General feedback from 1st assignment

APA 6th
There were quite a number of folk who did not get the APA 6th formatting correct. The only reason to nag about it is that for all of your other courses, this is the format you will need to use. The folk who used EndNote had no problems at all. A couple of points of common errors. When a paper has a [[apa-6th | doi]]], you do not include a URL.

Here is a journal reference with a doi:
Bennett, S., & Oliver, M. (2011). Talking back to theory: the missed opportunities in learning technology research. Research in Learning Technology, 19(3), 179-189. doi: 10.1080/21567069.2011.624997

The syntax is really fiddly. The volume number is in italics. The issue is in brackets (no space after the volume number) There is no pp. to indicate the page range. Doing all of this manually is a lot of work.

APA 6th no longer includes the date an online document is retrieved.

URLs
When you do a search via the GU library for a journal article, the URL that is generated is only appropriate for people who have access to the GU library So don’t use URLs like this: http://search.proquest.com.libraryproxy.griffith.edu.au/docview/210398064?…. This URL has no meaning outside Griffith!

Griffith library
You will find that on occasion you get a seriously mangled reference from the library database. You just have to keep an eye out for that. It’s not the library’s fault. It is the fault of the folk who provide the database. Whenever you get a machine to do work for you, you have to keep an eye on it, i.e. don't trust spell checkers, don't trust EndNote1 etc.

Writing about what researchers found
This can be tricky to do well. There is a useful cheat sheet that Inger Mewburn has put together that will help you think this through.

Case studies, data and other forms of representation
A few folk seem to have a view that the only research data that matters is that produced by quantitative methods. This is not the case at all. Qualitative studies produce data that is used for different purposes, to answer different questions. Both forms of data collecting have their problems but to assume that one is somehow better than the other is completely incorrect.

The course
There were a surprising number of folk who misread the assignment, perhaps the course. This is not a research course in the normal sense, i.e. you are not going to do research data collection. Your task is to end up with a draft of a paper that is suitable for publication in a professional journal by drawing upon published research conducted by other people. This does not mean that you can't include anecdotes from your own experience to engage

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