The Dakota State Owl is about as bare bones as you can get. The white background, lack of graphics, and low-tech presentation (few hypertextual elements) provide little incentive to visit the site. The handouts, from three highly-regarded OWLs, were useful. Ironically, the most extensive section explained the nuts and bolts of the online center, information which suggested more services than the site provided.
This page took a long time to load (I had enough time to get a Coke and a Snickers bar). The layout and design were rather boring. The site uses a plain white background with little owl pictures in an attempt to add interest. Most of the pages had very little text and only one graphic; I find little useful information anywhere in the site. Dakota State's back link was at the bottom of each page and read "Thanks for using the DSU OWL."
I did not find this site to be very well designed, and it provided the visitor no real benefit. For additional resources, the user was simply referred to other OWL sites. Therefore, I did not find the Dakota State OWL a very valuable resource.
Difficulty level: Extremely difficult for people who are not up to speed with the email and file transfer system (ASCII). Directions for sending the paper are provided but hard to follow. To many people, they may appear to be written in a foreign language because of the computerese. If you are not familiar with computer terminology, you will find yourself pulling out your hair--like I did!
Amount of feedback received: not available
Quality of feedback: not available
Staff qualifications: The DSU OWL is staffed by trained students and supervised by two faculty members.
Overall Rating: 1 Hoot
In addition, the OWL site provided links to other universities' writing labs. Listed in the Dakota State University OWL index is "Online Writing Resources from Other Universities." After clicking there and looking under the handbook and handouts section, I found links to the Rensselaer Writing Center Online Handouts and the University of Texas at Austin Undergraduate Writing Center handouts. Both of these centers offer a multitude of useful handouts available at the click of a button. For a student who wants to use handout information to remedy writing problems immediately, this feature makes them almost as convenient as if they were on the Dakota State University Online Writing Lab. Therefore, I give this OWL 3 hoots.
An off-campus OWL address was listed to contact a consultant. The email address is OWL@columbia.dus.edu. If the question for the OWL is short, write it in a Pegasus Mail message and send.
Daily hours and response time, if an OWL tutor is not online, were posted.
DSU asks that students resist the urge to send entire papers since this practice results in compositions that are not entirely the original work of the submitting writer.
DSU offered the option to submit questions about writing problems in case a student's on-line instructor was not available on the OWL.