OWL’s online courses work by inviting you to engage with your tutor, and with other writers enrolled in the course through a range of interfaces, including chat rooms, discussion forums, wikis, and standard, content-based webpages.

Throughout the site, you’ll find there is instant help available – usually indicated by a , which you can click to get more information. If you still can’t find a solution, simply post a message in a discussion forum, or email your tutors.

Although the course is run online, we also ask you to work offline on your writing, using old-fashioned techniques like writing in a journal, stretching your imagination and reading.

To get the most out of this course, we recommend you set aside at least four hours for each lesson/week:

• One hour to read the online lesson material;
• One hour to think and dream and mess about with ideas;
• One hour for trying out the various writing techniques each lesson includes; and
• One hour for posting your writing, providing feedback or commentary on other writer’s work, participating in discussion forums and chats, and so on.

We recommend that you allocate a bit of extra time the first week to familiarise yourself with the online learning forum.