Fiona Tyrie
Fiona Tyrie worked for the government for two years straight after finishing at university. She trained as a primary school teacher and worked briefly as a year six teacher. She then went on to run businesses which arrange specialist tours for groups from South East Asia. After this, she progressed to running three businesses, one of which she took over and turned around, then just kept going. Fiona started teaching at SIT in 2007. She has been involved with SIT’s on-site and on-line programmes for business and hotel management and was also a programme manager for seven years.
- Areas of lecturing: Fiona teaches business studies to postgraduates and hotel management to undergraduates.
- Areas of specialisation: Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Business Sustainability, Tourism, Research Methods.
- Aside from the description above, I would also like to add that Fiona was my tutor for my postgraduate studies.
1. What is ‘referencing’ in academic studies?
As a student, you need to ask yourself why you need to include referencing in your research project or assignment and is it mandatory to use referencing in your studies. In academic writing, a student has a set time frame in which to complete his/her studies, and you will need to validate your own opinions with evidence while writing a research project or an assignment. Referencing is the way in which you provide evidence and proof to support your statements in your own work.
According to Fiona Tyrie, qualifications gained from countries such as New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, and the United States of America do not require the student to memorise or know textbook material by heart, but they do expect the student to think creatively and to work out how to solve problems in order to gain a genuine benefit by achieving the qualification. Referencing in academic studies helps the reader to distinguish between the student’s own ideas and opinions, and the contributions of other writers, by respecting their intellectual property rights.
2. What is the APA format, and how is the APA referencing style different from the other formats?
The APA referencing format is a type of Harvard referencing, according to Fiona Tyrie. Harvard referencing or author-date style is a generic description for any reference style. APA referencing is more than 100 years old, and many academic organisations extensively use it.
The American Psychologist Association developed the APA referencing style; however, there are other different referencing styles such as MLA, Oxford, Harvard, and Chicago. Each of these referencing styles has its own rules for citing sources.
MLA, Harvard and APA use author-date style reference while Chicago and Oxford use documentary-note style reference.
According to FionaTyrie, the main difference in APA referencing style ( or author-date-style) is that you need to provide the author’s name within the text of the assignment. By contrast, in the Chicago and Oxford referencing style, (documentary-note style) , the student adds the author’s name in a footnote at the bottom of each page or as an endnote at the end of the assignment or research project.
The APA referencing style is commonly used in education, business and the humanities disciplines, while MLA is used mainly for English and media studies. Similarly, the Oxford referencing is often used in history, philosophy and the classics, and the Harvard and Chicago styles are used by individual disciplines.
3. ‘In-text citation’ and its importance for the reference list
The in-text citation is a code that directs the reader to the reference list. This means that when a student is writing an assignment or research project using a source, that source needs to appear in two places: in the body of the assignment (in-text citation) and at the end of the assignment (reference list).
The in-text citation is needed whenever you have used information, ideas or concepts from another source. If you have summarised, paraphrased or quoted another author, you need to include an in-text citation consisting of the author’s last name, the year of publication, and a paragraph or page number. Then, if the reader wants to find out more information about where the student has got this information or ideas from, the reference list provides more detailed information about the source: the title, year of publication, and the publisher’s name.
The reference list appears at the end of the research project or assignment under the heading “Reference or Bibliography.” Every source that you have mentioned in the in-text citation should be listed in the reference list. If a source doesn’t have an in-text citation, it should not be listed in the reference list; also the reference list should be in alphabetical order.
4. Which areas should students focus on to incorporate referencing?
Producing an assignment or research thesis to a high standard takes time, and the student should refer to published books from authentic publications, journal articles, and conference procedures that have done the review process. According to Fiona Tyrie, students should use the above sources rather than obtaining reference materials from blogs and Wikipedia.
Depending on the area of study and the topic of the research selected, the student needs to focus on making some preparation notes on where to gather information regarding the research topic.
For example, if you are doing an entrepreneurship research project, you may not be able to find peer-reviewed journal articles on this research topic. Hence the student should strive to find related journal articles which have an opinion on the selected research or assignment topic.
