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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

Citing source references in APA style, including ChatGPT

Elements of source references 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. Reference entries should be listed in alphabetical order by the first author's last name (or the title if no author) with hanging indentations.
  • Date. Refers to the date of publication and is most commonly the year or an exact date, such as year, month, and day. Use (n.d.) for no date.
  • Title. This can be either a work that stands alone, such as a book, or part of a greater whole, such as 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, such as 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.

Citing sources in APA style

CIting AI tools such as ChatGPT in APA style

Using citation generators in the library databases and catalog

Citing source references in APA style in your discussion posts

Notice how the sources are cited in these posts:

Rubric for grading online discussion posts

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

There is an abbreviated version of this rubric in each discussion post and response. I will put feedback in the rubric when I grade 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. See this helpful Canvas guide for 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 these conversations and activities will be graded.

Writing good discussion posts

Find quality sources

Search your topic in HCC Libraries online resources.