Activity 3 Integrity in Writing

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900)

Emerging as a Scholar

Now is the time to be “yourself” as mentioned in the quote above. That does not mean that you are to bring your old writing style and habits into this advanced program, but it does mean you are to present original and insightful ideas that emerge from within you as you examine various topics. At the same time, you will be asked to substantiate what you write by citing other scholars. None of this is easy; in fact, it is one of the greatest cognitive challenges academics face. It is like learning chess. You can learn the basics of the game in a few weeks but you can get better and better at it over a lifetime. It does not matter where you are on your journey to become a good academic writer, there will always be more to learn. As a graduate student you will be thoroughly studying theories and research, and critiquing them. As you emerge as a scholar, you will find the flaws and gaps in the work of others, and gradually create your own niche in your professional arena. In other words you will emerge as a respected scholar in your own right. No one grants you the status of a “respected scholar” easily, it is something you have to earn.

Graduate writing skills extend beyond learning and restating the work of others. While you might write hundreds of pages about ideas and research about a particular topic, the words you write will need to be your own. They will come as the result of careful thought. You will need to keep a pile of sources on your desk, or a robust computer file of articles in pdf format, or toggle between web pages, as you cobble together the wisdom of others to prove a point or present an argument. But you must go beyond that and create an original synthesis. As a respected scholar, what you write will come from a careful process of mulling over ideas, distilling them, and creating your own educated opinions, proposals, and plans.

In this activity you will learn more about Northcentral University’s high standards in writing, standards that require that what you write reflects your own thought. You’ll learn to keep quotes at a minimum and how to properly paraphrase the work of others when you need to. Even the unintentional use of the ideas of another person, without the use of a proper citation or a clearly personal writing style that reflects your own expression of ideas, can constitute a violation of the Northcentral Integrity policy, a violation called plagiarism. You may think that plagiarism means just presenting someone else’s paper as your own, but it goes beyond that into the need to think and create your own ideas. Northcentral’s insistence on the highest standards in integrity assures the high reputation of your own degree, and encourages the growth of innovative practices and promising research.

Do you want your Voice Heard?

Have you ever driven down a highway and noticed that several emergency vehicles were blocking the lanes going the opposite direction. Then, as you keep driving you notice a long line of vehicles waiting to get through the road block. Then, as you continue you discover there are miles

and miles of vehicles waiting in the line. You may have wished you had a way of telling them they were going in the wrong direction and needed to find a different route. However, there was no way to make your voice heard.

Something similar can happen to you as you gain deeper and broader insight into the social world as your gradate program advances. You may see hundreds or thousands of people heading in the wrong direction in their journey through life. You will want your voice to be heard. You have probably had the experience of not being able to convince others of impending problems and issues. The more you learn the art of good academic writing, the greater the chance is your voice will be heard by a larger and larger audience. The challenge is that you have to become quite good at it because our social world is filled with a cacophonous roar of thousands of people trying to make their voices heard. Nearly all of those voices are spouting disorganized and unsubstantiated assertions. Some are frustrated to the point of anger because no one is heeding them and are shouting their confusing messages all the louder. It is a relief to hear a clear voice that presents a concise, well organized, and well substantiated message that can be relied on. You can be the source of such a voice, but it is a reward that you have to earn the hard way.

Important Tips

Take special care to note the instructions on paraphrasing offered in the resource and strive to create an assignment that reflects your own style of writing and thinking. Some tips to try include:

First, read and enjoy the professional articles you are assigned Flanagan, F. M. (2005) Only pages 184-194 as it relates to Paulo Freire and Silova, I., & Brehm, W. C. (2010) on Brickman.

In this assignment you are to compare two educators: specifically Brickman and Freire.

Look over the quality points, the questions you’ll need to address when writing the brief paper for the assignment.

Go back to the articles and make notes, in your own words, of the main points you’ll need to address those questions.

