02-03-2022, 10:02 PM
A couple points:
I concur with the importance of knowing your APA or MLA really well, especially in graduate school. Like LevelUp, my college professors (and SDC and alt credit sources) were not sticklers about APA until I got to TESU's capstone. I am incredibly thankful for the capstone class because my professor was a total nitpicker... and that's been a huge benefit to me in grad school.
Purdue Owl is cited by just about everyone as the best resource on APA rules. My TESU professor point blank said "Please don't trust anything other than Owl or the actual APA style manual. There's a lot of misinformation out there and I take of a lot of points from people who followed erroneous advice." I also recommend anyone who is going to be using APA a lot to invest in the APA style manual. It's quite readable and gives numerous examples, and it really demystifies the reasoning behind each of the APA style rules, which makes them easier to remember.
I also recommend Grammarly just to check your work. You can't use it blindly, as it is wrong a fair amount of the time (it cannot reliably read context, though its AI continues to improve). You have to know what you're doing at a basic level, but it will catch your mistakes. The Grammarly plug-in also allows you to check message board posts.
Perrla is a useful APA format tool that works within Word or standalone, and will help you with basic formatting.
And as others have said... never leave free or almost free points on the table. Do the extra credit activities. Write the extra posts. Do all of your follow-up posts. READ THE DAMN RUBRIC for each major post/paper/etc and READ THE DIRECTIONS for each post to make sure you cover all the points the professor is after. It's astounding to me how many people don't do this, even at the graduate level. More than once while rechecking a finished post or paper, I've gone back and re-read the rubric and discovered I left off one or more points the professor wanted to see covered. It usually takes only a few minutes to add those points back in, and it results in my almost always getting full points for each assignment.
Lastly, talk to your professors (this applies whether butts-in-seats or online classes, but not to things like SDC or Sophia.) All other things being equal, if a professor recognizes you, and you've shown interest in the class and the material and shown yourself as eager to learn... it's going to make a slight difference in how your paper is read, and may gain you a few extra points when there are subjective grading criteria. If the prof has office hours by phone or zoom, make use of them. Even if you have to invent a reason to call. Or engage with them via email. They want to help you succeed and will give you advice and insight that will help you get the most out of class... and get the best grades.
I concur with the importance of knowing your APA or MLA really well, especially in graduate school. Like LevelUp, my college professors (and SDC and alt credit sources) were not sticklers about APA until I got to TESU's capstone. I am incredibly thankful for the capstone class because my professor was a total nitpicker... and that's been a huge benefit to me in grad school.
Purdue Owl is cited by just about everyone as the best resource on APA rules. My TESU professor point blank said "Please don't trust anything other than Owl or the actual APA style manual. There's a lot of misinformation out there and I take of a lot of points from people who followed erroneous advice." I also recommend anyone who is going to be using APA a lot to invest in the APA style manual. It's quite readable and gives numerous examples, and it really demystifies the reasoning behind each of the APA style rules, which makes them easier to remember.
I also recommend Grammarly just to check your work. You can't use it blindly, as it is wrong a fair amount of the time (it cannot reliably read context, though its AI continues to improve). You have to know what you're doing at a basic level, but it will catch your mistakes. The Grammarly plug-in also allows you to check message board posts.
Perrla is a useful APA format tool that works within Word or standalone, and will help you with basic formatting.
And as others have said... never leave free or almost free points on the table. Do the extra credit activities. Write the extra posts. Do all of your follow-up posts. READ THE DAMN RUBRIC for each major post/paper/etc and READ THE DIRECTIONS for each post to make sure you cover all the points the professor is after. It's astounding to me how many people don't do this, even at the graduate level. More than once while rechecking a finished post or paper, I've gone back and re-read the rubric and discovered I left off one or more points the professor wanted to see covered. It usually takes only a few minutes to add those points back in, and it results in my almost always getting full points for each assignment.
Lastly, talk to your professors (this applies whether butts-in-seats or online classes, but not to things like SDC or Sophia.) All other things being equal, if a professor recognizes you, and you've shown interest in the class and the material and shown yourself as eager to learn... it's going to make a slight difference in how your paper is read, and may gain you a few extra points when there are subjective grading criteria. If the prof has office hours by phone or zoom, make use of them. Even if you have to invent a reason to call. Or engage with them via email. They want to help you succeed and will give you advice and insight that will help you get the most out of class... and get the best grades.
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