Abstract
This article explores beliefs writing center stakeholders and practitioners hold about online writing centers (OWCs) in terms of OWC services available at their current institutions and in terms of any prior experience tutoring online. Beliefs about OWCs can influence whether writing centers offer online services, whether tutors find their work in OWCs satisfying or disheartening, and how OWCs are created technologically and theoretically. These beliefs are explored through a convenience-sample survey of writing center stakeholders and practitioners. This survey finds that while practitioners and stakeholders have overall positive beliefs about the purpose of OWCs, experience influences both positive and negative beliefs, with less experienced respondents tending toward beliefs that OWCs must be synchronous to be effective, that it is difficult to communicate or build rapport with students in OWCs, and that OWCs are convenient. While scholarship on OWCs indicates there are many effective methods and means for implementing OWCs, each with its own limitations and opportunities, there is still work to do in addressing how OWC scholarship fits with the beliefs and experiences-or inexperience-of individual writing center stakeholders and practitioners.