Write a draft of your paper, and put it aside. Go back to the paper, edit it, and then, if are vague on any of the required points, go back to

the article one more time. Strive to avoid the use of direct quotations if possible, and to write in your own words and

phrases that paraphrase the words of others and add perspective. Where you do need to use a direct quotation or to paraphrase the original articles, follow

APA style in doing so. The following website will give you a refresher on basic APA referencing and citing protocols: Introduction to APA Formatting

Be sure your paraphrases will pass a Turnitin scan. Click here for an important discussion of paraphrasing. Click here to learn about Turnitin.

The two links above are very important to your academic success. You need to be very certain you never receive an Academic Integrity Violation letter at Northcentral University or any other nook or cranny of Academia during the many years ahead of your career. You need to understand paraphrasing and you need to understand how Turnitin works.

Your Generic Assignment Template

You will be developing many, many assignments during your academic journey. Most of them will have to be presented following APA formatting Protocols. In order to help you with this, a generic assignment template has been sent to you along with this letter. In addition there is an annotated version of this generic template that explains its features. You should read through these annotations so you understand some of the key issues associated with APA formatting.

Save this template to your hard drive. Then save a backup copy of the template to your hard drive. Then save a copy of the template on a flash drive and give it to your neighbor for safe keeping. Then email a copy of the template to your sister in Hoboken and email another copy to your brother in Denver. Ask them both to save it on their hard drives in case you might need to get it from them. I could go on, but you get the idea. This template is very valuable to you. It will save you many hours as your journey continues. Be sure you do not lose track of it.

Editing your Generic Assignment Template for Assignment 3

Step 1. Edit the running head. You will notice that at the top of the template you see the following.

Running head: BRIEF TITLE IN ALL CAPS GOES HERE

Follow instructions and edit this so it becomes:

Running head: COMPARING FREIRE AND BRICKMAN

Step 2. Revise the title of the paper, the student name, and the name of the university on the title page.

Your title page should end up looking something like this.

A Comparison of Paulo Freire and William Brickman

Stu Dent

Northcentral University

Step 3. Develop a heading and subheading structure. This is a very important process for any complex assignment you will develop during your graduate work. It is vitally important that the heading structure emerges from the instructions for the assignment, not from your own ideas about how to get organized. Nearly all assignments will require you to cover several points or issues. If you use the instructions to develop your heading and subheading structure you will be sure you do not miss anything and you will stay organized and on topic. In light of the instructions for this assignment, the heading structure should look something like this.

Freire’s Contributions

Brickman’s Contributions

Resistance Freire and Brickman Encountered

Similarities in Freire’s and Brickman’s Professional Stories

How Freire and Brickman Differed

Factors that Impacted Freire’s and Brickman’s Success

Conclusion

Step 4. You must develop a reference list at the end of your assignment. After you finish typing the last word of the body of the paper, press Control+Enter in order to create a hard page break. Your reference list must begin on a new page. As you will notice in the generic template the reference list begins with its own level one heading.

Your Assignment Should Look like This

If you have done everything correctly, this is how your first two pages should look.

In-Text Citations

You will need to offer in-text citations in your paper. The definitive guide to properly formatting in-text citations begins on page 174 of the APA manual. You will have to refer to this section of the manual frequently as your journey continues. However, there are some good websites that will give you an overview. Click here for a good introduction to in-text citation formatting. If you advance the slide show using the arrow at the bottom of the screen and view the next three slides as well you will have a good overview of proper citation formatting. For this assignment you have to create a reference list entry for a chapter from a book. Click here for a well done explanation of how to do this. Scroll down a bit until you see the heading Book Chapter References.

Assignment Length

The syllabus offers the following comment about the length of this assignment.

Keep your paper within the suggested length (writing in a concise manner is one aspect of scholarly writing); what is critical in this assignment is that you write clearly, paraphrase correctly, and use citations and references appropriately. Your paper will be submitted to a text-matching service to see how well you were able to discuss these ideas in your own words using appropriate citations.

