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Dr. Barr's Really Useful Stuff for Sociology (Dale Mabry): Home

A guide for students in Dr. Deborah Barr's Sociology classes.

Welcome from Dr. Deborah Barr - “Dr. B”

really useful stuff label

Dear Students:

This page is a one-stop shop for any help you need in your course. The resources here are designed to help you be successful in the course.

While some resources are geared exclusively to online classes, most are beneficial to any students. For quick access, pick a topic.

I checked all of these links before the course started but you never know when a link will no longer be accessible. Be sure to let me know right away through Canvas email if something is not working correctly.

Let's have a great semester!

Dr. B

Tips for successful online classes

hints tips This section has many hints for how to be successful in your online course!

Online learning at HCC

More tips for online students

Discussion rubric for Gordon Rule assignments

rubric word artWhy discussions are important and how to avoid making unsupported factual assertions.

About this rubric

  • This is an abbreviated version of the rubric for each Gordon Rule writing assignment. When I grade, I will put feedback in the rubric for how to improve your grade.
  • The feedback can be obtained by going to your grade-book and accessing the comment balloon, or rubric icon, next to your grade.
  • This helpful Canvas guide shows how to do different things with your grade book - including using the "what if" function to estimate your grades. 

For any other type of post, the discussion forum will have instructions for how those conversations and activities will be graded.

Writing good discussion posts

Find quality sources:

Search your topic in HCC Libraries online resources.

Citing your sources, including ChatGPT, in APA style

a p a references list and book

Source citations in APA style are called references.

References contain the following four elements:

  • Author - This can be a person, group of people, or an organization. Use & for multiple authors. If there is no author, start the entry with the title.
  • Date - Refers to the date of publication and is most commonly the year or an exact date (year, month, and day). Use (n.d.) for no date.
  • Title - This can be either a work that stands alone (e.g. a book) or part of a greater whole (e.g. a journal article) and should always be in sentence case.
  • Source - Indicates where readers can retrieve the cited work and could be a publisher or the title of a greater whole (e.g. a journal article and the journal name). 
Can't find some of this information for your source? Use the the APA Style website's guide to adapting Missing reference information.

Here are examples of APA References for other types of sources:

Open this link

ARTICLE FROM A DATABASE

Last name, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of article. Title of Journal, Volume Number(Issue Number), page numbers. DOI or permalink

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185
WEB PAGE

Last name, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of webpage. Publisher (if different from author). URL

Pew Research Center. (2013, March 14). Modern parenthood: Roles of moms and dads converge as they balance work and family. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/modern-parenthood-roles-of-moms-and-dads-converge-as-they-balance-work-and-family/

Woodyatt, A. (2019, September 10). Daytime naps once or twice a week may be linked to a healthy heart, researchers say. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/10/health/nap-heart-health-wellness-intl-scli/index.html

YOUTUBE VIDEO

Username. (Year, Month Date). Title of video [Video]. YouTube. URL

Klusmanp. (2008, February 13). An engineer's guide to cats [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHXBL6bzAR4

IMAGE OR GRAPHIC

Last name or username, F. M. (Year, Month Date). Title of the artwork [Format]. Title of the Website. URL

Gallup. (2012, December 50). In U.S., more cite obesity as most urgent health problem [Graphs]. https://news.gallup.com/poll/159083/cite-obesity-urgent-health-problem.aspx

Verch, M. (2019, January 23). Refined sugar and granulated sugar on white background [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/30478819@N08/46148146934

PERSONAL INTERVIEW

A personal interview is not considered recoverable data, so no reference is provided in the reference list. You may, however, cite the interview during your speech or within the text as personal communication.

(J. Smith, personal communication, August 15, 2009)

More helpful resources for APA style

How to cite references in your discussion posts

For examples of how to cite your references in initial posts and responses, refer to the following documents: