APA Citations Part 1: Methods to the Madness

Presented May 6, 2020

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Last updated 5/26/2020

 

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Housekeeping

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    • Now: Use the Q&A box.
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  • Help
    • Ask in the Q&A box.
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Audio: [Beth] Alright. Well, hello everyone! It’s wonderful to have you here. We have a nice big group this evening, and I am excited for this presentation that Jes has prepared for you. We have a couple of quick housekeeping notes before we get started. And also, I want to introduce myself. My name is Beth Nastachowski, one of the facilitators today, along with our presenter Jes and our other facilitator Max. Max, why don’t we give you a chance to say hi before the housekeeping.

[Max] Sure, thanks very much, Beth. Welcome everyone. It’s really great to be here. I’m going to be behind the scenes tonight answering questions, so if you have any, pop those into the Q&A box. I am an instructor in the Writing Center, and I’m thrilled whenever I get the chance to work with Walden students. You all are doing such amazing, interesting, social change research. Just today, I was reading a prospectus on lowering the racial dynamics of incarceration in Ferguson, Missouri. Anyway, great to be here, and I’m looking forward to being here with you tonight.

[Beth] Thanks, Max, and Jes, I’ll hand it over to you in just a minute once I take over the housekeeping. We’re glad to have you all here today; this is fantastic. A couple of quick housekeeping notes and I’ll hand it over to Jes. As I said, I am recording the session. We’re posting all of the recordings of our webinars in the webinar archive by tomorrow afternoon, so if you have to leave for any reason or you’d like to come back and review the session, you’re more than welcome to do so. You can access that in the webinar archive, and you’ll get a link that in the follow-up e-mail we send after the webinar.

We encourage you to interact today, and it was wonderful to see everyone introducing themselves and responding to our questions in the lobby, but also note that there are lots of ways to interact with us in the webinar today; Jes has some chats that she’ll be using throughout the session today to engage with the content and your fellow classmates today, but there are also links in the slides for further information, so feel free to click those links. They’ll open up in a new tab in your browser.

You can also download a copy of the slide that Jes is using tonight in the files pod at the bottom right-hand corner and you can download those by clicking on the file titled Slides.

Click on that and you can click download files and save those to access those as a later date. We are here to answer questions on the right-hand side of the screen.

Ask questions as soon as you have them but note we are here to help support you with APA and any questions you have after the webinar as well so we have the email address and live chat hours both which will be mentioned at the end of the center and you can reach out after the webinar to think of a question later. If you have technical issues please let me know in the questions box. I have a couple of tips and tricks I can give you. There is a help button in the top right-hand corner which is a great place to go for significant technical help. With that I will hand it over to you, Jes.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the title of the webinar, “APA Citations Part 1: Methods to the Madness” and the speaker’s name and information: Jes Philbrook, Resource Manager, Walden University Writing Center

Audio: [Jes] Thank you, I appreciate that. Hello and welcome everyone. It is nice to be here with you today. I am your presenter for tonight and I'm thrilled to be here to share APA citations part one Methods to the Madness. This is the first of our regular APA sessions we are transitioning over into APA 7 and presenting to you. We will have several other APA sessions this week and next week to teach the foundations of the APA in the new APA 7 style. I am a resource manager the Writing Center and I've been with Walden five years paradigm from St. Louis part, Minnesota with my trusty companion Zoie at home, and I'm happy to teach this to you and respond to your questions as they come through. Thank you Beth and Max for being behind-the-scenes and responding to student questions as we have over 100 people today. Welcome to everyone.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Webinar Objectives

  • You will be able to:

Understand the reasoning behind how APA citations and references are structured

Understand changes from APA 6 to APA 7 for citations and references

Identify errors in reference list entries

Create citations based on reference list entries

Know where to go for APA help

Audio: [Jes] A little bit about the webinar’s objectives, we have a few today. After listening to the webinar and participating you should be able to undersell the reasoning about how APA citations are structured. We will go over basics of references and citations. I will be highlighting changes from APA 6 to APA 7 for references and citations so if you already know APA 6, we will teach you what is changing so you can change that in your mind. If you come to the session with no background, you'll get all APA 7 instructions. Know that we are there to support you with the APA transition in your coursework. You will identify errors in reference list entries, create citations from reference list entries, and know where to go for help, and I will highlight resource and answer questions.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Transition to APA 7

  • New (7th) edition of APA manual released
  • APA 7 implementation dates: May 4 (semester-based programs) & June 1 (quarter-based and Tempo programs)
  • Some doctoral capstone students may continue using APA 6 for an additional grace period—details TBA

Audio: [Jes] APA 7 is the first time in about six or seven years there's been a new version. There were issues with APA 6 that APA 7 is doing a nice job of clarifying. For students in semester-based programs the APA 7 implementation date was this week, May 4, during the term start. For students in quarter based or Tempo programs the implementation is June 1. So we are in the middle of the transition and this is a good time to learn APA 7.

