This is a general guidance on the Faculty of Educations’ requirements for written academic assignments. The Faculty operates with general requirements, as well as specific requirements in the different disciplines and courses. This guidance has a focus on the general requirements. Note that term papers and other assignments that are a part of the course examination may have other specific designs. It is the students’ responsibility to familiarize themselves with these requirements. For more information, visit the course information web site or talk to the lecturer responsible for the course.
The Faculty of Education emphasises the importance of learning and formal academic writing. Thus written academic assignments are an important part of the studies.
These requirements of academic writing include proper use of references and bibliography. Negligence of the formal requirements may negatively affect the grade of the assignment. In more serious cases, the assignment may be rejected on the basis of plagiarism.
There are different technical standards with regards to written assignments. At Department of Educational Research the standards are as follows:
a) The assignment needs to be typed, in the following format: Font size 12 point, spacing 1.5, left and right margins set at 2.5. The pages need to be numerated. In the content list page, numbers are to be given under the different sub-headlines. The number of pages of the paper does not include front page, content list, bibliography and appendix/s.
b) The assignment should be printed double sided.
c) New paragraphs are to be marked by skipping a line, it is not to be marked by indentation.
d) Headlines are to be written from the left margin, not centred. If the headlines are ranged in sub headlines, there should no be more than three levels. The ranking is to be shown by using capital and lower case letters and the decimal number system as in the following example:
3. THEORIES ON LEARNING
3.1. Conditioned theoretical explanations
3.1.1. Classical theory
The spacing between a paragraph and a new heading needs to be triple, and the spacing between heading and new paragraph double.
e) References needs to be given in parenthesis in the text (and not in footnotes). A proper reference is given with the name of the author, publication year and page number/s when necessary (page number/s of the reference is used when giving direct quote/s).
· (Hirst 1987)
· (Myhre 1988:160-162)
· (Handal & Lauv?s 1983:59)
· (Atkinson et.al. 1987:223)
· (Sommerschild 1985)
If the reference has two authors, both names need to be written. If the reference has more than two authors, write the name of the author first mentioned followed by et.al., as shown in the example above. The references used in the text must in addition always be cited in the bibliography. The bibliography needs to be given in alphabetical order at the end of the assignment.
Example of a bibliography:
Book written by author:
Surname, First name (year): Full title of the book. Place where published: Publisher. (Edition, nr)
Cummings, William K. (2003): The Institutions of Education, Oxford: Symposium Books.
Book written by two or three authors:
Surname, first name, name 2 first name surname and name 3 first name surname (year): Full title. Place where published: Publisher. (edition, nr)
Lie, Suzanne Stiver and Lynda Malik (1994): World Yearbook of Education 1994: The gender gap in higher education. London: Kogan Page.
Articles in magazines or encyclopaedias:
Encyclopaedias:
Surname, First name (year): Full title of the article In: Name of editor (ed): Title of encyclopaedia. Place where published: Publisher.
Arnove, Robert F. (2003): Introduction: Reframing comparative education. The dialectic of the global and the local. In: Arnove, Robert F. and Carlos A. Torres (eds.). Comparative education: the dialectic of the global and the local. Lanham, Md : Rowman & Littlefield.
Article in magazine:
Surname, First name (year): Full title of article. In: Title of magazine. Volume/year. Page numbers.
Antikainen, Ari (2006): In Search of the Nordic Model in Education. In: Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, vol. 50, no. 3: 229-243.
Publications with several given authors or no given author:
Full title. If given editor Surname, First name (ed)/ if given authors name 1 Surname, First name, et.al. Place where published: Publisher, year. (Edition, nr)
Introduction to psychology. 9. Ed. Atkinson, Rita L. et.al. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1987
Literature published on the internet:
Author (year): title, complete site address (date when data was collected for use)
Report No. 17 (2006 - 2007) to the Storting (2006): An Information Society for All, Ministry of Government Administraion and Reform. http://www.regjeringen.no/en/ministries/fad/Documents/Government-propositions-and-reports-/Reports-to-the-Storting-white-papers/20062007/Report-No-17-2006---2007-to-the-Storting.html?id=441497 (02.04.2007)
f) Quotes up until five lines can be given directly in the text. The quotes given in the text need to be given in quotation marks. Longer quotes must be given in a separate paragraph, indented and with single spacing. First paragraph after given quote must begin in left margin. You may choose to leave out some words or whole sentences. This is marked by […].Quotes need to be cited in the original language and correctly cited. When quotes are given in another language than English, the quote must be translated. It needs to be stated after the reference to the quote that the translation is your own.
