Community reviews for Purdue Online Writing Lab

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My overall take is that it is a little advanced for the high school students that I teach however it is necessary to have such a rigorous resource available because writing is a serious subject and good writing does not occur overnight-it takes work. The editing and paper analysis process of the Purdue writing service is highly defined. I am familiar with a similar service at the University of Phoenix, which has been in place for approximately 20 years and is highly recommended by PhDs and doctoral candidates. If I had to make a comparison, I would place the University of Phoenix above Purdue University's writing service.

I believe this is an excellent teaching tool. It can be used to teach the entire class, a small group, or during one-on-one instruction. Students can even go home and use this tool on their own as they write their papers. The website is easy to navigate and provides plenty of examples.

It is the website I trust when I'm writing my own research citations pages. With two examples per most entries as well as the formula, it helps my students power through their first from scratch citation. It isn't going to make kids love writing citations, but it will give them enough information to do it correctly if they pay close attention to detail. However, you can't just direct them to the site. Teachers really have to show the students how to use the resource.

Have not used this yet, however it looks like an awesome tool for the classroom.

There's a wealth of information here, but you have to know what you want. If you need to know how to cite a line from a song on a CD in MLA, it will tell you. You can't, however, just send students to the site without some guidance. As a reference for creating citations, it's great. As a teaching tool, it's too dry.

This site is an excellent tool because it provides accurate and appropriate examples of letters and resume formats. I liked their explanations, examples of formats to use, and feel it is professional. The one thing I found was that many students are reluctant writers and nothing is on the site to assist or encourage them.

My higher level students still to this day utilize this website as a resource for their college papers. The lower level students find it too comprehensive to find what they need and they usually don't need it to be that comprehensive in order to get what they need. I will say though that to teach APA style - our entire department relies on that site in order to have accurate information.

For middle school, this is a great resource for teachers! It would be excellent for high school students and above to use individually, but it could be very overwhelming for middle school students.

The OWL is extremely text-dependent; however, it is an excellent tool for small group assignments. Grouping students (higher level with lower level) and allowing them to explore the site and investigate often helps students who need help with vocabulary and structure. Because it is a college-produced site, OWL is geared to higher level learners. It would be beneficial if OWL would create more resources that helped lower level students become more engaged and understand the idea of citing sources in text.