Some doctoral students may continue using APA 6 for an additional grace period, and the details for that are unique to each situation so if you are already writing your doctoral capstone, work with your committee to get clarification on that.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Transition to APA 7

Audio: [Jes] Here are some resources as you navigate the transition to APA 7. There is the writing center APA transition webpage. That is the first place to go I would recommend and gives the timeline, resources. On that page, you can find that APA 6 to 7 comparison table. It goes over what the APA 6 rule was, and it shows you the APA 7 rule is now. You can also register for the other writing center webinars being presented this week and next. Several are going on, and our facilitator Max is presenting one tomorrow that is continuing the APA citations part two, nontraditional sources. If you find yourself wanting more about APA we have a lot more this weekend next week.

You can look for updated website content, and that's been rolling out this week so if you frequently use the writing Center website that will be up-to-date in APA 7 this week, and you can send questions to apa7@mail.walden.edu.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Today’s Webinar

Audio: [Jes] We have revised the curriculum to reflect our instruction and examples. I will indicate large shifts from APA 6 to 7 using this handy icon. So anytime you see that triggers the change from APA 6 to APA 7. For more details you can watch some of the other sessions. Earlier this week was APA 7 at a glance. If any of you were at that one being at webinars two nights in a row. If you want more often outlined explanation of the APA 6 to 7 changes, that's a good webinar.

That is what I have for you in terms of situating what we are with APA 7.

 

Visual: Slide changes to Chat box

  • Why do scholars use APA (or any citation style)?
  • Why does Walden use APA?

Audio: [Jes] We will now jump into the session and start with a chat for you. I have a question I would like you to respond to our chat box. Just a moment to reflect and pause and think about why we are doing this session and talking about this.

Why do scholars use APA or any citation style like MLA or Chicago or IEEE(Turabian)? and why do you think Walden uses APA? I think it is helpful to start thinking about that. Why do scholars use APA and why this Walden use APA? I’m going to mute for moment and let you reflect on that in the chat box and then we will chat a little more.

I am seeing a lot of great responses here. Because it’s is a scholarly standard, legal reasons, research and consistency to build a foundation, organization, avoid misunderstanding. Quality, to avoid plagiarism. Yes, yes, to show consistency. Good question about the difference between APA and MLA, I will get to that a little on the next slide. Just a different style. A lot of minor differences. I appreciate the comments about making life difficult, I know it can definitely feel that way. I'm starting though to see some more of the research. Excellent what all you are sharing. What about why does Walden use APA? Any thoughts on why Walden uses APA? I will take another drink while I go on mute.

Because we are scholars and it is a standard across all programs. It is accredited. These are all great reasons. There are many different reasons. Credibility, organization, joining a community of discourse. APA is the citation style frequently used by social sciences and since Walden is primarily a social science institution, that is why we use APA versus MLA. MLA is used more by those with a background in English, and it focuses more on names and people whereas APA focuses more on studies and years of publication etc.

Thank you for participating in that chat it is nice to have that level of engagement. I appreciate that very much.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Examples of reference list entries in three styles: APA, MLA, and Chicago

  • APA
    • Holzweiss, P. C., Joyner, S. A., Fuller, M. B., Henderson, S., & Young, R. (2014). Online graduate students’ perceptions of best learning experiences. Distance Education, 35(3), 311-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.955262
  • MLA
    • Holzweiss, Peggy C., et al. “Online Graduate Students’ Perceptions of Best Learning Experiences.” Distance Education, vol. 35, no. 3, 2014, pp. 311-323. doi:10.1080/01587919.2015.955262
  • Chicago
    • Holzweiss, Peggy C., Sheila A. Joyner, Matthew B. Fuller, Susan Henderson, and Robert Young. “Online Graduate Students’ Perceptions of Best Learning Experiences.” Distance Education 35, no. 3 (2014): 311-323, doi: 10.1080/01587919.2015.955262

Audio: [Jes] Here's a little bit of a foundation to start from. I have the same source here cited in three different styles. My background is in MLA; my graduate coursework and research has been published in MLA not APA.

Since Walden is an institute of social sciences we all use APA. You can see the main differences are really with the authors names and publication information. With APA would list all of those authors names all five, but only the last names and initials, and for the most part the same information is provided, the year, the title, publication information, the DOI, formatted slightly different. You can tell the authors names are the biggest difference here. APA focuses a lot on last names, no first names are used whereas MLA and Chicago, they have first names and MLA just uses et al. and doesn't even list all five names. So there's a difference in focus and what the role the researchers play and whether first names are needed or not. APA avoids first names to avoid gender bias.

In case you come from another background is just a little bit of a comparison for the different citation styles.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Dissecting a Reference Entry

  • General sections
  • Books, articles, webpages

Audio: [Jes] We will talk about reference entries to start and the general components of a reference entry for a book, articles, and for webpages. That will be our focus today. Some of you mentioned having trouble with legal citations and references. We will not cover that today but we do have resources on our website and you can reach out to us via email for questions. If you have questions beyond the scope of today's session. We will focus more on foundations today.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Four Sections of a Reference Entry

Author’s Name. (Publication Date). Title of the source. Publication information.

 

Audio: [Jes] There are four sections of a reference entry. Every reference entry will have some form of these pieces and they will look a little different depending on the source. Reference entry is the part of the end of the paper, the references list and will start with the author's name. APA, just last names and initials. Then there’s the publication date and that will be in parentheses after the author name. Then there's the title of the source whether a book or journal article or webpage. And then publication information. For some sources, the publication information is brief, like for a book, and for others more robust like a journal article, and the publication information sometimes includes electronic retrieval information where those sources can be found.