Length: 2-3 pages (app. 350 words per page)

You do not need to count the title page and reference list in this length guideline. With a title page and reference list you will have a range of 4-5 pages to work with.

Also, you are asked to insert the NCU Cover page that your instructor uses to provide you with feedback. Since you will be working hard to create a title page with a proper running head etc, you may not want to disrupt your hard won formatting excellence. I do not mind if you leave the cover page off of this assignment. I will review your title page formatting and then I will insert the cover page for you. (Note: there is a difference between a title page as is shown in the generic assignment template and the Northcentral University Cover Page which is designed to give a systematic structure for instructors to provide their feedback. You edit your title page appropriately and I will paste in the Cover Page when I grade this assignment. However, when asked, you should insert the cover page for future assignments.)

Reference List

You will also have to develop a reference list at the end of your paper. The APA manual offers the definitive discussion of reference list formatting beginning on page 180. You will need to refer to this section of the manual often. However, there are some good internet sites that will help you get started. Click here for an overview of how to format reference list entries. If you advance the slideshow by clicking the arrows at the bottom of the screen you will learn a great deal about reference formatting.

What comes next is…>>> VERY IMPORTANT <<<

Start a Personal Writing Checklist

I work very hard to get all my students to do what is written below. Alas, I fail most of the time because my students don’t think they have time to do this. If only they all knew it will save them time in the long run. Since I created a generic assignment template for you, you own me many hours of saved time. I am asking you to invest those hours in a Personal Writing Checklist.

In the feedback you receive for this activity you will most likely find margin comments about your academic writing, APA skills and so on. This assignment is an example of the typical assignments you will be doing for much of your future coursework and academic writing skills will be very important as you progress. Now is the time to begin a Personal Writing Checklist. Start a Microsoft Word document where you will enter any significant feedback you receive on your writing so the lessons are not lost. Then, use that checklist to help you do a final edit for all written assignments from this point on. As you receive feedback on your writing, your personal writing checklist will grow and become more relevant and useful to you. As you continually refresh yourself on these issues by using the check list for a final edit for assignment after assignment, academic writing skills will become second nature to you as you repeatedly correct errors until you no longer make them. Often you can cut and paste pieces of instructor feedback

into your checklist; as a result, developing your check list will not be time consuming. However, using it effectively will take time.

Here is an example of the type of things you should put in your checklist. These are only examples and it is by no means a complete list. J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, is reputed to have earned $1,000,000,000 by writing. However, she is still learning how to be a better writer. You will be learning about effective writing for as long as you are alive and will always have new things to add.

Note that many of these checklist items include references and support for the issue that is being addressed either by referring to the APA manual or to a link. When your instructors give you feedback they will often include this type of support, do not lose track of it, cut and paste it into your ever growing checklist. Although the first point below is about abstracts but you will not need an abstract for any assignments in this course because the assignments are too brief to warrant one.

Abstracts are not indented. See page 27 of the APA manual for guidance on abstract formatting and also page 41 to see an example of a properly formatted abstract.

Except for abstracts, indent all other paragraphs, check APA guide p. 229.

In the APA manual we find the following comment about the use of ampersand: “Precede the final name in a multiple-author citation in running text by the word and. In parenthetical material, in tables and captions, and in the reference list joint the names by an ampersand (&)” (p. 175). Look at the bottom sample of a citation by two authors when you click here. You can see an example of when you use and instead of & in the first example when you click here. If you list multiple authors as part of a sentence you use and. If you list multiple authors in a citation enclosed in parentheses you use &. You also use & when you list sources written by multiple authors in the reference list. Look at the bottom two examples when you click here.

On a page 286 of the APA guide it states, "Double-space between all lines of the manuscript. Double-space after every line in the title, headings, footnotes, quotations, references, figure captions, and all parts of tables." In other words, double-space everything. If you look at the sample reference list provided by the APA manual on page 313 you will see double spacing also applies to reference lists as indicated in the above quote.

