Social Anthropology: Writing & Citing

To assist you to develop the writing skills necessary to become a confident and skilled writer, the Student Learning Centre offer the following services:

Study Guides

• Planning and Writing University Assignments: Planning assignments, and strategies for finding information, reading, and taking notes. 
• Guidelines for Writing and Editing: (Massey) Paragraph and sentence structures, writing style, and the rules for the apostrophe, comma, colon and semicolon.
• Perfect Your Punctuation: (Auckland)  - A brief guide and common usage punctuation marks. 

Tipsheets

• The Quirky Comma: Tips on the when and how of using commas.
• The Dreaded Apostrophe: Tips to help you use apostrophes correctly in your writing.
• Colons and Semi Colons: This tip sheet is designed to clarify the use of colon and semi colons.
• Writing a Literature Review: A literature review is a survey of scholarly sources on a specific topic. It provides an overview of current knowledge, allowing you to identify relevant theories, methods, and gaps in the existing research.

Online Tutorials

• Essay writing with readings 
• Annotated Bibliography (Waikato) 
• Business Report (Massey) 
• Scientific Report 

Workshops

The Student Learning Centre offer a range of workshops that will assist with your writing:

• Writing at University 
• Thesis Writing 

Drop-in Thesis Clinic

If you are a postgraduate student and have a problem with some aspects of your thesis, then the thesis clinic is the place for you. You can discuss any issue related to thinking about your postgraduate research, and planning and writing a thesis. Drop in to the Student Learning Centre on a Thursday at 4pm.
 

Individual Consultations with a Learning Advisor

If you are an enrolled student, you are welcome to visit the Student Learning Centre in the south-west corner of the Central Library (ISB) Building to discuss any aspect of your study that is causing concern. You can also telephone 479 8801 or e-mail hedc.studentlearning@otago.ac.nz  to make an appointment with a Learning Adviser. There are many ways that we can assist you in an individual appointment.

If you are an off-campus student, the same service is available to you through e-mail or a toll-free line: 0800 808 098. (Ask Otago) 

Student Learning Centre 

Evaluating Information (Te Ara Canterbury) 

It is important to identify Good information from Bad information

The video will help you evaluate the information you come across

  Evaluating Information (Pdf)   

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism 

• Academic integrity and academic misconduct

Academic integrity means being honest in your studies and assessments. Academic integrity is informed by the values of honesty, trust, responsibility, fairness, respect, and courage.

• Plagiarism at Otago 

In New Zealand, high value is placed on full acknowledgment and referencing of the words and ideas of others. If you want to use information that you find elsewhere you must acknowledge where it came from.

• How to avoid plagiarism (Massey University) 

This interactive online tutorial will help you learn what plagiarism is, why and how students get in trouble for it and how to use ideas or quotes from your research effectively.

If you follow a citation style correctly, you will avoid plagiarism and help your reader find your information sources. 

• APA  | University of Canterbury 
• Harvard | Auckland University 
• Chicago | AUT University 
• MLA  | Massey University (Interactive) 

                        Citing Social Media 

APA & MLA  (Georgia State) 

Chicago  (Carleton) 

Harvard  (Bournemouth) 

How to Cite a Podcast (MLA, APA, Chicago etc) 

These books can help you when you are working on written assignments for art history and theory.

Mind Mapping Apps - Individuals & Teams 

  Coggle - with this you'll see the central node of a new mind map, with a plus sign to get started adding new nodes and ideas 

  MindMeister - this tool includes keyboard shortcuts, embeds live videos, adds team members' upvotes, downvotes & leave comments. 

  Scapple - start with an idea, work "backwards" to find the main idea. Individual nodes will connect by dragging and dropping. 

  Stormboard - uses sticky notes and index cards, group your notes on different parts of the screen to represent connections. 

   SimpleMind - click on it to change it to whatever idea you're mind-mapping,  click on plus icons to create new branches and nodes. 

Digital Tools for Archival Research 

   Illinois Libguide  (Digital Tools) 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Māori Font

  Te Reo (at Otago)                   

Qualitative data analysis software

   NVivo is for researchers to combine coding with qualitative linking, shaping, searching, and modelling.

NVivo from the University of Canterbury  (What is NVivo)  

NVivo help screen 

Zoom - Host Tips

Zoom -  Attendee 

Zoom - Recoding sessions 

Exam Prep Regulations Otago University

  Preparing for and sitting exams 

Exam Prep Resources 

  Take home exams, writing essays in exams, open book exams etc...

There is software available to help you to keep track of all of the information that you find and ensure that your citations are formatted correctly

Managing Your References - Introduction (Citation Library) 

• References -  Introduction 

Know which reference manager you are looking for?  Use the following links to quickly navigate to their tabs in this guide:

• Endnote 
• Endnote videos 

EndNote is software used to manage bibliographic citations. It can be used to organise references, cite them in papers, and automatically generate bibliographies - in the citation style of your choice. 

• Zotero

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.

• Mendeley

Mendeley is a free reference manager that can help you store, organize, note, share and cite references and research data.