Of the four components, they will remain fairly consistent across all sources. Publication information is where you will see the most change from source to source.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Author

  • Author’s (or authors’) last name(s), comma, and initial(s)
  • List all authors’ names, up to 20 authors, and present in order shown
  • An organization or government group can be an author
  • Reference entries are alphabetized by author last name
  • Author’s name sticks out from rest of reference with hanging indent

Audio: [Jes] Starting with the author, this is an example of a book in case it is helpful to highlight the sources we have. I've used a gold box to highlight the author, so this is the first part of every reference entry. This is the source that has three authors. You can see we have the author last name, and then initial afterwards, second author's last name comma, the & symbol is used here and the third author's name and initial, so something to note is for this piece you will just use the last names, comma and initials and ampersand if you have two or more authors. In APA 7 you will list all authors names up to 20 authors and presented in the list shown.

One little caveat is if you have more than that, which will not happen often, you will include the first 19 and then ellipses and then the last. Again, that’s not going to happen very often because APA doesn't tend to have sources with that many authors.

An organization or group can be the author, and I will show examples of that later, so it could be the center for disease control and prevention but it doesn't have to be a person. They are alphabetized by author last name and the author's last name sticks out from the rest of the reference. For some reason can’t see it because the link turned up white but if you click on the little icon there it brings you to – it’s between the parentheses even though does not popping up. It brings you to the academic skills Center website which is tutorials on formatting the hanging indent. In case that is a the struggle for you, that is a place you can go.

That is the author piece, and that will be pretty consistent across all sources.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Publication Date

  • Most publications such as journal articles and books only require a year
  • Some publications like blog posts, newspaper articles, magazine articles, and webpages include the month or month/date
  • Use n.d. if there is no date of publication

Audio: [Jes] Publication date is the second category. This will be relatively consistent. This source is an online news article, so that is the kind of format I've used for this reference. We have that author in the first piece with the author last name and initial like I shared earlier. The date for this includes the month and date because of the type of source it is. Most publications such as journal articles and books only require a year, so in the parentheses, you are only going to have the year like we did with this source before, where there was just 2006 there.

But for blog posts, newspaper articles, magazine articles, and webpages, you will need a month and/or month date in addition to the year. The APA manual makes that clear. We have instruction for that on the website as well. Different sources will require just the year versus month, date, and year, but generally you will have the year in parentheses after the author name as the way of publishing -- presenting that piece of information.

For some sources there will not be a year. Some webpages do not have a year or they have a copyright date. In that case you do not leave it out you will use the same parentheses and right n.d. And that represents no date. So that's our second piece of information.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Publication Title

  • Follows sentence case capitalization rule: First word, first word after a colon, and proper nouns
  • Sources published as own entity are italicized (books, journals, DVDs, dissertations, webpages)
  • Article, blog post, and chapter titles are not italicized

Audio: [Jes] The third piece we see in every reference entry is the publication title. This is the actual title of the document or source of the video or whatever it is you encounter, the thing, the title of that. The title will always follow sentence case capitalization rules. That means only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns are capitalized and everything else is lowercase. And then there will be some variance between if something is italicized or if it is not.

This is an example of a webpage. A webpage in APA 7 is considered a standalone publication. Just like a book or journal or a DVD or dissertation, it is a thing by itself. Those are going to be italicized.

Things housed within something larger like a journal article or blog post or chapter title, those will not be italicized and that will be the difference you see whether something is italicized or not. This is a webpage APA 7 considers that a standalone. So that is going to be italicized. And you can see we have an example of the author name being an organization, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, and this is a publication that does not have a date. So we have an example of that "n.d." there.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Webpage titles in references

APA 6:

  • Webpage titles: not italicized

APA 7:

  • Webpage titles: italicized

Audio: [Jes] Moving forward, here's a little bit of a trigger of an APA 7 change. Those of you familiar with 6 will probably note that the webpage title was italicized in the previous example. In APA 6 webpage titles were not italicized and were considered housed within the larger website. That is not always the case, so with APA 7 they transitioned to make the standardized with everything else. Now webpage titles are italicized and considered standalone like a book. That something to note if you are familiar with APA 6.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Publication Information

  • Includes everything after the source title
  • Depends on how the source was published
  • Depends on how you accessed the source
  • Directs reader to how to find the source

Audio: [Jes] Moving to publication information. As I noted, this is the piece that will change the most for every source you engage with. Based on what kinds of source it is. This is an example of a journal article. We have the author names, there are two, we have the date, just the year and title of the article, those are the three other pieces. Everything in the gold box is the publication information and you can see there's a lot of information there. The bold is for emphasis to make sure that is clear.

This publication information because it is a journal article, it has the name of the journal, the volume number, and the issue number. If there was a page number it would include that but there was not in this case, and then the retrieval information, the DOI. Publication information includes everything after the source title, and it will vary depending on how the source is published, how you access the source but it will help the reader find it.

For the journal article we have the journal name, the volume, issue, the retrieval. If you go back to the other examples this is a webpage and the publication information is the name of the larger website organization and the URL of the webpage. This is an online news article on the information in Forbes and the URL. For the book the information is just the publisher.

