Explaining what information is common knowledge..

I think I'm going to start going more in depth with explaining the concept of what students need to cite and what information is common knowledge. It seems like students really struggle with this. I have a feeling that this academic integrity issue is being overlooked by some of K-12.




For a Humanities class this morning, I gave a general information literacy workshop preparing the students for a research paper that they have to write. I explained with concepts that might interest the students for their Humanities research paper. The students and I discussed why the information on the right column needed to be cited, and I felt like (for one of the first times) it clicked!

Outlines and Table of Contents

Do you have students ask you how to do an outline or table of contents in APA formatting. I have this happen to me every quarter. There isn't any info in the Wadsworth about APA rules for these items. I have looked online, and I have not found much info. This is pretty great for Outlines, but I find myself wondering if APA really even has rules for outlines or TofCs.

I think that some assignments must say: "your research paper should include a table of contents in APA format," and then students are scrambling to figure out what this means.

I was thinking of emailing the instructors on my campus to tell them that there aren't real concrete rules for APA in regard to TofC and outlines. Thoughts? Advice?

Open APA workshop success..

I have to share.. I did a workshop on Wednesday night, and 9 people came. I ran out of pizza! It was very exciting. To get the students there, I enticed them with advertising pizza and opportunities to get extra credit. I think most students were there for the extra credit.

I know some librarians are against bribing students with pizza or extra credit, BUT I made the students work. I got them in the door with the pizza and extra credit, but I think all the students learned a lot about APA/Noodlebib/paraphrasing/quoting. I created the powerpoint to be about Minnesota and specifically the Vikings.

You know the slide in Emily's ppt that has 2 columns?
You do not have to credit ____, you do have to credit ____? Well, I changed that slide to:

no credit: It snows in Minnesota
credit: The Metro region averaged 35.5 inches of snow in '06-07

no credit: Ice fishing is dangerous when there isn't enough ice
credit: Pickup trucks and large fish houses should be on ice at least 12 inches thick.

no credit: Minnesota is the home to the Minnesota Vikings football team.
credit: Ragnar is the Vikings' team mascot. He holds the current world record for fastest time shaving a beard with an ax.

*Since these MNstats were interesting to the students, I could tell that they were digesting the information.

Then, I had them practice paraphrasing and quoting from an article that I printed from the Minneapolis Star Tribune about the Vikings. I had them use Noodlebib to get a citation for that article. The students (especially males) were really engaged with reading the Vikings article and having to put the football article into their own words. I love using pop culture/regional culture to "make it click" with students.

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