Introduction
This session introduces students to the basics of the Harvard referencing system and gives them
practice creating citations and references for common sources of information. It is vital in preparation
for all assessed activities. It can be combined with additional course-specific literature for maximum
affect.
Learning Objective
Students will use the Harvard system of referencing to create citations and references.
Learning Outcomes
1. To determine the two components of the Harvard referencing system and discover the
University’s referencing convention.
2. To practise using citation and referencing for books and articles.
3. To correct and review the references created and iteratively practise referencing.
Timings: 20 minutes
Resources: Student resource booklet, pages 2-9
Activity Outline
Pg.
Activity
Outcome
2-6
1. Introduce the concept of referencing and ask students what familiarity with referencing they
have, and why it is important to have references and a system of referencing – why can’t they
just make their own system up?
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2. Go through the two parts of the system – citations in text and references at the end of text.
Use pg. 2-6 to illustrate the main conventions. Lecturer may wish to illustrate with examples
of own or course texts using a whiteboard or pieces of paper.
7-9
3. Students work through the three examples on pg. 7-8, producing citations and references.
Stress the importance of accuracy and punctuation. Students swap with each other and use
pg. 9 to make corrections to the examples, and then return the examples with feedback to the
initial student.
2 and 3
4. Lecturer can add in extra texts, such as the course text, own lecture notes or more advances
things such as artworks, TV programmes etc. depending on the area of study, and ask students
to practise writing citations and references for these sources of information.
Optional Self-study for extension of skills using Skills4study Campus
Referencing and Plagiarism —> Referencing
Skills4study campus can be accessed from: http://www.skills4studycampus.com/orglogin.aspx
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