All of these are really different because they are different sources. So the way we format the publication information will vary. One of the best places you can go on the website to learn more about these different styles and the format, is the example of the common reference entry page. This page has all the different common examples that Walden students encounter. It provides examples of those references should so you can actually -- -- you can find the journal article on the common examples reference page and compare with example is there to the source you are looking at and follow the formatting and that helps a lot with ensuring you adhere to APA standards.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Publication Information for Journal Articles

  • Article with DOI Number
    • Jenkins, R. (2005). Globalisation of production, employment and poverty: Three macro-meso-micro studies. European Journal of Development Research, 17(4), 601-625. https://doi.org/10.1080/09578810500367557
  • Article without a DOI Number
    • Cox, M., Ortmeier-Hooper, C., & Tirabassi, K. E. (2009). Teaching writing for the “real world”: Community and workplace writing. The English Journal, 98(5), 72-80.

Audio: [Jes] With journal articles, some will have DOIs and some will not. Here's two examples to show you how to format a journal article. Both start with the author. You can see Jenkins, just one author but then here we have three authors. It has the year, the title of the article, the publication information of the journal name in italics, volume, issue, page number. So that is the same. The first one by Jenkins has a DOI and that is just something used to help access journal articles in a more easy fashion. It is kind of like the Dewey decimal system of the online Journal world. It is a number associated with the journal.

Most journal articles published recently have a DOI but there will occasionally be those that do not. I have found in the English world, so the field I come from, a lot of journal articles do not have DOIs and I’m not quite sure why that's the case. But I found that more social science journals have them. In general, if there's a DOI, include it and present it as an https://doi.org.

If there is no DOI number, for the most part you will be able to not include it and present it like it is a print source. There are some clauses in APA for how to do things differently, but we do not need to get into that with today's session. We can do that and others where we go different but if there is a DOI number, include it and presented as a URL. If not present it like a print source.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Publication information: Books and webpages

APA 6:

  • Books: Include city/state of publisher
  • Webpages: Write “Retrieved from” before URL

APA 7:

  • Books: Do not include city/state of publisher
  • Webpages: Include URL without “Retrieved from” before

Audio: [Jes] This is a change from APA 6 to APA 7, so I will highlight those for books and webpages. With APA 6 for books, you included the city and state of publisher in addition to the publisher. APA 7, you just include just the publisher. No city, state. Webpages, we used to write "retrieved from” for the URL but in APA 7 it is implied and not included.

Samples I shared earlier are in APA 7 so if you download the slides you can see examples.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Publication information: Journal articles

APA 6:

  • Issue numbers not always included
  • DOI formatted in different ways; no active links
  • If no DOI, provide URL of journal home page

APA 7:

  • Always include issue number
  • DOIs should be presented as a URL and can be active link
  • If no DOI, format like a print source

Audio: [Jes] There were quite a few more changes with journal articles in all of these made things easier. I am a huge fan of these changes. In APA 6, there were different rules for when to include issue numbers. The DOI was formatted in different ways, sometimes just DOI colon and the number, sometimes it was http, sometimes HTTPS there were a lot of options, and in APA 6 if you didn't have a DOI you had to go find a journal home page and grab that URL and present that. APA 7 streamlines some things. So always include the issue number if there is one. Don't figure out the pagination but include the issue number. DOIs should be presented as URLs, which I showed in the last example. With HTTPS. Always do it like that. It can be an active link and it is fine it is blue and underlined, that's not a problem anymore.

Instead of finding the URL of the Journal homepage if there is no DOI you can format like a print source. Hopefully those of you familiar with APA 6 and who got frustrated by the DOI and issue number rules, hopefully the change to APA 7 makes things easier.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Comparing Different Sources in APA [27:02]

  • Book
    • Merriam, S., Courtenay, B., & Cervero, R. (2006). Global issues and adult education. Jossey-Bass Publishing.
  • Article
    • Holzweiss, P. C., Joyner, S. A., Fuller, M. B., Henderson, S., & Young, R. (2014). Online graduate students’ perceptions of best learning experiences. Distance Education, 35(3), 311-323. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2015.955262
  • Webpage

Chat box: How are these entries formatted differently?

Audio: [Jes] Comparison of different sources. Here we have this example of the book, we have three authors, then we have an article, and we have a webpage by the National Assessment of Adult Literacy. We will move into a chat discussion right now.

You can let us know in the chat box out of these entries are formatted differently. What are the major changes that you are seeing between how a book, article, and webpage are formatted? I will take another little water break and give you some time to respond in the chat.

Awesome. You are pointing out some important things. There is some difference in italics for different titles. The book in the webpage are both standalone and italicized. The article is housed within something else so that is not italicized. The authors names are different, we have three authors and then five and then webpage. Some of you may remember in APA 6, the only included seven authors and now we include up to 20. So that's a change. We do not have any with that many authors in the example here thank goodness.

The change in "retrieved from". The book does not have the city. Nice job. You're highlighting a lot of different things. The thing that is standard that I find useful is the author and year, while the number of authors is different and whether there is a year or not is different, they will be formatted the same. The title will be similar and the main difference is italics or not. And the publication information is going to be different.

For the book it is straightforward, just the publisher, but for the article it is the issue number and DOI as the hyperlink. For the webpage you will write the name of the larger organization for the webpage and that URL. Question, do we include the HTTPS in front of the DOI. Yes. This is the new format that APA requires -- no longer is the option of just DOI:, it should always be presented as a hyperlink like this. I hope that helps.

