ABSTRACT
The name writing lab has always sounded too much like a place where white-coated scientists conduct experiments on unsuspecting students; writing center, although broader in scope, often does not live up to its name, being hidden away in the recesses of the English Department and not at the center for anyone. What to call those staffing the lab or center is problematic as well: tutor sounds too directive; consultant seems better, but no one knows exactly what a consultant does. When the writing center becomes wired, the name game only intensifies: OWL has become the ubiquitous acronym for online writing lab. Although the reference to the bird is fortuitous (being the pet bird of Athena, goddess of wisdom), this acronym often seems to our faculty colleagues to be a little too cute to take seriously. At the UM, we struggled with these names as well, rethinking what we had done, what we wanted to do, and how best to describe both of these in an accurate yet inspiring manner. We liked the notion of OWL, but did not want to
be limited by the terminology, lab. We tried various acronyms (COW: Center for Online Writing; OIL: Online Interactive Learning; COL: Center for Online Literacies; and so forth), but none of them had the powerful graphic symbolism of the acronym OWL. So we kept the acronym but reassigned the letters to mean online writing and learning to refer to our online tutoring service, in an effort to foreground the human interactivity over the place or even the technology. In other words, we wanted students and writers-and ultimately, administrators and funders-to think of OWL not as a specific place but as any site where distant learners worked together.