APA requires that we use a serf type font for the body of our papers. The two choices are Times New Roman and Courier. However, Times New Roman is the best choice (see the bottom of page 228 of the APA manual). Always use a 12 point New Times Roman font for all assignments unless directed otherwise.

The definitive guide for formatting APA headings is found on page 62 of the APA manual. Also, you can click here for an authoritative online explanation of APA heading formatting provided by the APA. Note that levels 3, 4 and 5 all have a period at the end and the content following the heading begins on the same line as the heading. You can see an example of

a level 3 heading in the sample paper on page 45 of the APA manual. Notice how the heading ends with a period and the material following the heading begins on the same line as the heading.

The Publication Manual of the APA (2010) offers the following comment about not using an introduction heading: “The introduction to a manuscript does not carry a heading that labels it as the introduction. (The first part of a manuscript is assumed to be the introduction)” (p. 63). You can see an illustration of an introduction to a paper being presented without a heading in the sample paper on page 42 of the manual.

Paragraphs should have topic sentences and the paragraph should support or develop a single controlling idea that is expressed in the topic sentence. Click here for an introduction to this important topic.

The sample points above might not have any personal connection to your writing at this time but on all future occasions when an instructor gives you feedback on your writing, personal connections will be forged and the writing lesson the instructor teaches you will be clearly relevant to your future work.

Your work will be Checked for Originality

Northcentral uses an online text matching service called Turnitin to help us spot integrity violations and to guide students who may be relying too much on the writing style and phrases of others and not enough on their own style. I will share the results of that text check with you. Please note that self plagiarism is still plagiarism and is considered a serious academic integrity violation. If you submitted an assignment at Northcentral or another university in the past it is probably in the Turnitin data bank. If you do a little revising and resubmit the same assignment it will come back with a very poor originality score and your standing at Northcentral University may have to be examined by a meeting of the Academic Integrity Board, something that you never want to see happen.

How to Correctly Name your Assignments When Saving to Your Hard Drive

Northcentral University has a very specific pattern for saving activities to your hard drive before you submit them. The pattern looks like this.Your last name, first initial, e.g., EDU5000-3 (DoeJEDU5000-4).The above example assumes you are on activity 3 in EDU5000 and your name is John Doe.

Here are other illustrations.

AnistonJEDU5000-3 (means activity 3 for Jennifer Aniston in EDU5000)RockefellerTEDU7101-5 (means activity 5 for Tom Rockefeller in EDU7101)GrahamGEDU8000-7 (means activity 7 for Gordon Graham in EDU8000)

You will notice that there are no spaces in the name of the assignments when they are saved to your hard drive, that way they download without an issue. You will continue to have trouble with the NCU systems if you include spaces in the names of any document you upload or download.

Working Ahead on the Course

It would be wise for you to work ahead on activity 4: How to Find What You Need, however; Northcentral University has a firm policy that requires you to wait until one assignment is graded and returned before submitting the next one. You can still work ahead. Many students start work on the next activity as soon as they submit the last assignment. As soon as the previously submitted assignment is graded and returned they check the feedback and do some final editing if any of the previous feedback applies to their next assignment. They then submit the next assignment a few days early and thus avoid getting close to the deadline. However, you are only required to submit before the deadline, working ahead is wise but is not required.

An Open Invitation to Contact Me

Are you frustrated, puzzled, overwhelmed, bored, sick, sick and tired, having a baby, going to visit a new baby, slipping behind schedule, feeling like no one understands or cares, curled in the fetal position, or otherwise distressed in any way about this course? If so, please contact me using one of the methods listed below.

Marla KelseyEducation Foundations Faculty

Email: mkelsey@ncu.eduSkype: marlakelsey

Phone: 480-822-0743(8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Arizona time ← click here to check)“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” William Butler Yeats