Re: OWL's

[amoser@ruacad.ac.runet.edu]

Sharon--I see that you have had referrals from Purdue.  Other than that, 
does your OWL just serve your campus?  Do students send your tutors 
entire papers or do they just ask specific questions (grammar, how to, 
library?) and ask for handouts.  I would like to start and OWL here, but 
I want to start small (mostly because I don't know what I'm doing).  It 
all sound like a lot of fun, and it appeals to me to be able to serve 
students who can't get to campus when they would like to or are shy or 
who just like this medium best.  Also, I like the goal of helping 
students learn to ask good questions (or profitable questions, I guess).  
Ann
amoser @ruacad.ac.runet.edu
> 
> >We're just about ready to do a pilot opening of an OWL here at St. Olaf.  
> >Would any of you wise ones connected to OWLS (and surely all of those 
> >connected to OWLS are wise) offer observations on pitfalls before we 
> >launch into it?  
> 
> get a friend in the computer field.  i had relatively few problems setting
> up our mailing address and gopher site because i went right to the man in
> charge and his team.  it helps that the man in charge is married to a
> friend of mine, but you may not have such a circumstance.  
> 
> be realistic about what you want the system to do.  i had thought
> beforehand about what i wanted our owl to do -- answers writing questions
> not in real time and provide handouts.  they were willing to set up a
> fairly simple system for us at this time.  we have just gone through
> setting up an email system for the entire campus -- all 20000 of us -- and
> the computer types are still working out all the bugs so they were not
> willing to set up any elaborate systems for us.  we're content to do what
> we can with what they could do for us now and will expand as we see the
> need and as they have more time.
> 
> we did not advertise our system heavily this fall as i was out for 6 weeks
> for surgery and thought i should be here if we got hit with lots of
> requests.  so far the few requests we have had have been forwarded from the
> purdue owl.  we will advertise heavily when school starts up again and hope
> to get more requests locally.  
> 
> Sharon Strand
> Bowling Green State University
> Bowling Green, OH  
> sstrand@bgnet.bgsu.edu
> 
>