Thank you for participating in this chat. I will keep moving on to the chat will go away but we will have more practice coming up.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: APA rules aren’t random!

Formatting varies for each kind of source:

  • Authors’ name formatting is consistent
  • Publication dates vary pending whether you include year, month, day, and/or n.d.
  • Publication title formatting varies with italics and no italics for different sources
  • Publication information changes the most for different kinds of sources

Audio: [Jes] Lots of chances to implement what we are learning today.

I hope from this that it was clear that APA rules are not random. Formatting varies for kinds of sources. As I have emphasized, author name formatting is pretty consistent. Publication dates will vary whether you include the year, the month, the day or the no date, but they will always be there and will be in parentheses with a period at the end and that will not change. The publication title, that will vary a little with italics or no italics, but that is really the only major difference, there will never really be quotation marks or bold or underline, it is just italics or no italics that changes.

The publication information is what changes most for different sources. That's where it is important to have the reference list examples page handy to compare the source you are referencing to the examples to follow the formatting guidelines.

I suppose at this point I can pause for little bit and our next slides or activities. Beth, are the questions that I can address at this time in the chat?

[Beth] Yes. I have a couple that I think would be relevant to clarify. You will talk about et al. in the next section but should students use et al. in reference entries?

[Jes] Great question. No, et al. should not be used reference entries, that will just be used in citations in the actual paper. In the reference entry, you include all the authors names up to 20. And if there are more than 20 say, 30, you include the first 19, an ellipses, and the last one but you never need to use et al. in the reference entry. Good question, anything else?

[Beth] Thank you. The other question, and I think you got to this, but to make sure to-- when students are providing a URL, one student asks whether they need to include the HTTPS, the whole part or whether they could start with WWW.--? Does that make sense?

[Jes] Yes. My understanding, based on the examples I've seen in the APA manual, is you do need the HTTPS:\\ before. Try to think where that might change but can you think of anything with a WWW would be needed instead?

[Beth] I cannot think of it, I think the HTTPS part is probably more specific and stable and that's why APA probably defaults to it but if you encounter a case where you think that might be an option, of course reach out.

[Jes] Typically, if I'm doing a webpage I will just copy and paste from the browser at the top and it formats it in the right way which is nice.

[Beth] Everything other than that's been specific so those are the general questions and we will keep diving into the questions and answering them as they come in.

[Jes] Thank you Beth and Max, I can see all the questions going through. You've got your hands full. I appreciate you responding, and students thank you for sharing your questions. Appreciate you are so engaged, that is wonderful to see.

 

Visual: Slide changes to Chat Practice #1 [Chat]

Chat Practice #1:

What kind of source is this?

What errors do you see in this reference entry?

Hodgson, K., & Darling, M. (2011). Pets in the family: Practical Approaches. Journal of the american animal hospital association, 47(5), pp. 299-305. https://doi.org/10.5326/JAAHA-MS-5695

Audio: [Jes] With that we will move on to a series of activities to work on identifying kinds of sources and errors in sources. Remember that one of the objectives for the session, one of our learning goals is to identify errors in reference list entries. So in the chat practice on a start by asking -- place this in the chat when you know -- what kind of source is this? And then what errors do you see?

It is important when you look at a reference entry and correcting it to identify what kind of source it is because how it is formatted will depend on that. I see some responses here that it is a journal article. Correct. It is. Now that we know that, what are the errors you see in the reference entry? Again, I will go on mute and take a sip and give you a chance to think and I will reveal it on the next slide.

Awesome. I'm seeing some notes about capitalization and italics, and the pp at the end. Yes, those are the main errors. They are related to capitalization. “Approaches” doesn't need to be capitalized because sentence case is used for titles in the sub the first letter or the letter after the colon or proper noun. The journal name should be Title Case meaning every major word should be capitalized in italics as well as the volume. We don't need that pp we will use some abbreviation of page or paragraph and the citation for quotation but you do not need it in the reference entry.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: It’s a Journal Article!

Errors highlighted: Sentence case for title, italics and title case for publisher, page numbers.

Hodgson, K., & Darling, M. (2011). Pets in the family: Practical approaches. Journal of the American Animal Hospital Association, 47(5), 299-305. https://doi.org/10.5326/JAAHA-MS-5695

Audio: [Jes] This is what it looks like when it is corrected per the author's last names, "&" that's correct. We have the title pets in the family practical approaches and that is in sentence case. No quotation marks or anything like that. The journal name is in italics abd Title Case volume, and there is no pp for page numbers, and there is no DOI. It's either not available or it is a print source. Nice job, everyone.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: Chat Practice #2 [Chat]

Chat Practice #2:

What kind of source is this?

What errors do you see in this reference entry?

Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2015). Business Communication: Process & Product (8th ed.). Cengage Learning: Stamford, CT.

Audio: [Jes] Moving on to chat practice number two number two, another source. Let's start there. What kind of source is this? Let's begin with that and then we will talk about the errors. Yes, resounding consensus that this is a book. This is a book. What errors do you see with this reference entry?

I will go on mute and give you a minute to think. I see people highlighting that the title should be italicized. The city and state do not need to be there. Yes. Awesome job.

