Assignment Details

Blog and Critical Reflection

• Create a blog about a topic of your choice that you feel passionate and excited about.

Blog and Required Blog Components:

• 2 short blog entries related to your topic of choice

  • 3-5 paragraphs per entry.

  • Research isn't required but, if needed, must be cited in APA 7 style appropriately.

• An "about the author" section

  • 3-4 pages double-spaced.

• Appropriate images

  • At a minimum, each blog entry should have an accompanying image or visual (it can be realistic, a drawing, a symbol, etc.).

  • You also need to include an appropriate image for your "about the author" section.

  • In the blog, images should be captioned per APA 7 style standards and a corresponding reference entry should be made in the reference list for your Critical Reflection and within the Blog itself - either by way of a separate tab for references or underneath the blog entry. This webpage has excellent information on referencing images in APA 7 style.

• Design elements

  • Think about design elements and how you can use them to enhance your messaging.

Critical Reflection:

• Approximately 3-4 pages double-spaced not including references, formatted according to APA 7 style guidelines.

• In this section, you will explain your design/visual component choices. How do design and visual elements (including images) reinforce your message? You’ll need to provide proper foundational information (from our readings) and examples from your blog to create a robust discussion.

• You must also examine how you uses ethos, logos, and pathos to establish rapport with your readers. Please use specific examples from your narrative and explain how these examples fit the definitions of ethos, logos, and pathos.

• In this section, you will need to cite our readings and lectures, as well as any research you may do (for example, you may need to look up information about a font. Please use reputable websites). Remember, you need to follow APA 7 style rules for in-text citations and for your References page.

• As this is a personal reflection, you can write in the first person while weaving in your reasons and rationale.

WordPress: Largest blogging platform. 1/3 of the web runs on WordPress

Wix: Easy to use drag and drop interface.

Blogger: First major blogging platform. Log in with your Google account.

Medium: Simplistic and designed for written content. Only two sections - 'posts' and 'about'

"How to Write a Good Blog Post" (WordPress, 2022): https://wordpress.com/go/content-blogging/how-to-write-a-good-blog-post/

"11 Ways to Write Better" (The Minimalists, n.d.): https://www.theminimalists.com/eleven/

Conducting Academic Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save). If you are logged into MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

The Cited by function will forward you find related articles.

Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "climate change"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically does this.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • "climate change" OR "global warming"

• Use truncation to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • ethic* (in this example, the search ethic* will search for records that contain strings such as ethics, ethical, and ethically)

• Use intitle: to limit your search to search terms only appearing in the title of a resource:

  •  intitle:"climate change"

Figure 1

Peter Steiner's Famous 1993 New Yorker Cartoon Illustrating an Issue Central to Information Evaluation

Note. From "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" [Cartoon], by P. Steiner, 1993, Wikimedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg).

Evaluating Information

It is good to find lots of search results, but, in order to use information skilfully, you need to know how to evaluate that information to determine whether a specific resource is appropriate to use in a specific use case (i.e. for a specific assignment).

Evaluate information using RADAR

We can ask the following questions to help us assess each criterion:

Relevance:

• Does this source fit my topic?

• What is this source's intended audience?

  • Is that intended audience appropriate for my use case in this assignment?

Authority:

• Is/are the creator(s) of this source clearly identified or known to us?

• How important is it in this use case to trust the source's creator(s)?

  • If it is important, why should we trust the source's creator(s)?

  • Is the source's creator credentialed or an expert in their field?

Date:

• Is the creation or publication date of this source identified or known to us?

• Is this source too old?

Accuracy:

• Do this source's facts "check out"?

• Does the source have references of its own?

Reason for Creation (take your best guess at this question using judgments from earlier criteria):

• Why was this source made?

• Was this source made to sell a product or service, to inform/educate, to entertain, etc?

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," academic, or "refereed." They all mean essentially the same thing and refer to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published.

Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

7. Is it an actual article? (Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews. Make sure you are looking at an article.)

Citation Help

• Use the "cite" feature in most search tools to get you started with most resources (you will need to review and correct the citation).

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Referencing (2023-2024)

  • MRU Guide to APA Style for Formatting a Paper (2023-2024)

• Academic Success Workshops: APA: An Introduction and APA 2: An Online Escape Room. Academic Success Workshops are 75 minutes long and are offered both in-person and online. Registration is required.

• Appointments: Personalized online or in-person 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist at Student Learning Services located on the 2nd floor of the Riddell Library & Learning Centre.

• Use the Service Desk on the 1st floor of the RLLC for assistance as well as the library chat feature on the library website for quick citation questions.

Image Sources

Photos:

Image Collection

Contains images from Archive Photos, Canadian Press, Motion Picture & Television Archive, and MapQuest as well as a variety of images from the public domain.

ARTstor

ARTstor is a digital library of nearly 1,000,000 images with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes.

Oxford Art Online

Provides access to more than 23,000 subject entries, 21,000 biographies, 40,000 image links and 5,000 images.

Bridgeman Art Library Archive

Founded in 1972, the Bridgeman Art Library works with museums art galleries and artists to make the best art available for reproduction. It represents a large part of the complete collection chosen for its suitability for web use. Over 17000 individual works of art are featured here cross-referenced and linked using Bridgeman's own categories.

LIFE Photo Archive

Search photographs from the LIFE Photo Archive.

Images on the Web:

Flickr Creative Commons

Creative Commons licensing offers an alternative to full copyright. Search the collection of Flickr images that have been offered for use with CC licenses.

Wikimedia Commons

Search freely usable media files.

Pexels

Stock photos

Tineye

Searches for images that match an uploaded file or another image on the web - great for tracing original creators of images, rights holders, or just finding more information.

Google Images Search

Great for finding high-profile images.

Archival Collections:

Glenbow Museum & Archives

Search the photographs collection in the Archives.

Alberta on Record

Search for digital material in the Archives Society of Alberta’s online portal.

Library & Archives Canada Image Search

Search for photographs, drawings, maps and art.

For more information on finding images you can use in your work, consult the Copyright Guide's Copyright friendly image resources section.

Citing Images in your Assignment

Consult MRU's advisory of image citation in APA here.

Images that you refer to in your assignments must always be cited both parenthetically in text and in your reference list.

Images that you reproduce in your assignment must also be cited in-text with a figure number, title, and a figure note.

Example 1

Note: Some instructors (like Professor McLinden) allow you to use a typical APA parenthetical in-text reference (as in Figure 1 above) under your image instead of a more formal figure note.

Reference list entry:

In addition to the in-text citation, this image would also be cited in your reference list like this:

Raphael. (1505-1506). Portrait of a woman [Drawing]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raffaello_Sanzio_-              _Portrait_of_a_Woman_-_WGA18948.jpg

Example 2

Reference list entry:

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). Lava [Photograph]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

If the image has no title, provide a description of the image in your own words, e.g.:

Denali National Park and Preserve. (2013). [Photograph of blue-eyed dog in the snow]. Flickr. https://www.flickr.com/photos/denalinps/8639280606/

Example 3

Reference list entry:

Philadelphia Museum of Art [@philamuseum]. (2019, December 3). “It’s always wonderful to walk in and see my work in a collection where it’s loved, and where people are [Photograph]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/B5oDnnNhOt4/

• In this case there is no title, so we use the first 20 words of the post’s text as its title (according to the direction of APA style).

Example 4: Stock image citations

Reference list entry:

Kanenori. (2022, September 8). [Photograph of the Ōnaruto Bridge in the evening]. Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/landscape-evening-onaruto-bridge-7438429/

Example 5: Integrating your own images

Reference list entry:

My own supplied image does not need a reference list entry in APA style.