Teaching With Style: Digital Resources for APA Style and Scholarly Writing
Concurrent Session 6
Brief Abstract
Learn about updates to seventh edition APA Style that help students write clear, precise, and inclusive papers and about innovative, interactive, and engaging resources that instructors can use to teach APA Style and strengthen student writing. Also hear and share insights on what works best for providing effective writing instruction.
Presenters
Extended Abstract
Used worldwide by students and professionals in psychology, nursing, education, business, and other fields, APA Style guidelines provide a foundation for effective communication that enables all writers to present their ideas in a clear, precise, and inclusive manner. For students, uniformity and consistency in writing enable them to focus on the content, rather than the format, of their papers, communicate their ideas more effectively, and receive higher grades on papers and other assignments. The seventh edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association and the student-specific Concise Guide to APA Style offer expanded guidance for students writing academic papers in APA Style.
In this session, we will briefly discuss seventh edition APA Style, highlighting key details for instructors and adaptations that make student papers easier to write and format, with an emphasis on how default word-processing software settings align with seventh edition style. We also outline updated and expanded guidance on writing style and mechanics of style that ensure clear, consistent communication and presentation within written works.
We will then shift to (a) provide innovative ideas and digital resources for teaching APA Style and strengthening student writing and (b) solicit instructors’ ideas and experiences on what works best for teaching academic writing in secondary and collegiate classes. Our panel of writing instructors will discuss how, by incorporating digital resources into their courses, all instructors can strengthen their students’ writing ability and critical thinking.
First, we will provide an overview of digital resources that help writers improve their papers and communicate more effectively. In particular, we will spotlight an innovative APA Style digital workbook designed specifically for instructors and students at both secondary and collegiate institutions. The workbook utilizes best practices in digital learning and learning design to teach the basics of style that make writing more accurate, accessible, and inclusive. Using a hands-on demonstration, we will show how the workbook’s use of learning objectives, interactive engagement, scaffolded learning, and immediate feedback make both APA Style guidelines and overall scholarly writing easier to learn and master. Attendees will have the opportunity to view the workbook in action and even try out the interactive questions for themselves.
As an accompaniment to comprehensive writing instruction, we will walk through the extensive online library of free instructional resources on the APA Style website. These include style and grammar guidelines on various topics, full sample papers to use as templates, bias-free language and accessibility guidelines written by experts, and reference examples for over a hundred works. They also include more than two dozen instructional handouts, guides, checklists, activities, tutorials, and webinars that help instructors introduce APA Style, discuss style and writing topics, and engage students and that help students set up their papers, create in-text citations and references, and stay organized while writing papers and citing sources.
Then, we will discuss ways to engage students in the collaborative element of writing through digital peer review, collaborative annotation, virtual meetings, and breakout rooms. This includes a demonstration of how digital peer review and collaborative annotation can help students stay connected to each other and their instructors and reflect on their writing in deeper ways. We will highlight advantages of one-on-one virtual meetings for instructors and students in terms of enhanced flexibility, accessibility, and inclusivity. We will also discuss the use of breakout rooms in web conferencing programs such as Zoom, BlueJeans, and Microsoft Teams to facilitate the collaborative aspects of writing.
We will end by inviting attendees to participate in a discussion on what works best for teaching and learning APA Style and scholarly writing. Attendees will be able to share the challenges they face in academic writing instruction and presenters will identify ways to use style and writing resources as solutions to those challenges. Attendees will leave the session with increased knowledge of digital resources for APA Style and scholarly writing and increased confidence in providing effective and engaging writing instruction.