, and research. In 1993, these engagement efforts shifted to a GOPHER system (precursor to the Internet) where users could review and download electronic writing resources through FTP. In 1995, the OWL launched on the World Wide Web with html versions of writing resources, and it has maintained an ongoing effort of engagement with the world ever since.

This Engagement area, however, is different from past efforts. Users' feedback notwithstanding, many OWL resources have been developed by members of the Writing Lab or members of the English Department and then disseminated to OWL users. Many projects and resources in this Engagement area have been (or are being) developed with OWL users or members of local organizations. Therefore, work housed here represents a participatory approach to resource authorship (civic invention) that teams users and developers in close, collaborative, and ongoing relationships. We hope you find this section informative and useful.

Engagement at Purdue

Office of Engagement

Purdue Liberal Arts Community Engagement (PLACE)

Engineering Projects In Community Service (EPICS)

Service-Learning at Purdue

 

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