 

Visual: Changes to the following:

It’s a book!

Errors highlighted: Italics revision for year and title, sentence case for title, publication location not needed.

Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2015). Business Communication: Process & Product (8th ed.). Cengage Learning: Stamford, CT.

Audio: I see people highlighting the title should be italicized. The city and state do not need to be there. Yes. Awesome job.

There is one more thing. I don't know if you could quite tell in the previous slide. Italics is hard to see in Adobe Connect. I had italicized 2015 and it does not need to be. The book title does need to be italicized and it needs to be in sentence case, so we need to lowercase both communication and product, and we do not need the location of Stanford, Connecticut at the end.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: It’s a book!

Correct reference:

Guffey, M. E., & Loewy, D. (2015). Business communication: Process & product (8th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Audio: This is what it would look like corrected. We have the author names, the year in parentheses, the title of the article in italics, the eighth edition afterwards in parentheses, and just the name of the publisher, Cengage learning.

Nice job everyone.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: Chat Practice #3

What kind of source is this?

What errors do you see in this reference entry?

Koller, Daphne. (2013, June 21). How online education can create a ‘global classroom.’ CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/business/opinion-koller-education-petersburg-forum/index.html

Audio: With that, we will move to the third practice. We have this next one and this is a little trickier for deciding what kind of source it is. Take a minute and look at this and feel free -- the URL did not show up again. Let me copy paste that URL for you into the chat box. Feel free to click the link and look at the source if you are not quite sure of the source type.

A couple different perspectives on this which I expect because even APA has nuances for the type of source, this is a webpage but it's on a news website so it has a little uniqueness to it. A webpage on a website. I've given examples before, the Forbes example was a webpage on a web site. What are some things wrong with this one?

Awesome. I see retrieve from is not needed. Correct. Omit the author's first name, good one, we do not need the full name. Yes, I see here at the title should be italicized, absolutely correct. And CNN does not need to be italicized because that's the publication information.

 

Visual: Visual changes to the following: It’s a webpage on a news website!

Errors highlighted: Author first name not needed, italics switched for title and publisher, retrieved from not needed.

Audio: Here is the highlight of things that need correction. The authors last name, or author's first name should not be there just the initial. The title of the webpage should be italicized and then the publication information should not. Then we do not need "retrieved from" just the URL. The URL is there it is just a white font, so pretend it is there.

 

Visual: Visual changes to the following: It’s a webpage on a news website! Correct reference:

Koller, D. (2013, June 21). How online education can create a ‘global classroom.’ CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/21/business/opinion-koller-education-petersburg-forum/index.html

Audio: Here is what we have for this one, for the corrected example, color, the year, the month and the date, the title of the webpage in italics, and CNN not italicized, and it is in white, so you cannot see it but I can on my teachers deck the URL is presented afterwards and that is that one that I presented in the chat box earlier. That is an example for a news website.

Awesome job and I'm proud of you on this. You are good at noticing incorrect references, that is great.

 

Visual: Changes to a slide for questions.

Audio: [Jes] Pretty soon we will move on to talking about citations. Let me pause again to see, Beth, are there questions I can address from the group from the series of activities?

[Beth] Not that I am seeing, everything is pretty specific so I think we are good for now.

[Jes] Perfect. Keep sending those questions and if you have them. And Max and Beth thank you for responding to everything as it comes in.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: Create your reference entry first…
                                                                           …then create your citation.

Last name(s) of author or authors, or authoring organization/government dept.

Publication year

Page or paragraph number if quoted

Audio: You might be asking yourself, the session is called APA citations, why did we spend the first 30 slides or so talking about references? It is because when you create a citation, it is totally based on the reference entry. So it is best practice to create your reference entry first and then create your citation. That is because a citation is the first two pieces of the reference entry that you place in the paper.

You might not know the author and the year unless you create that reference because for some sources it is not totally apparent. For example, the one I shared earlier about the national assessment association. That one was kind of tricky to figure out the National Assessment of Adult literacy, it was hard to know if that was the author or was the US Department of Education? I would not know how to create the citation unless I crave the reference first so that's my biggest recommendation, create the reference entry first and then create a citation. Your citation will be made up of the last names of the author or authors. Are they authoring organization or governmental department and publication year.

If you paraphrase you do not need to include a page number but if you are quoting them, you need to include a page or paragraph number. In that teal I have an example of what a citation would look like for a paraphrase. This is what is considered a parenthetical citation. There's just the author, year and parentheses. The next one is a parenthetical citation if you are referencing a quotation. This is the author, the year and then "p." And the page number.

 

Visual: Slide changes to the following: Citation Foundations

Narrative:

  • Hewett (2010) found that writing centers help students.
  • Holzweiss et al. (2014) conducted a survey of 86 graduate students and found that graduate students prefer deeper learning which requires more instructional planning.

Parenthetical:

  • Writing centers help students (Hewett, 2010).
  • Graduate students prefer deeper learning which requires more instructional planning (Holzweiss et al., 2014).

Audio: [Jes] Some foundations on this, and actually tomorrow's session that Max is presenting a nontraditional sources, will go into more detail with this. This is just foundations to get us started. I have two an example of different kinds of citations here. Citations can be narrative, meaning they are part of the sentence or parenthetical, meaning they are at the end.

