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Discussion Boards Review the discussion board comments in the Announcement section of our course. These should provide you with a good guide. Below is a summary. 1. Your initial post must be at least 250 words long. Be certain that you cover all components of the topic. Remember the goal is to convince the reader that you understand and can critically analyze and apply our course concepts. Your post must include our course text and at least one non-course scholarly/peer reviewed reference. In-text citations are required. 2. You may submit your initial post once the particular week begins. Due dates as noted. 3. You must have at least two response postings that occur on different days from each other and from your initial posting. This means you will be posting on at least three different days. Your response posts must be at least 150 words long. When appropriate, reference(s) and in-text citation(s) is required. Written Assignments Your written assignments need to follow APA guidelines for graduate papers. Once source that can help you with understanding the APA guidelines is the Owl at Purdue (Link). For this course, you do not need a Table of Contents or an Abstract with your paper. General Document Guidelines (please note that these guidelines may be adapted by individual instructors in other courses) A. Margins: One inch on all sides (top, bottom, left, right) B. Font Size and Type : 12-pt. font (Times Roman or Courier are acceptable typefaces) C. Spacing: Double-space throughout the paper, including the title page, abstract, body of the document, references, appendixes, footnotes, tables, and figure captions. Only quotes longer than 40 words are single spaced. These are also double indented. D. Alignment: Flush left (creating uneven right margin) – NOT right justified. E. Paragraph Indentation: 5 spaces F. Pagination: The page number appears one inch from the right edge of the paper on the first line of every page, beginning with the title page. G. Running Title Header: The first two or three words of the paper title appear five spaces to the left of the page number on every page, beginning with the title page. H. With APA formatting, follow the (author, date) format for non-quotes and the (author, date, page/paragraph number) method quotes within your in-text citations. This means that the author's last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, and a complete reference should appear in the reference list at the end of the paper. If you are directly quoting from a work, you always need to include the author, year of publication, and the page/paragraph number for the citation. If you are paraphrasing or citing a specific idea from another work, you must refer to the author and year of publication in your in-text citation, as well as again providing the full reference in your reference listing. Your papers must be written in the third person unless otherwise noted by the assignment. If the assignment in some part is asking your opinion, then you may use the first person. There are two sample papers in the Graduate Work Info tab of our course. Your papers must include the following: 1. A cover/title page (Link) with: a. A title for your paper; b. Our course name & number; c. Your name; d. The school’s name; e. The instructor’s name; and f. The date you submit the paper 2. An introductory paragraph. This paragraph should let the reader know the purpose of your paper and specifically what you will be addressing. This means paraphrasing the assignment into your own words while also introducing your case or topic. Here’s a Link that provides a little more detail. 3. The body of your paper addressing all components requested within the assignment. You must use Level 1 section headings that basically have a relationship to the points you must cover from the assignment. 4. A concluding paragraph. This paragraph should let the reader know how your paper met the requirements of the assignment and provide any last take away you want the reader to connect (Link). This is the ‘so what’ of your paper for the reader. 5. Your reference page must start on it’s own page. To do this in Microsoft Word, simply hold the shift key and press return. Then type the word Reference and center it. Then you can type in your references. Your references must be in alphabetical order by the last name of the first author. If no author, follow APA requirements (Link). Your references, if obtained via the web, must include: retrieved on (date), from (online link) after the normal APA formatted reference. Scholarly/peer reviewed references At the graduate level and certainly for this course, you are required to follow APA guidelines regarding your reference page. Your text is one minimal requirement for your initial discussion board post and also for your written assignments. In addition, your initial discussion board post and your written assignments may require at least one non-course scholarly/peer reviewed reference. Follow the requirements of the particular assignment. Just what is a scholarly/peer reviewed reference and how do you select one? A scholarly reference is one that has been written by an expert(s) in a particular field the most recent research and findings in that particular field. A reference is considered peer-reviewed when it has undergone a review by a board of colleagues in the author’s field. The source is analyzed as part