This site was not one of my favorites. It took such a long time loading that I was expecting something really spectacular with lots of graphics. When the plain gray screen appeared with only rainbow divider bars, I was truly disappointed. There were no graphics in the site at all except for the divider bars. Layout seemed virtually nonexistent, and it was very confusing trying to navigate where I wanted to go. The online tutorials were extremely poor. There was very little information per page and the information presented did not even make sense.
I would advise against considering this site as a resource. Getting any kind of useful information seems unlikely and difficult at best.
Format for submission: Has a form to fill out that is somewhat straightforward. Has a field that is labeled "message," but does not ask for the assignment. Students can also email papers through their regular email accounts.
Difficulty level: Very difficult to submit papers because the server is very busy. I noticed the second time I submitted this paper it was easier to just email it to them.
Amount of feedback received: I submitted the paper the first time and after waiting two weeks for a response, I re-submitted the paper. At this time I received a message that said the original message had been forwarded but must have gotten lost. OSU admitted that because the OWL was now restricted, tutors could only provide specific information to OSU students.
Quality of feedback: None given
Staff qualifications: "Staffed by graduate students working toward
a master's degree or a Ph.D. in the OSU Department of English."
Additional features: One-to-one conference, grammar hotline (by phone),
and a site under construction for interactive tutorial.
Overall Rating: 1 Hoot
This OWL has handouts for coordination, subordination, paragraph development, sentences, simple sentences, compound sentences, thesis development, transitions and subject-verb agreement. The user can reach these handouts via instructional programs or services hot-spots. After I found the three ways to enter the tutorials, I noticed that they were under construction. I took this into account as I went through the handouts.
I tried to begin with the first handout (coordination). However, I then noticed that the next topic, subordination, was blocked, so I chose to go through the sentence tutorials. Despite these problems, the handouts are informative and understandable. The pages are set-up so the user does not need to scroll down; he/she only needs to click "Continue." I noticed there is only a "Continue" button on each page and not a "Back to tutorials listing" button or a "Back to OWL homepage" button. This presents a drawback because in order to get out of the tutorials the user must go to the end of each session or use the "Back" icon to return to the homepage. At the end of each handout there are links to the OSU OWL or the OSU Homepage, but the user is never able to return to the tutorials listing. This is a huge drawback for this OWL.
OSU's OWL has been under construction for some time now. I have been looking at this OWL weekly for about 2 months and I have not seen any changes. I decided to email OSU and ask about the complications. I received feedback the same day. The gentleman responded with some useful information. He said they revise it every year in order to make it more user-friendly. Due to technicians' schedules and the OWL staff's inability to upload revisions on their own, the recent changes are taking additional time. He hopes for the work to be done by the end of the semester.
Even though this OWL has handouts, they are not organized and user-friendly. Also, this OWL has been under construction far too long. For these reasons, I must give OSU 2 hoots.