question on APA and program, etc

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I am a 20 year ADN and currently have been inserting PICC lines the last 10 years. I am going to go back to get my BSN at OU is what I like. I have not been in a classroom for 20 years so this on-line stuff is all new to me for college. I have been skimming the internet like OWL Perdue and other websites over the content of the APA format. Is it to my understanding that there are two different types of APA style papers? For example, one with a literature review ( no Method) and the other with experiment review which requires a Method? Does this make sense? Do you write both in the classes or focus on the experiment review with Method? Sorry to sound so goofy but I am trying to get a feel of all this before diving into anything. Is the software in BSN program easy to navigate or should I purchase Microsoft Office to get familiar with it? Thanks!

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Office is the required software to use - or at least it was! Things change at OU so quickly it is hard to keep up. I understand your APA question but it really isn't pertinent to OU. Their requirements are title page with running head, body of paper with introduction and closing paragraphs. There are usually some very specific requirements as to length of paper. Follow the assignment rubrics closely. You don't have to get too technical with the mechanics of method vs non-method papers. I believe that applies more to research driven papers rather than run of the mill papers. Good luck!!

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I am a 20 year ADN and currently have been inserting PICC lines the last 10 years. I am going to go back to get my BSN at OU is what I like. I have not been in a classroom for 20 years so this on-line stuff is all new to me for college. I have been skimming the internet like OWL Perdue and other websites over the content of the APA format. Is it to my understanding that there are two different types of APA style papers? For example, one with a literature review ( no Method) and the other with experiment review which requires a Method? Does this make sense? Do you write both in the classes or focus on the experiment review with Method? Sorry to sound so goofy but I am trying to get a feel of all this before diving into anything. Is the software in BSN program easy to navigate or should I purchase Microsoft Office to get familiar with it? Thanks!
As rninme says, MS Word was the required wp application. You may already know that Word has some built-in capability to format things in APA but it's pretty limited and I found it more trouble than it was worth. I occasionally used Citation Machine (on-line and free) but found you really can't rely on that. In the end I found the Purdue OWL APA guide sufficient for all but some very unusual formatting issues and just manually formatted most things.

I would not worry too much about APA formatting. Some instructors care a lot about it and ding you for the smallest deviation, others don't care nearly as much. My suggestion is try the OWL guide and if that doesn't work, then try PEERLA or some other application.

Good luck at OU!

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Hi,

My only experience with APA papers was that you either had to do an abstract or not do an abstract. Most times it was No abstract.

Beyond that it was the formatting of the page (margins, spacing etc) and formatting in text citations and formatting references at the end.

You will learn a lot from the first course, 4510, and Purdue is good too.

Good luck with your education plan.

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