A graduate student in adult education
Source text:
According to Sheridan (1999), virtual presence is a theoretical concept intended to describe the phenomenon wherein an individual “feels herself to be present at a location which is synthetic”; that is, created only by a computer.
Source:
Barab, S. A., Scott, B., Siyahhan, S., Goldstone, R., Ingra-Goble, A., Zuiker, J., Warren, S. (2009). Transformational Play as a Curricular Scaffold: Using Videogames to Support Science Education. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 18(4), 305–320.
Writer’s text:
The avatars are able to walk, run, fly, and even teleport themselves to entirely new virtual environments, inducing, what may be called “virtual presence” – a theoretical concept describing the phenomenon of presence in a synthetic environment (Sheridan, 1999, cited in Barab, Scott, Siyahhan, Goldstone, Ingram-Goble, Zuiker & Warren, 2009, p. 306).
Writer’s comment:
I decided to quote [it], because I wanted to draw attention to that.
It is very good to quote it, because you have the person who said it. However, your use of secondary source citation is not appropriate, sometimes it is challenging to find the original source. If that is the case, it is important to cite the indirect source properly.
If Sheridan’s work is cited in Barab and you did not read Sheridan’s work, list the secondary reference in the reference list. Because in text citations correspond to the reference list, cite only the secondary source (Barab et al.) in parentheses, and acknowledge the original author in the sentence itself.
Also, if there are 6 or more authors that created the article you are referencing, simply provide the last name of the first author with “et al.” from the first citation to the last, the in-line citation should like this:
(as cited in Barab et al., 2009, p.306) (A Master’s student in Education)
The student did acknowledge the source in the text and followed APA guidelines in doing so. If this is the student’s first reference to this article written by multiple authors, it is indeed necessary to cite all authors; however, if reference to the same article occurred before, it is enough to write the surname of the first author followed by et al. and the year and page number. As for the use of quotation marks, the student quotes a specific term used by an author. Being a key term, I would italicize it rather than put it between quotation marks. Also, I would change the phrasing slightly as there seem to be too many similarities between the source text and the student’s text.
I noticed a small inconsistency in the name of the 5th author. Is it Ingra-Goble or Ingram-Goble?
In the reference list, only the first word of the title and the word that comes after the colon in the title should be capitalized. Also, the title of the journal and the volume number should be italicized, and between the names of the last two authors there should be the symbol &. In addition, if there is a doi, it should be provided.
I was wondering if a key term becomes part of common usage, do we need to italicize it and cite the author(s) who coined the term? (A Master’s student in Education)
Good eye on the Ingra(m)-Goble! and great question about how to cite coined terms! (A graduate in Education)