Last updated: 11/14/2020
Visual: The words “Walden University Writing Center” and the Walden University Writing Center logo on a blank page of a notebook with a pencil. The slogan “Your writing, grammar, and APA experts” appears. The screen shifts to present the words “Course Paper Template” with the title “Downloading and Using the Template” underneath.
Audio: Music plays.
Visual: The Walden University Writing Center webpage “Walden Templates: General Templates” is open in a browser window. The screen scrolls down to show Undergraduate Course Paper Templates and Graduate Course Paper Templates.
Audio: The Writing Center provides course paper templates for undergraduate and graduate courses. There are a few versions of the course paper template—without abstract, with abstract, and with advice. You can use whichever template fits your needs. For this demonstration, I will download the course paper template with abstract for graduate courses.
Visual: The cursor clicks on the link that reads, “APA Course Template (7th Ed.).”
Audio: To download the template, click the link. Your web browser may prompt you to open or save the template. Choose the option to save the Word document to your computer.
Visual: The cursor moves to the Downloads icon in the web browser and clicks to open the file. Microsoft Word opens on the screen with the template title page. The cursor moves to “File” in the upper left hand corner of the screen and then clicks on “Save As.” A pop-up window appears for saving the file. The cursor moves to the file name and types in “Paper Assignment 1” and then choose the Documents folder for the location. The pop-up window disappears and the template title page is visible again.
Audio: Check your downloads folder or search your computer for “Course Paper Template” to find the file if your web browser does not provide you a pop-up link to the file. You may also check the downloads area in your web browser.
When you first open the file to work on an assignment, you may wish to “Save As” immediately and rename the file as well as choose a different location on your computer.
Some students find it useful to use the template as a guide for formatting their own Word documents. Others prefer to write their assignments in a separate Word document and then copying and pasting the text into the template. Our recommendation at the Writing Center is to write directly in a clean copy of the course paper template for each assignment.
The template shows you the formatting requirements you need to follow for your coursework assignments as well as examples of APA-formatted title pages, abstracts, headings, and reference entries.
If you find that the template’s formatting is changed or becomes corrupted and you cannot fix the errors, you can always download a clean version of the template from our website and start over. The template is available to you as a tool and is meant to save you time and give you guidance, so use it in whatever way makes the most sense to you.
Visual: The email address writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu appears on the screen.