Here we have Hewitt 2010, that is the narrative citation, found that writing centers helps students. So that is what that citation looks like with one all author. Here's an example we pulled up before and this has five authors. In APA 7, anytime you have a source with three or more authors you will present the first author's last name and et al. So we have Holzweiss et al. (2014) conducted a survey of 86 graduate students and found that graduate students prefer deeper learning which requires more instructional planning.

Those are our two narrative examples whether there is one source or more than three sources.

Parenthetical citations are at the end of the sentence. The author and the year are in parentheses. So here we have a writing center help students 2010 and it's really the same content as the examples before, but it is at the end of the sentence of the highlight is on the content.

Then we have this one with Holtweisse et al. Graduate students prefer deeper learning which requires more instructional planning (Holzweiss et al., 2014).

That is what it would look like anytime you are using et al. in a citation.

 

Visual: Citation format for three or more authors

APA 6:

  • Use of et al. varies by number of authors

APA 7:

  • 1-2 authors: Never use et al.
  • 3+ authors: Always use et al.

Audio: [Jes] Again, as I emphasized, this is one of those APA changes, I wish I had a musical instrument that could make noises when there's an APA 7 change for you. There's a lot of variety in APA 6 on how et al. was used. You might remember for every source that had 3-5 authors, you included et al. sometimes, and then you included the full authors names other times. And that got really confusing; it depended on where you were in the paper. That is not the case with APA 7. The streamlined things here also. In APA 7, if there are 1-2 authors never use et al. and include both authors names. You will always include both last names.

However, if there are three or more authors use et al. always. In this example there are five authors so every citation will look like either this one here or this one here. I hope that clarifies things bad this is an issue I've talked to students about at residencies a lot, and I'm hoping this makes things a lot clearer for everyone.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: Reference to Citation

Audio: [Jes] The reference to citation is just the first two pieces. We are not going to need the article title or the publication information for the citation. All we will need is the author names and year. The first example is a narrative citation.

We have Oyo and Kalema 2014 and then the quote and page number. When you do a narrative citation, spell out the word "and" when you have two sources. For this one, though, we have a parenthetical citation, and you’ll use an ampersand (&) anytime it is in the parenthetical citation or reference list entry. If it is part of the sentence write it out, if it is something extra in parentheses or the end of the paper, then use the ampersand.

You can tell that, again, it is just the last names from the reference entry and the year, that is what makes up the citation.

 

Visual: New slide with same title: Reference to Citation

Audio: In another example, this is an organizational author, you will see this example with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, if you participate in that. There is an author here, the American Accounting Association. There is no date. The webpages about the AAA, and those with keen eyes will say there's no publisher name. That is because the publisher name is the same as the author and instead of presenting it twice you present it as the author.

And there's the URL for the source. So in the citation, you include the American Accounting Association and the year, even if there is no year, n.d.

Then for the parenthetical citation, the same thing. In the parentheses, you have the organizational author name, n.d., and you would write para. rather than p.

I hope those are useful examples.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: Citation Management Software

“These programs can be helpful shortcuts in organizing research, but keep in mind that the program’s formatting is often imperfect when used for your references list.” (Walden University, n.d., para 1)

Audio: And then a little bit of a pitch for learning how to do this manually. At this point in the session we often will have students ask, why do I have to learn this, can't I just use citation management software?

I get that sentiment. It's like learning long division versus a calculator. Citation management software can be helpful as a shortcut for organizing research. But it is a program and a robot and not a person, doesn't have the same critical thinking skills you have. To identify what is the actual author here and the date of publication? What is the title versus the publication information? It just reads information on a screen and makes its best guess based on how things are laid out.

Citation management software such as Zotero can be a good starting place, but it's good to know how to format a reference list entry, how to identify errors like we did in our practice earlier so you can correct it. And you have the critical thinking skills to know when it needs to be changed or selected.

 

Visual: Questions slide

Audio: With that we are getting close to the recap. We're getting close to the end, so rather than pausing for questions now, I will pause and the last slide and keep us going through the recap.

 

Visual: Recap slide

Audio: So there is a method to the madness. As I noted before, in APA, that is largely the language of the social sciences, and Walden is a social science institution so we use APA. You use a lot in your more formal papers for class. Not as much in journal entries but sometimes, depending on the journal entry. Or the discussion board post. Those at the doctoral stage, you use APA a lot when you get into the research. Because you are engaging so much with outside sources, so it can really help to know that the sections of the reference entry. The four pieces I talked about: author, date, title and publication information. See you can identify the type of source and mirror the formatting.

It's easy to tell that a book is a book, you're holding it in your hand. But when it comes to a source on the Internet, that is more complicated, so it requires the critical thinking skills to identify the type of source it is. Pay attention to the publication information because that will vary from source to source.

Another tip is to craft citations from reference entries. Start with your reference entry, which is the foundation for everything, and create your citations from there.

 

Visual: List of resources hyperlinked

Audio: Some additional resources if you want to learn about that. There's a little more that you can do to dig in. This is a link to the common reference list examples page, so you can visit that sources to review that resource. We have a page 2 on electronic source references and interactive modules you can review to practice APA and other writing skills including one on citation formatting and frequency.

If you have questions you can ask us at writingsupport@mail.waldenu.edu, or chat with us live on our website.

