At Athabasca University (AU), APA 7th edition and MLA are the citation styles most students meet. AU Library names them as its two most used styles, psychology papers must follow APA 7, and the nursing syllabi we read require the current APA manual. This AU citation guide sets out what AU's own pages add: study guides, course packs and Brightspace posts, the AU title page, and where AU's pages disagree with each other.
EdCitation is not affiliated with Athabasca University; this follows its public library guide, checked on 2 October 2026. We read each rule here that day in AU Library's citation guides, the Write Site's pages and AU's open course pages.
EdCitation publishes this guide. Its free Cite a source takes each APA 7 or MLA 9 entry from the publisher's record, and Verify references then tests the whole list; we ran both on AU's own examples and quote the results below, faults and all.
Which citation style does Athabasca University use?
APA 7th edition or MLA, whichever your course sets. Athabasca University Library (2026g) calls them the two most widely used styles at AU and tells anyone unsure to ask their instructor or tutor. The Write Site (2025) links AU guides for APA, MLA, Chicago, CSE and IEEE, and names AAA, ACS, ASA and SAA as other styles.
| Course or subject | Style AU's pages name | Page it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | APA 7th edition, required | Psychology APA Style (7th Ed.) Tutorial |
| Nursing | The current APA manual | NURS 250 and other syllabi |
| Humanities, especially English | MLA; the Write Site teaches MLA 9 | MLA Guide; The Basics of Documentation |
| History | Chicago notes and bibliography | Chicago/Turabian; Writing in the disciplines |
| Philosophy, where AU's page files it | Chicago author-date | Chicago/Turabian |
| Sciences, biology among them | CSE | CSE |
| Computer science | IEEE | IEEE |
| Sociology | ASA | Writing in the disciplines |
| Anthropology | AAA, which now follows Chicago author-date | Other Citation Styles |
| Canadian legal materials | McGill Guide, 10th edition | Legal Citation (McGill) |
| Any APA 7, MLA 9 or IEEE assignment | Built entry by entry in Cite a source, no account needed | EdCitation |
Howorko (2021a) makes APA 7 a requirement for psychology papers, and Faculty of Health Disciplines (2026) requires every NURS 250 assignment to follow the current APA manual.
EdCitation builds six styles only: from that table, APA 7, MLA 9, IEEE and Chicago 18 author-date, plus Harvard and Vancouver. CSE, ASA, ACS, SAA, the McGill Guide and Chicago's footnotes are outside what it builds, so write those from the guides AU links; for history footnotes, see our guide to Chicago in history and the humanities.
Which wins: AU's guide or your tutor?
Your course. Athabasca University Library (2026d) can suggest examples, but leaves the responsibility with the student and points to the tutor.
How do you cite AU course materials in APA?
By what each one is, with Athabasca University as author when no person is named. Violini (2025), a Write Site writing coach, set out the patterns, and Athabasca University Library (2026e) adds slides and open textbooks.
Study guides and course packs
A study guide with no named author takes the university's name, the year printed on it (or the current year if none is), the guide's name in italics and [Study guide]. AU's example names it by course code:
Athabasca University. (2024). EDDE 801 [Study guide]. URL
A course pack is treated as an anthology edited by your instructor: the reading's author, year and title, then In, the instructor as editor (Ed.), the course number and title in italics, the pages, Athabasca University, and the original publication in parentheses after "Reprinted from".
Slides, lecture notes and Brightspace posts
Lecture notes, modules, handouts and slides take the author (or Athabasca University), the year, the title in italics, a description such as [Lecture Notes] or [PowerPoint], and the address. Slides on Brightspace name the site and give its address, the login page if it needs one; if readers cannot reach them, cite a personal communication instead. A forum post gives the writer's handle in square brackets and the exact date:
Singh, G. [gsingh1]. (2024, December 2). Safe injection sites in the Downtown Eastside [Online forum post]. Brightspace. URL
E-books and open textbooks
Cite an online course text as you would the print book. AU's open-textbook examples end with a retrieval date ("Retrieved October 3, 2025, from" and the address). Without page numbers, the Write Site suggests paragraph numbers, then a heading or section name; the Library rules out Kindle location numbers.
Which APA rules does AU's Library guide set?
The ones below, each from the AU page named; the rest is APA 7 as the manual has it.
| Rule | What AU's pages say | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Et al. | From three authors, in every citation: (Singh et al., 2023) | In-text Citations; The Basics of Documentation |
| Page numbers | p. or pp.; needed for quotations, optional for paraphrase | In-text Citations |
| Pages out of order | In the order your sentence uses them: (McShane et al., 2021, pp. 25, 18) | In-text Citations |
| Secondary sources | "as cited in"; the list holds only the source you read | In-text Citations |
| Books | No place of publication; edition in parentheses; an e-book's DOI if it has one | Books/eBooks |
| Web pages | Never the copyright date; n.d. when no posted or updated date | Webpages |
| Building the entries | Start in Cite a source; the fixes are listed further down | EdCitation |
The AU title page
AU's sample student title page (Howorko, 2021b) runs: the title, your name, your AU ID number, your department and Athabasca University, the course number and name, your tutor's name, and the date of submission. AU student papers need no running head, affiliation line or author note, and no abstract unless the course asks. The rest of the page is in our APA 7 paper format guide.
