As noted in your syllabus, the APA Style and Grammar Guide is required in this class. You should not rely on citation generators or other sources to ensure your citations are correct. Check your citations against the original, APA examples and advice.

One thing I tend to emphasize in my review of APA citations is the correct use of DOIs and URLs.  So, make sure you use a DOI whenever appropriate AND make sure any URLs you cite do not include “fhsu.”

Also, remember that the Style and Grammar Guide is your required text in the class to ensure you follow that. As the Purdue Owl explains, citation generators are not reliable without careful review. As most Informatics majors should understand about any database, junk in… junk out.

Additionally, APA has created a variety of tutorials to help. You can take an online tutorial or try one of their free webinars. Two webinars that are likely to be helpful are the association’s tutorial for formatting Student Papers in APA Style:

And, the tutorial on best practices for citing works, paraphrasing, and citing quotations:

Come back to these resources anytime you need them by utilizing the Course Information menu. And, when you check out a source, please reply to this post. Let others know what you checked, whether or not it seemed useful, and why. I’m sure your review can help a classmate before using this.

To see where your weaknesses are with APA Style, you can try this quiz. You certainly don’t need to know what APA stands for in this class, but it would be nice for you to have that context. Various assignments, however, do test your ability to utilize APA citations and references.