Citing Your Sources: Cite Sources in Online Course Discussion Posts using APA

Often, you will be asked to take part in a discussion forum in your online courses. In addition, you may be asked to cite sources in your posts using the APA Citation style. Here are some general guidelines for how to do this. Because any specific assignment may use different guidelines, if something in your assignment contradicts something in this page, your assignment instructions take precedence. If something in the assignment instructions is unclear, contact your instructor for clarification.

Generally, discussion forums will use APA in the same way as when writing a paper. Indeed, you can think of your discussion posts as very brief APA papers. Use information from your course texts and readings or from your own research to bolster the assertions you make in your posts. When you use such sources, you normally cite them both in-text and at the end of the post. The main difference will be in some of the formatting. For example, discussion tools may not allow for hanging indents, etc.

Here are two examples of discussion posts that use APA citing (note the use of both narrative and parenthetical in-text citations) and a brief, alphabetical-by-author-last-name list of references at the end of the post.

I believe a good possible solution to this case study's dilemma is to create an assignment that combines a student-centered team-based approach with a topic that brings in social justice. Wilson's (2022) discussion of "student-centered, critical pedagogy" would be a good fit (p. 283). Approaching the lesson plan as much from the students' perspectives as possible, and hopefully "empowering them to bring their own life experiences" to the problem-solving assignment would allow for a positive learning experience (Wilson, 2022, p. 285). In addition, Frante's study (2019) showed that "assignments with a current social justice focus resulted in statistically higher grades in the courses studied than in those assignments that did not have a social justice focus (p. 2267).

Frante, J.D. (2019). A comparative study of team-based assignments utilizing a social justice focus. Northeast Higher Education Journal. 2(3). 2263-2272. 

Wilson, A.M. (2022). Introduction to pedagogy: Teaching the smart way (2nd ed.). Stanford University Press.

[Response to previous post] This is a great idea! You might also consider adding a culminating activity to the assignment tasking each team with presenting their proposed solution to the rest of the class. That might help reinforce the learning and, as the textbook discusses in chapter 7, allow for a more equitable division of assignment responsibilities among those with different dominant learning styles (Wilson, 2022, pp. 310-312).

Wilson, A.M. (2022). Introduction to pedagogy: Teaching the smart way (2nd ed.). Stanford University Press.

• See examples of different publication types cited in APA.