Teaching students to write in APA format

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Specializes in Trauma, Emergency, ICU, Education.

Hello to all,

Do you have a specific course that addresses how to write correctly in APA 7th edition format or do students just learn it by trial and error throughout the curriculum? Do you offer any type of handouts or "writing bootcamp" during orientation? Finally, do you have any apps that you recommend to students to help them with APA formatting?

Thank you in advance for your responses!

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Specializes in Emergency, Cardiac, PAT/SPU, Urgent Care.

When I was in school many moons ago we just bought an APA guide which was sold in the college bookstore. Had examples of how to cite everything and anything. 

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.

Purdue Owl is an amazing resource.

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I have previously used both the 5th and 6th editions of the Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)'s APA Formatting and Style Guide, and found both to be helpful.  Their 7th edition style guide is available online.

A Kindle edition is available for less than $20.

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(Former/recent) student perspective:

Some instructors do use one of the first class sessions to go over the basics. One had a very good video that included expectations, examples and how to go about manually setting up a paper in APA format. I also had hard copy of the correct edition APA manual, also used Purdue OWL and spent untold hours looking for answers to more obscure issues.  In other words I tried hard.

That said, with regard to nursing education specifically I feel this easily qualifies as a forest vs. trees issue. I can't even fully explain the inappropriateness of the level of preoccupation with this in two well-regarded (State U.) nursing programs from which I earned degrees. In the end (well, luckily long before the end...near the beginning) I subscribed to a formatting program/service and wrote all my papers using it.  It wasn't perfect and I still spent many hours trying to make sure I had things just right lest everything get all marked up and points deducted (and even then sometimes they were, inappropriately or flat-out wrongly according to APA). In my humble opinion, life is seriously too short to be this preoccupied with something like this in a nursing program. I know the arguments about why it is important, and I generally agree with them. But we aren't training to write the 8th Edition of this thing, after all. Along the way I learned that even APA experts have to make judgment calls about how to cite things from time to time.

 

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Specializes in Occupational Health.

Seems like that should have been taught/learned in their English classes.

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
sleepwalker said:

Seems like that should have been taught/learned in their English classes.

My English classes focused on MLA formatting. And can't blame them- so many different areas use different methods. 

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sleepwalker said:

Seems like that should have been taught/learned in their English classes.

My nursing program included English composition during the first semester, where we were introduced to APA Formatting and Style Guide.

JKL33 said:

[...]

That said, with regard to nursing education specifically I feel this easily qualifies as a forest vs. trees issue. I can't even fully explain the inappropriateness of the level of preoccupation with this in two well-regarded (State U.) nursing programs from which I earned degrees. ...

Completely agree with this.  During my post master's program the faculty placed much more emphasis on formatting than content.  As they guided all towards submitting our comprehensive morificecript for publication, they said this attention to formatting would facilitate acceptance.  They failed to consider that not all publications use APA.

JKL33 said:

[...]

... In the end (well, luckily long before the end...near the beginning) I subscribed to a formatting program/service and wrote all my papers using it.  It wasn't perfect and I still spent many hours trying to make sure I had things just right lest everything get all marked up and points deducted (and even then sometimes they were, inappropriately or flat-out wrongly according to APA).

I would advise students that choose to do this to do so cautiously.  First, for the reason you wrote here, you can reach a point where the time spent proofing your paper can be excessive.  Additionally, depending on which plagiarism checker being used, this might create an alert.

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Specializes in oncology.
Rose_Queen said:

My English classes focused on MLA formatting. And can't blame them- so many different areas use different methods. 

Yes, English courses use MLA. 

 

MLA Formatting and Style Guide 

But a scientific format is APA. If you are writing a science article it is APA. 

JKL33 said:

That said, with regard to nursing education specifically I feel this easily qualifies as a forest vs. trees issue. I can't even fully explain the inappropriateness of the level of preoccupation with this in two well-regarded (State U.) nursing programs from which I earned degrees

You have complained about the APA issue before.  

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londonflo said:

[...]

But a scientific format is APA. If you are writing a science article it is APA. 

[...]

Yes, as is the AMA formatting.  Incidentally, APA style is not universally used by nursing journals. 

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Specializes in oncology.
Rose_Queen said:

My English classes focused on MLA formatting. And can't blame them- so many different areas use different methods. 

Yes, English courses use MLA. 

 

MLA Formatting and Style Guide 

But a scientific format is APA. If you are writing a science article it is APA. 

JKL33 said:

That said, with regard to nursing education specifically I feel this easily qualifies as a forest vs. trees issue. I can't even fully explain the inappropriateness of the level of preoccupation with this in two well-regarded (State U.) nursing programs from which I earned degrees

You have complained about the APA issue before.  

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Specializes in OR, Nursing Professional Development.
londonflo said:

Yes, English courses use MLA. 

 

MLA Formatting and Style Guide 

But a scientific format is APA. If you are writing a science article it is APA. 

Which is exactly why I wouldn't expect English classes to teach APA, as was suggested by the poster I responded to. 

Not all scientific areas use APA. My own specialty's journal does not use APA formatting in publication. 

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