Research Skills Instruction: Academic Honesty and Citations in APA Style

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.

The Lighthouse Diary Entry #27: Academic Integrity and Turnitin

I attended a webinar yesterday morning. Yes, another webinar. The local distributor of Turnitin, APAC Marketing organized a 2 hour webinar on Academic Integrity at the heart of teaching and learning processes. There is less talk of the Turnitin app and more of practices in teaching and learning. 

One takeaway I have from the webinar is the 70-30 approach in online distance learning. This means, 70% is allotted for asynchronous learning and 30% for synchronous learning. This may imply that the design of instruction for asynchronous learning will lean towards student agency, engagement and independent learning. Skills teaching is paramount. Synchronous learning would entail follow up, following through, tutorial type sessions, show and model strategies. Concepts and content, especially those that cover a prescribed curriculum may need to be revisited.

I appreciated the input session of Dr. Michael Dino on Academic Integrity. I was holistic, historical and culturally relevant to our teaching practices. The live online forum that followed right after the product demo of Gradescope was engaging. Gradescope helps teachers manage and administer grades and assessments. Pegged as easy to use, it generates data that may help inform teachers on skills and concepts that have been learned and would need improvement on.

During the open forum, there were many questions about plagiarism and citations. I had to involve myself on this topic. I just cannot. So, I gave some suggestions on citation processes and the necessity of following a citation format to guide students and researchers in the responsible use of information and varied media formats.

This led me to another insight on Academic Integrity. It is about relationships. Knowing the learner, first of all, and the teacher recognizing and seeing himself or herself as a learner too, are factors to building a caring and respectful relationship necessary for learning honestly and with integrity.

Turnitin is neat app to detect plagiarism, thereby upholding Academic Integrity. But at the end of the day, it is a tool. We need to make these tools work for our advantage and not the other way around.

Pathfinder: Copyright and Creative Commons for School Librarians and Teachers

Because teachers have started creating and producing learning modules and materials for flexible learning, discussions on ethical considerations on the use of content, media and technology in social media abound. Educators, lawyers and information professionals have organised webinars on intellectual property and copyright issues. When I was a guest in empowerED last Saturday July 4, 2020, Jim Tuscano, teacher and host of the online panel, asked me about copyright since we were knee deep into talking about creating and developing learning materials.

I remember giving broad and generalised statements about it. So, to extend and expand our collective knowledge on the issue, here is a Pathfinder on Copyright and Creative Commons. Putting this resources and websites together is but a beginning to what can develop and grow into an online collection for teachers and school librarians especially.

Pathfinder: Copyright and Creative Commons for School Librarians and Teachers
Keywords: copyright, intellectual property, academic honesty, creative commons

Philippine Copyright and the Intellectual Property Rights

Copyright and the Intellectual Property Rights in the Philippines - an easy to understand infographic with a link to the Plazo & Associates Law website where Republic Act 8293 - The Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines can be read entirely. 

The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPO) - this is the official website of the IPO and its contents vary from the easy to understand to the more complex legal speak of RA 8293. It also has web portals for researchers, artists, authors and content creators, entreprenuers, inventors and industrial designers to guide them through registration, documentation and coding of their works. This is a government website, so there are materials that are free for use and downloads. It has an array of interesting articles too that highlight the creativity and ingenuity of the Filipino. 

COPYTALK: Copyright in the Academe, in Libraries and the Language of the Law - a webinar by the Central Philippines University that you can watch over at YouTube. It is three hour long. You might need a snack and a break in between. It has very informative content and helpful for librarians to know as they scale these principles according to the context of their learning communities.

For copyright licensing and registration, visit the FILCOLS and the National Library of the Philippines' Copyright Registration Office. The former is an organization of lawyers, artists, creatives and educators who are assisting the industry to promote and observe the implementation of RA 8293. The later is where artists and creators go to have their works, especially books, registered with an international book number. It makes the work and its creators legit.

To know more about Creative Commons, visit the website for detailed explanation of the different licenses, how sharing and collaboration of content can happen with respect and responsibility between parties. For teachers and school librarians, Kathleen Morris has an article with free posters on copyright and creative commons for downloads.

These are all for now. Visit the blog for more updates!

IL Lesson: Academic Honesty, Plagiarism and Citation

Information Literacy skills can be taught in chunks. This week, I'm facilitating a session on academic honesty, plagiarism and citations.

Sharing my PPT -

Plagiarism in the Digital Age

Courtesy of: Schools.com