of the body of research for the particular discipline and recommendations are made regarding edits, its publication in a journal or it being rejected. Scholarly/peer reviewed sources provide authority and credibility of your own paper or research project. Consider if you were going to present a recommendation to your supervisor or if you wanted to decide about treatment options that your physician was giving you. Would you rely on an article in a local newspaper or magazine? What about a blog or non-professional website with no other citations in them? Here’s an example. If you went to the store and found that your favorite cereal was priced at $35 per box, would you simply say ok and purchase the cereal? No, you’d question an associate in the store assuming that there was an error with the marked price. Why? You have prior knowledge and experience about what the price should be. You can provide feedback regarding the item from your history with the item. So too with research. We’ve heard a lot in the last few years about fake news. The challenge we have in moving our case forward regarding a discussion or written assignment is to ensure the facts being provided are accurate. What is the purpose of many company websites? Most likely to sell you their service of products. So, they will provide you with information regarding why you should choose them or select their products. Did you ever purchase a product after reading from their website that it was guaranteed to…….. and it didn’t work. Most likely you simply discarded the rest of the product, not willing to deal with returning it. Wouldn’t it be great if a panel of experts reviewed the product and published unbiased facts? This is what you are looking for with scholarly/peer reviewed sources. How do I know what to search for regarding the assignment? Let’s consider that you are taking a course about boats. Each week your course covers a specific type of boat and reviews how it is made; what it is primarily used for; the benefits and negatives of the boat; and what types of water it is best used within. Now let’s assume your course week is exploring small motorboats and you have an assignment to review the impact of small boats on the vegetation and fish. If you try a search on the impact of small boats on vegetation, you will probably find this article (Link). You may instead decide to use a non-scholarly article (Link) to make some other points and then find an article like this one (Link) regarding sustainability in general. Since your reference list would still include a scholarly/peer reviewed reference, having non-scholarly/peer reviewed references is fine if you believe them to be accurate and factual. In the Graduate Work Info tab, you’ll find a couple of articles reviewing this content in greater detail. How do you find these types of references? Here’s a chart from the Illinois University Library which I find easy to follow and helpful: There is further discussion regarding how to find scholarly/peer reviewed references within the Graduate Work Info tab of our Blackboard course. How do I find a scholarly/peer reviewed reference online? There are multiple ways to find scholarly/peer reviewed references online. Within the New England College library, you can conduct a search for an article right on the library’s home page (Link) and simply select the peer reviewed option. When you are within the library search function, the peer reviewed option is also on the left. Remember, just because you found something on the NEC Library, it does not mean it is a scholarly/peer reviewed article. The library has newspapers, magazines and many other sources that are not scholarly/peer reviewed. Google Scholar is another option. Simply searching with your web browser and typing in ‘peer reviewed articles for…..’ will also provide some sources. Searching in Google will often provide 2-3 peer reviewed articles at the top of your search results. Plagiarism or Copying material What is it? In general terms, plagiarism means using someone else's work without giving them credit or recognition, thereby taking the writing as your own original work. Whether the material is published or simply from some unpublished source, like a website, it is still viewed as plagiarism if you don’t quote and provide appropriate in-text citation and a reference. This is known as verbatim plagiarism. Paraphrasing is where you take the work of others and change a few words or perhaps change the order in which it is written and submit it as your own. Again, without an in-text citation and associated reference, this is still considered plagiarism because you are not recognizing the original author. If you receive assistance from someone or an external source that considerably alters your content to write your paper, you also need to provide an in-text citation and reference. Finally, you cannot submit or re-use our own work that you have used for the same or another course. What does plagiarism matter? Basically, this is about honesty and ethics related to academia and to the person who had the original concepts, ideas, or words which you are now passing off as your own. NEC’s Academic Integrity policy will be followed during this course. When an instructor becomes aware of an issue of plagiarism, they are required to report it to the Program Director. If the Program Director agrees with the plagiarism, then the student is reported to the Registrar of the college.