When referring to a specific line of arguments or a specific model from an author, not just general thoughts, you need to give the name of the author and year when published. When citing quotes, figures and/or tables, you have to give the page number where the information was found, e.g. (Myhre 1988:23)
g) Figures, tables etc should be numerated, and given a short explicatory text. The explicatory text needs to be underlined. Text to tables are to be placed before the given table, and text to figures under the given figure.
h) When including notes in the assignment, they can be given as footnotes, or in a list of notes at the end of the paper. If the notes are given at the end of the paper, they need to be placed after the paper yet before the bibliography. They must be numerated throughout the assignment. Only additional text can be given in notes, references used in the assignments needs to be given in parenthesis as shown above.
i) The front page of the assignment must contain following information in given order:
Title of the paper/assignment
What kind of assignment it is, e.g. term paper EDU4100
Your name
The given semester and year
University of Oslo
Faculty of Education
Department of Educational Research
Referencing:
The objective with referencing is:
To make clear to the reader what is the writer of the text/assignments’ own ideas and what ideas and concepts are taken from other authors
Referencing in a manner that makes it easy for the reader to find the source referred to in the bibliography.
When do you need references? When referring to an author’s ideas, thoughts, models etc, you need to show whom it is taken from. Referencing is done both in the text and in a separate bibliography. All literature referred to in the text needs to be listed in the bibliography, in alphabetical order. The bibliography can only consist of literature given as reference in the text, neither more nor less. In the bibliography, you need to give the authors full name, full title of the book, publisher, place where published and year when published. When referring to articles, you need to give the title of the article and information on the book/magazine the article is found. See the following examples.
When referring to literature in the text, you have to give the authors surname and year when published, e.g. (Gundem 1987), (Berger and Luckmann 1975) or (Haagensen et.al. 1990). The latter example is used when there are more than two authors.
There are several ways to do referencing in the text. It can be done directly into the text: “In this line of arguments I refer to Reidar Myhre (1990) who claims that ….. Reidar Myhre (1990) claims that…” etc. Year and alternatively page number/s (when giving direct quote/s) need to be given, either following the author's name or after the given argument. The reference can also be given in parenthesis after the argument/idea/concept of the author is presented, e.g. (Myhre 1990). If you wish to show that several authors/researches support the same argument/idea/concept, it can be listed as followed (Eidheim 1971, Hoem 1978, H?gmo 1989). Note that they are place chronologically, starting with the oldest published reference. If you are referring to an article, you need to give the name of the author of the article, and not the editor of the magazine/book.
You may also start a chapter/section by stating that you will now present the theory developed by the author you are referring to or a line of arguments supported in the literature you are referring to. If presenting a theory, concept or idea from one reference you only need to list it once.
In the cases when you are referring to the same book/article on the same page in your text, you are allowed to use (op.cit) which refers the stated book/article, (loc.cit) which refers the quoted place or (ibid) which refers to the same book/article or the same place.
Secondary sources: It needs to be clearly demonstrated when you are using secondary sources. This implies that you always have to give references to the secondary sources you are referring to in the assignment.
One example : If one author you are reading e.g. Gundem (1987) is referring to another author e.g. Myhre (1981) you can write the following: Gundem (1987:22) is here referring to Myhre (1981), or the following (Gundem 1987:22 referred in/quoted in Myhre 1981), or (Myhre 1981, her quoted in Gundem 1987:22), which implies that you do not have the book/article of Myhre, but support your statements on Myhre’s arguments and/or ideas referred to in Gundem’s book. In the bibliography you can list Gundems work. You are also allowed to list Myhres book, but then need to emphasize that it is referred to from Gundem.
Plagiarism and written assignments:
The University of Oslo has a strict policy on plagiarism. Plagiarism is a breach of the trust to the institution. Plagiarism affects and reflects upon the University, fellow students and your future employers. Serious consequences are taken in incidents of plagiarism.
Plagiarism in written home assignments and exams concerns the cases where the assignment is:
Turned in by another student at a previous examination
Turned in by another person at a previous examination
Written by another person for the student turning in the paper
An assignment giving direct quotations and/or rewritings of “unknown” previously published material or previous written exams without giving proper referencing
Rewritings and quotations from books, articles, previously written assignments and theses without giving proper referencing is also considered plagiarism.
When submitting a written assignment, the candidate must sign a declaration stating the assignment:
Has not been submitted at a previous exam at a different institute/university/university college domestically or in another country.
Does not refer to other author’s ideas and arguments without being referenced.
Does not refer to the candidate’s previous work without referencing that work.
Does include references in the text and bibliography.
Breach of these terms will be considered plagiarism and lead to sanctions from the University of Oslo.
Submitting the assignments electronically:
From 01.01.2005, all master theses are to be submitted electronically in addition to a printed version. Use the university’s system for electronically publishing, DUO.