References & Course Paper

I received two different questions this week about references in your final papers. The first question essentially asked if there would be any references beyond the three articles reviewed. The answer is yes!

Notice that the rubric states for the Overview section:

Give us a 2-to-3 page overview of the research area that summarizes the main issues explored in your specialization area. Then tell us why you chose the 3 specific articles selected (one for the research aloud and two for this paper).

Put differently, it's hard/impossible to summarize main issues in your specialization area without using additional references. You can use references to your required readings from class and to other articles you may have run across. Keep in mind this is an overview of the research—as such it's impossible not to reference some research. Using vague phrases like "research indicates," "some researchers have found," "there's a large body of evidence," simply don't stand on their own. They need citations in the body of the paper with full references at the end.

The "Future Directions" section of the article may, or may not, contain references—it really depends on how you write it.

The second question asked, "Do you think it's ok to just write about the reason we chose the 2 articles covered in the paper, and not the 3rd article that we covered in the research aloud? In the research aloud, I believe we talked about why we chose that article." The answer is yes. In this case you could only reference the two articles. That said, my guess is you'd likely (though not necessarily) reference the third article for the Research Aloud in your Overview section.