 

Visual: Changes to the following: Questions: Ask Now or Later

Audio: [Jes] With that we have some time to answer questions. And talk a little bit about paper reviews. And the other webinars coming up. Beth, are there any other questions I can address at this point?

[Beth] Yes. A couple questions here. One overall that I think you addressed at the start but it is always a good reminder and may be a potential helpful bookend: why is it even important to include a reference list at all. And can you talk about what you think about the reference lists and its importance?

[Jes] Great question. Why do need to include a reference list at all? If we just included citations, there would not actually be enough information to find the source, so if it just said, American Accounting Association, no date, we wouldn't have any idea on what webpage it was from. The partnership of the citation and reference makes it possible for the reader to find your source. The reference entry provides everything needed to find that source. We have the author, the date of publication, the title, the publication information but sometimes there is a link. All those things.

So, part of the reason we include the reference list is to provide the information so the reader can find it and follow your research and replicate it and learn more about something you cited. It's also to build credibility to show my research is based on all these other scholars who came before me. And I'm basing my research on their research. And another part is to give credit where it’s due and avoid plagiarism.

If you are bringing in someone else's ideas into your paper, it is important to show where those ideas came from. Both to avoid plagiarism and to give credit where due.

Again, if we just did citations, there would not be enough information for the reader. So the partnership of citations and references makes it possible for the reader to find the source. Thank you for that question.

[Beth] That's fantastic. The other question was, could you go over how to find a DOI number or what process or steps students should take to find a DOI number?

[Jes] Yes. DOI number is the digital object identifier. The way I usually find it, the first step I do, I look at the article because oftentimes it will show up on the article. It will say it somewhere like underneath the title.

The second place I will look as I go to the database or Google Scholar or wherever it is, where that came from and sometimes it will be in the search information. If I cannot find it there, I will search on crossref.org. I don't know if Beth or Max can grab that URL. But it's a website we can search the name and title and author of the source and find the DOI from there.

Do you have any other tips for how to find the DOI, Beth? I'm thinking there might be one I missed.

[Beth] I think you covered it all. I don't have anything else. And Max is grabbing that link. Before I ask my last question, I'm saving the best for last, we have not mentioned really formatting at all in this and I think that is fine. But I wondered if you could talk a little bit about our templates and explain what they are. Those are updated now for APA 7. I'm going to include a link here in the Q&A box but maybe talk about the templates. They also have reference entry examples in them and that can be useful.

[Jes] Yes. Absolutely and thank you for grabbing the link to that, that is helpful. The templates are formatted in APA already for you. The one that I like in particular is the APA course paper template with examples. And explanations. So it will have the title page with explanation in the margins of why that is the title page. It will have a headings set up the way they're supposed to be set up with first, second, third level headings.

And the reference list will already be in APA format as well so the hanging indent will already be there. So if you are in your coursework I highly recommend downloading one of the templates and using that as the starting point for your paper. Just replace what is there with your content.

If you're further along, there are other templates at other stages. So there's capstone templates and those are already formatted but in the coursework stage, the APA course paper template is really really useful, especially the hanging indent but I think that is the hardest part for a lot of students. It's already formatted for you. Thank you, Beth.

[Beth] All right. Last question. Two questions. Can you talk a little about paper review appointments. And then once you do, can you tell us what your favorite update is from the APA 6th edition to the seventh edition?

[Jes] Happy to. Paper reviews are asynchronous course paper review appointments that you can make with our writing instructors, like Max.

You can make up to two points a week and you click on the link to make a paper review appointment, create an account in myPASS, and then select a day and person you want to make the appointment with. Upload the paper the day of the appointment and the instructor reviews the paper and makes comments using the track changes or comment bubbles. They are fantastic and free to students and can only help. Our instructors are encouraging and kind and knowledgeable and smart and so fun to work with. I highly recommend the paper review appointments.

My favorite APA rule, I'm a fan of all of the changes. I love the include the issue number, that makes everything easier. Present things as URL makes things easier. Singular "they" is one of the style changes, so allowing for people to have the pronoun they would like to use in the scholarly writings about them.

What else? The headings are simplified and look prettier. I'm a fan of all the changes to be honest, and I hope -- I hope they make your life easier too because we want your lives to be made easier, as you are doing this research in pursuing your social change initiatives.

[Beth] Agreed. Any last thoughts before I wrap up?

[Jes] Just thank you. We are in an interesting time right now and I appreciate that so many of you came to the session and participated and engaged with us. There's almost 150 people here so we are here for you and we want to support you and want to engage with you. Reach out and let us know how we can help and hopefully I will see you in another webinar or residency someday, or in one of the other services. Thank you for everything that you do.

[Beth] Thank you so much, Jess. And thank you to you and Max in the questions box. Again, we appreciate you taking the time and engaging with us today. We hope this has been useful for you but we know that you may walk away with questions or think of things later you would like clarification on or have questions on so reach out to us. The email address is listed here.

We have live chat hours where you can ask questions of one of our writing instructors live, and those are listed on the homepage of the website. I encourage you to make a paper review appointment or join us for one of the upcoming webinars tomorrow or next week. All of those are recorded and you can access those recordings afterwards as well. I will close us out. But again, thank you, Jes, Max and everyone for attending and happy writing everyone. We look for to seeing you somewhere in the writing center soon.