1. Introduction
Whenever you use the ideas, thoughts, or research of other people, you will need to attribute the person(s) or organizations where this information originated from. Even when this information is more abstract and you are simply describing or summarizing someone’s work, you will still need to cite this information. There are many different ways to cite sources, but in the ITMA program, and generally within the field of education, we use APA Style. In this short tutorial, you will learn how to cite your sources according to APA Style.

2. Citing Your Sources
Whenever you do use someone else`s ideas or research findings, APA requires you to cite this work both in the body of your text and in your reference list. In this tutorial, you will therefore learn about both in-text citations and listing them in your reference list. In the example on the right, you can quickly see what is meant with both types of citations.
An example - My Paper
In this paper I will discuss what is meant with the field of Instructional Design and Technology. Reiser (2012) states that essential to the field is “a focus on systematic processes and the use of technological resources” (p. 5).
Even though some people associate the field with technology, this is only a part of the field.
Reference list:
Reiser, R. A. (2012). What field did you say you were in? Defining and naming our field. In Reiser, R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey, J. V. (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (3rd ed.) (pp. 1-7). Boston: Pearson.
In-Text Citation
Reference List

3. In-Text Citations
When you use someone else`s ideas or resources, you can either cite this person’s or organization’s ideas word-by-word (verbatim), or you cite these sources more indirectly by paraphrasing the source. Each of these citations look a little bit different. Word-by-word citations: When you cite a source verbatim, you cite the author’s last name, year of publication, and page number or paragraph number (for web sources). Your cited text should be within quotation marks. Paraphrasing: When you describe someone’s study, idea, or thought more indirectly, you cite your source by simply adding the author’s last name, and year of publication. Please take a look at the next pages to see what this looks like.

4. Word-by-Word Citations
When you cite a source verbatim, you cite the author’s last name, year of publication, and page number(s) or paragraph number(s) (for web sources without page numbers). Your cited text should be written within quotation marks. When the citation is over 40 words, you put the citation in a separate block omitting the quotation marks. If the source does not have any page numbers, add the paragraph number(s) instead. Example 1 – under 40 words: It is important to collect information about your learners. Branch and Merrill (2012) state that “Data are at the heart of the ID process” (p. 11). Example 2 – 40 words and over: It is important to collect information about your learners. Data are at the heart of the ID process. Data collection begins during the initial analysis and continues through implementation. For example, during the analysis phase, data may be collected so as to compare what learners already know to what they need to know. (Branch & Merrill, 2012, p. 11) Example 3 – (Web) source without page number: Instructional design is “The process by which instruction is improved through the analysis of learning needs and systematic development of learning experiences.” Culatta, 2013, para 1).

5. Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing means that you write out the ideas of someone else in your own words. When you do this, you still need to cite your source. When you do this, you just cite the author’s last name, year of publication, and preferably a page or paragraph number as well (although this is not necessary). Please see some examples below: Example 1: Branch and Merrill (2012) also underscore the importance of collecting data throughout all instructional design phases. Example 2: It is important to collect data throughout all instructional design phases (Branch & Merrill, 2012).

6. No Author(s) or Year of Publication
Now this all seems very straightforward. However how do you cite your source when it is written by many different authors? And what if it does not have any authors? What if you cannot find a publication date? You will learn this next! No Author: When the author is unknown, add the first few words of the title of the article, put these in quotation marks, and add the year of publication. Example – No Author: The field of distance education has been growing (“Distance Education,” 2015, p. 1). No Year of Publication: When the year of publication is unknown, add “n.d.” (abbreviation for no date) instead of the year of publication. Example – No Year of Publication: The field of distance education has been growing (Lytle, n.d., p. 1).

7. Multiple Authors or Organizations
Sometimes a source has multiple authors or it may be written by an organization, rather than a single author. How do you deal with this? Make sure you also add the page/paragraph number here when citing a source word-by-word!
Citation as part of the text:
Example: According to Schilder (2016, para. 1), IDT is a great field.
Citation in parentheses:
Example: “IDT is great” (Schilder, 2016, para. 1).
First citation
Subsequent citation
1 author
Reiser (2012)
(Reiser, 2012)
2 authors
Boling and Smith (2012)
(Boling & Smith, 2012)
3-5 authors
Klein, Rushby, and Su (2012)
Klein et al. (2012)
(Klein, Rushby, and Su, 2012)
(Klein et al, 2012)
6+ authors
Litchfield et al. (2012)
(Litchfield et al., 2012)
Organization
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2014)
OECD (2014)
(Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2014)
(OECD, 2014)

8. Reference List
Whenever you have cited a source in the body of your paper, you also need to cite this same source in your reference list (and vice versa). You will therefore never have any sources in your reference list that you do not also cite in the body of your text. The way you format your source in your reference list depends on the type of source you are citing. Books are formatted a little bit differently from websites and book chapters are formatted a little bit differently from journal articles. In the next few pages you will learn how to add some of the main sources to your reference list. Please pay attention to where and how all periods and cursive text is placed and which parts of the reference needs to be capitalized, as all of this is very important and specific in APA Style.

9. Formatting Books
When you cite something coming from a book, you generally cite it the following way: Author, A. A. (Year of Publication). Title of work: Capital letter also for subtitle. Location: Publisher. Example – Book Reference: Woolfolk, A. (2015). Educational Psychology. (13th Edition). New York, NY: Pearson.

10. Formatting Book Chapters
Sometimes, you read an edited book in which all book chapters are written by different authors. An example of this is the book we are reading for the Foundations of IDT course. When you are citing something from a specific chapter of the book, you will therefore need to cite these authors and the specific chapter. This is how you do that: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages of chapter). Location: Publisher. Example - Chapter in an Edited book: Reiser, R. A. (2012). A history of instructional design and technology. In R. A. Reiser, & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology, 3rd ed (pp ). Saddlebrook, NJ: Merrill/Prentice-Hall.

11. Formatting Journal Articles
In the field of IDT, we often read and cite articles from academic journals. An example is the article written by Clark that you will read in lesson 8 of this course. Journal articles are generally formatted this way: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year of Publication). Title of article. Title of Journal, volume number(issue number), page numbers. Example - Journal Article: Clark, R. E. (1994). Media will never influence learning. ETR&D, 42(2),

12. Formatting Websites
You will also often find useful information on websites that you will need to cite and add to your reference list. An example would be the plagiarism module that you will go through after you complete this short tutorial. This is how you cite websites: Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Date of publication). Title of document. Retrieved from Example - Websites: Indiana University. (2015, March 6). How to Recognize Plagiarism. Retrieved from Websites sometimes do not list the date of publication and sometimes the author is not known either. In case the source above would not have had an author nor date of publication, this is how you would cite it: How to recognize plagiarism. (n.d.) Retrieved from

13. Useful Resources
Sometimes you need to cite a type of source that is not mentioned in this short tutorial. For example, you may need to cite a newspaper article or an an entry in an encyclopedia. The Purdue University Online Writing Lab has developed a very useful resource where you can find out how to cite almost any possible type of source. It may also be beneficial to look at a sample paper written using APA style so you can see what it looks like in practice. You can find a sample paper here: paper-1.pdf