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By Kevin Cullen, Journal and
Courier
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| WRITING HELP: Monica Stumpf (left) and Holly Grout, both students at Purdue, look over OWL, the Online Writing Lab at Heavilon Hall. The Internet Web site is visited by a million people a year who have questions about writing. |
Purdue University's Writing Lab is housed in three rooms of Heavilon Hall, but its clients pop in every minute of the day from all over the face of the Earth.
Thanks to the Internet, writers in about 100 nations are turning to its Web site for help with English spelling, punctuation and usage.
The Web site, the first of its kind in the United States, was begun in 1994. More than 2 million information requests, or hits, are expected this year. They're coming in at a rate of 7,000 a day.
In 1996, 1.5 million hits were logged.
"It just stuns me," says Muriel Harris, professor of English and director of the lab. "The world seems awesomely small."
The service is offered 24 hours a day. Purdue's computer can handle up to 25 computer "hits" at one time.
Using home, office and campus computers, users have access to more than 150 handouts written specifically for writers. They can learn about English as a second language; find writing resources and make copies of materials for English and language arts teachers.
Available "how-to" aids run the gamut and include: planning a composition; proofreading tips; up-to-date recommendations on using non-sexist language; coping with writing anxiety; quotations and paraphrasing; verb endings; parts of speech; dangling modifiers; the difference between "accept" and "except;" the "i before e" rule; and compound sentences.
New information is added all the time, often at the request of those using it -- no matter where they are.
"That's the beauty of the Internet -- it's free and accessible. It's a worldwide sharing of ideas," Harris says.
Purdue opened its writing lab in 1976. It's a place where students come for help in organizing, researching and writing class assignments, resumes, cover letters and other items.
The lab, 226 Heavilon Hall, has grown from two desks to three rooms and now serves about 6,000 students each year. It has three staffs of tutors for one-on-one consultations, plus computers and reference materials.
A major shortcoming lay in the fact that the lab was closed when some needed it: at nights and on weekends.
So in 1992, e-mail was added, allowing students and the public to send queries to the tutors. Today, about five e-mail messages are received daily; answers are e-mailed back within two days but requests for e-mail handouts are answered immediately.
In 1994, Harris set up the nation's first OWL, or Online Writing Lab. Dozens of colleges and universities have copied it.
"As the campus became wired, we needed to reach out to students in residence halls and with their own modems," Harris says. "There was no reason for them to wait until 9 a.m. to 6 p.m."
The word quickly spread.
"We've become an information provider to the universe," she says.
"I use it all the time," says Michelle Sidler, a Purdue graduate student in English from Dallas, Texas. "I've used it for about two years. It's very convenient. At 1 o'clock in the morning I can find out how to spell a certain word, or use a certain word, or reference a book."
OWL is especially popular among international students learning English, Sidler says.
Harris remembers one electronic request sent by a man in Malaysia. He was in no hurry to get an answer, he said, because he wouldn't have access to a computer again for another week.
More recently, Nathalie Faucheax, a student in France, asked the Writing Lab to analyze and correct an abstract she had written in English.
The lab can't honor such time-consuming requests, of course, but it responds anyway.
"One magazine called it the 'Rome' of OWLs," Harris says. "All roads lead to Rome, and all OWLs have links to us."
She admits that she's somewhat baffled by the popularity of the online service. It received a staggering 885,930 hits between Jan. 2 and May 13. More than 2 million hits are expected during 1997.
"It has grown as the Internet has grown," she says. Whenever research papers are due in grade schools, high schools or at Purdue, the number of requests soars.
January and May are the most active months. Requests have come from about 100 different nations, including Belize, Brunei, Modavia, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Egypt, Slovenia, Malaysia, and Tobago.
"Some (hits) have come from countries that I couldn't point to on the map," Harris says.
Many come from businessmen preparing reports and proposals in English, and from students and instructors learning or teaching English.
East Anglia University in England, the University of Toronto and the Dublin School of Business in Ireland have Web sites almost identical to Purdue's.
"You can print (our information) for non-commercial use, but we don't want people to put it on line for themselves without our permission," said OWL coordinator Jon Bush, a graduate student from Lafayette.
Liz Thelen is the OWL technical coordinator.
Purdue offers an online bibliography, giving other OWLs and prospective OWLs a 20-article reading list with start-up information. It gets more than 5,000 hits per semester.
OWL also shows students how to link to the Library of Congress information bases, on-line newspapers, government documents, library catalogues, dictionaries and other resources.
Harris says that Purdue's OWL is used as a teaching tool by teachers in cash-poor school districts. Some such districts have access to computers and the Internet because of technology grants, but can't afford to replace old textbooks.
Teachers have made paper printouts of OWL handouts for whole classrooms of children. A teaching assistant from the University of California at Berkeley did the same for his undergraduates.
"It is not designed to replace textbooks, but it is more current than a lot of other sources," Bush says.
He considers it "pretty amazing" to find himself so involved in a popular global Web site. It provides a vital service and is a good public relations tool for Purdue.
"A lot of people who teach English in the Far East have our e-mail address handy," he says. "It makes you feel good when people come to us.
"People will e-mail us and say, 'I'm a Purdue grad, and I loved the Writing Lab. Will you help my son in his class?'"
Purdue's OWL also is written about and pictured in various computer books and textbooks, including a textbook for college computer science classes and a high school textbook for college-bound students.
Harris says she'd love to offer effective on-line tutorials, to simulate the interaction between a real tutor and a student.
"But there seems to be something about two people talking, talking out problems and asking questions that you can't seem to duplicate," she says.
Bush says, "We end up being an information resource people depend on in a lot of ways, but it can't replace face-to-face tutoring."
Harris encourages local people to use the Web site.
"With more access to the Internet, we expect to get more and more use," Bush says. "It's more famous away from Lafayette than in it."
Harris won't even speculate on what might lie ahead for OWL.
"The Web is so dynamic. You don't know what will be available two years from now," she says. "Who knows what Web browsers will permit us to do?"
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