Similarly, a student should not rely only on websites. There should be a balance of various types of sources such as business reviews, journal articles, and published books. A student needs to find accurate information on the research question. Some students do not gather related reference material for the research question and just provide information for their assignment or research thesis.
5. What are the leading publications students can utilise for APA referencing?
The Southern Institute of Technology New Zeland has two guides for APA referencing; a short and longer guide. In the longer guide, there is a lot of information about APA 7th edition; a short guide which has summarised APA referencing information is also available on the SIT Library website.
It is recommended that at the start, students use the longer guide to familiarise themselves with the APA reference guidelines. Once the student is more familiar with referencing after practising it in three or four assignments, she/he can then use the short guide to review or check any mistakes such as capital letters, italics, full stops and commas.
SIT provides the APA referencing guide as a hard copy for students, and the online version is available on the SIT library home page. Almost every university in the world uses the APA referencing guide and SIT provides very detailed APA referencing guidelines for students.
As stated by Fiona Tyrie, the online version has tailored the content of the APA guidelines with examples for SIT students to understand easily.
At the same time, students can get more familiar with databases and a variety of tools on how to find information. The SIT librarian, Cat smart and the team will support and guide students on how to use the databases. The SIT library has constructive databases and provides personalised services for students.
6. What is the difference between the reference list and the bibliography?
The reference list is a complete list of sources including published books, journal articles, websites, conference papers, which the student has used for their research project or assignment and cited directly in their document. For example, if a student has done six in-text citations by referring to six journal articles, all six journal articles should appear on the ‘Reference List’ page.
A bibliography is a list of publications that a student has used or read for their research project or assignment to develop their own concepts but which may not have been cited directly. The bibliography includes all the sources that you have used to generate ideas for your research topic but not referred to directly in the body of your research or assignment.
Many tutors mark a student’s reference list first to see what publications the student has used for the given research project or assignment before marking the content, and also to check for plagiarism, according to Fiona Tyrie.
7. What are the main changes in the APA 7th edition?
The APA published the 7th edition of the publication manual of the American Psychological Association and the fundamental changes for the 7th edition are as follows.
Most of the students use journal articles, published books, and chapters in an edited book as references for their assignment or research project. The diagram below shows the key reference guidelines of the APA 7th edition:
Journal Article – APA 7th edition
Book – APA 7th edition
Chapter in an edited Book – APA 7th edition
As I always write in my articles, you should try to achieve an A grade for your research project or dissertation. The table below shows how the marks are allocated for APA referencing.
8. Can a student follow the APA 6th edition in future studies at SIT?
Fiona Tyrie stated that, according to her understanding, the faculty has been informed that from the second semester of 2020, which is from the month of July, students need to follow the APA 7th edition referencing guidelines, so it is recommended that students become familiar with APA 7th edition from the first semester.
9. Common mistakes students make when using APA Referencing
The most common errors students make when using APA reference are:
- In-text citation errors
Most students do hours of researching to find the information for their research question or assignment. However, often a student forgets to give priority to where they could score credits easily.
The APA style requires the use of author’s last name and the year of publication in an in-text citation; also if you are using a direct quote from a publication, it needs to be enclosed in double quotation marks “ “ with the page number from the original work.
All in-text citations must be included in the reference list at the end of your assignment or research project. Also when you are citing multiple sources in a single sentence, they should be in alphabetical order. If there is no date found, then you need to use “n.d”.
- Figures and tables error
When you are writing an assignment or research project if you are using any tables or figures, you must label them in order, so they are consecutive. For example, you cannot use Figure 1, Figure 4, Figure 6 etc. in different chapters. They should be listed in Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3 accordingly.
- In-text citations which do not match the reference list
Once you have done the in-text citations, make sure that all the sources are in the reference list. Some times students forget to mention in-text citations in the reference list. It is better to cross-check with a friend that all the in-text citations match the reference list before you submit your research project or assignment. In addition, ensure that the author’s name and year are consistent.
- Incorrect quotations
As I mentioned in the in-text citation error paragraph, if you are using a direct quote from a source, you need to include the page number. However, if you are using online resources with no page number, it is better to use the paragraph number or overarching heading plus paragraph number.