My session with our Business Management (BM12) students last week went as planned. My 20 minute lecture and demonstration on citations using the APA style/format was a review of what students already know and have, eventually, forgotten. Citing sources is emphasized as an important skill in research and in academic writing. Like all skills to be mastered, it has to be seen as part of a bigger set of composite skills like documenting sources and annotating them. It can be taught and learned in isolation, but context and real life application make the learning meaningful. When there is meaning in learning, the learner remembers.
Here are fundamental concepts I emphasized in my session.
1. Citing sources is part of documenting and annotating references and sources of information.
2. There are three preliminary steps before citation happens: understanding the task at hand; knowing the needed information to complete the task; identifying the source of information needed to complete the task. When these are all accomplished, engagement and transaction with the information begins.
3. As soon as sources are selected, taking note and recording of the sources' bibliographic data are important tasks as well.
I used the APA Style as requested by the BM teacher. Here is the poster of citation formats and basic in-text citation must-do. This is taken from Purdue Online Writing Lab.
On Friday, the last day of the week, we closed our advisory session with a discussion on Academic Honesty using a short film, Reluctance, as a spring board. Since it was a session with the entire cohort, we had breakout rooms for each advisory class over on Zoom. This strategy eased the students into expressing their responses over the material as well as the topic on Academic Honesty. It can be a big concept involving many factors and disciplines of thought.
The process of learning the skills and the big idea that drives them is ongoing. I will definitely blog them all here in as much and as frequent as I can.
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