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Changes to House Style: Anchor Text & Attributions

This post captures changes to our editorial house style following a meeting on Feb. 9, 2018.   Attributions and Credit Lines Attributions in a course might appear in a resources list (at the beginning of the module), in the learning activity that assigns the reading or media (within the module), in a title page (created…

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How to Format Lists

Our style guide formats bulleted or numbered lists with an introductory colon, a capital letter at the beginning of each listed item, and no punctuation at the end (unless the items in the list are complete sentences or they complete the sentence). If the list includes nouns, it might look like: Natural history Natural selection…

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PhD(c)

Kudos to Mona Hall for researching and validating our house style! Ongoing PhD studies are not listed on the Copyright and Credits page of the course guide; therefore, do not include credentials such as: Title (year): Name, PhD(c) Title (year): Name, PhD(candidate) Title (year): Name, PhD(ABD) Title (year): Name, PhD(all but dissertation) See also APA’s  The Misuse…

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Assessment Editing: Which Is/Are True?

The relative pronoun “which” can be singular or plural. Conjugate the verb to match the antecedent (noun or nouns, or noun phrase or phrases) that the pronoun replaces. In a multiple-choice question stem, the antecedent often appears as the answer (or answers) to the question. This means we conjugate the verb depending on the number…

Dictionary of Canadianisms

Here’s an open, online resource that could be a useful guide for editors (or writers, or students) to verify or to explain Canadian regionalisms or idioms. Dollinger, S. (Chief Editor), & Fee, M. (Associate Editor). (2017). DCHP-2: The dictionary of Canadianisms on historical principles (2nd ed., with the assistance of B. Ford, A. Gaylie, & G. Lim)….

Fairness to All

A few years ago Mona Hall, Danielle Collins, and I collaborated on an infographic about inter-culturalization of the curriculum. Our central question was: How will we create learner-centred courses for culturally and linguistically diverse readers? We found that the university has some excellent guiding policies and resources for educators, but it did take some effort to…

Student Cafe as Interculturalization of the Curriculum

Our online courses often include the Student Cafe, which is an ungraded discussion area intended to encourage peer-to-peer interactions, foster or enhance student engagement, and build a learning community. Sounds great, but I wonder sometimes how many students post to the Student Cafe? Do they find it useful? Open Learning students often start a course at…

Assessment Editing

I recommend this excellent “Assessment Editing” blog post  at the ACES website. Evelyn Mellone and David Pisano are language proficiency test editors at the U.S. Defense Language Institute. They presented a workshop on editing assessments to ACES members, and their PowerPoint notes offer best practices and areas of concern that will be useful for anyone editing…