Where do AU's own pages disagree?
In four places. Follow your tutor; failing that, the Library's current APA Guide.
- How many authors. The Library's articles page cuts the list from 20 authors. The Write Site (n.d.) gives APA 7's own rule: all names up to 20; from 21 names on, the first 19, an ellipsis, then the final author. Follow that one.
- E-book labels. The Write Site adds [eBook] after the title; the Library's books page uses one form for print and e-books and leaves the format out.
- Retrieval dates. The open-textbook examples carry one; The Basics of Documentation says APA 7 no longer needs "Retrieved from", and the Library keeps it only where a page's content is not static.
- Old editions. The Basics of Documentation still carries APA 6 and Chicago 17 appendices beside APA 7, and the Write Site's psychology link points to the APA 6 tutorial (Write Site, 2024). Use APA 7.
What does an AU APA reference list look like?
Like this: seven sources in AU's APA 7 form, beneath a bold, centred "References" heading that opens a new page, double-spaced with a hanging indent. Alcoff, the Canadian Nurses Association, Hall and the Write Site slides are AU's own examples (the slides at the address that loads; AU's printed one, with "writesite", did not); Milloy is AU's with the book's DOI added; the study guide keeps AU's "URL" for your course page's address.
Alcoff, L. M. (2022). Extractivist epistemologies. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 5(1), Article 2127231. https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2022.2127231
Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2011). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(3), 80–97. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v12i3.890
Athabasca University. (2024). EDDE 801 [Study guide]. URL
Canadian Nurses Association. (2025). Code of ethics for nurses. https://www.cna-aiic.ca/en/nursing/regulated-nursing-in-canada/nursing-ethics/2025-coe
Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278–1296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225
Milloy, J. S. (2017). A national crime: The Canadian government and the residential school system (2nd ed.). University of Manitoba Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780887555213
The Write Site. (n.d.). Common sentence errors [PDF]. Athabasca University. https://www.athabascau.ca/write-site/_documents/slides/commonerrors_slides_2024-04.pdf
In the text: (Alcoff, 2022); Anderson and Dron (2011), or (Anderson & Dron, 2011); (Athabasca University, 2024); (Canadian Nurses Association [CNA], 2025), then (CNA, 2025); (Hall, 2019); (Milloy, 2017); (The Write Site, n.d.).
Which EdCitation style fits AU, and what needs fixing by hand?
APA 7. EdCitation's APA 7 style follows the seventh edition, so most entries need nothing. Our edits, made on 2 October 2026:
| EdCitation printed | Change to, for AU |
|---|---|
| Hall and Alcoff, by DOI | Nothing: identical to AU's examples |
| Anderson and Dron: 12(3), 80. | 12(3), 80–97, as the article's own page shows |
| Milloy, J. S., & McCallum, M. J. L. (2017), no edition | Milloy, J. S. (2017), with (2nd ed.) after the title |
| Code of ethics 2025. (n.d.). Canadian Nurses Association. Retrieved October 2, 2026, from … | The association, the code's title and 2025 typed into the form, which rebuilt AU's entry |
| "Retrieved [date], from" on an undated page | Deleted, unless the page's content changes |
| A PDF, study guide, course pack or forum post | Written by hand from AU's patterns |
How did EdCitation's free tools handle AU's sources?
EdCitation is the best tool for an AU reference list, and AU's own FAQ shows why: it tells students to "always double check any auto-generated citations for accuracy", because citations generated by databases often get capitals and punctuation wrong. EdCitation takes every reference from the publisher's record instead of composing it, so the details are the record's, not a guess. It sets the entry in APA 7, MLA 9 or four other styles and checks each source for retraction, free and without an account. It writes no part of a student's paper: the essay, the discussion post and every sentence in them remain the student's own, and EdCitation keeps the sources beneath them sound. The runs below date from 2 October 2026; plain text loses their italics.
Cite a source on five sources
AU's Hall example, 10.1177/0265407518761225, came back exactly as AU prints it:
Hall, J. A. (2019). How many hours does it take to make a friend? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 36(4), 1278–1296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407518761225
The Alcoff DOI did the same, "Article 2127231" included. No retraction was reported for any source.
For 10.19173/irrodl.v12i3.890 it gave "Anderson, T., & Dron, J. (2011). Three generations of distance education pedagogy. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 12(3), 80. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v12i3.890". Crossref's record holds the first page alone, so the last goes in by hand.
For the Milloy book, by its DOI 10.1515/9780887555213: "Milloy, J. S., & McCallum, M. J. L. (2017). A national crime: The Canadian government and the residential school system. University of Manitoba Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780887555213". The record lists McCallum as an author; Penn State University Libraries (n.d.) catalogues her as the foreword's writer, which is why AU's entry names Milloy alone.
The nurses' code page gave no author or date, so APA began with the title. With the association entered as an organisation, the code's title and 2025, APA returned the worked example's entry.
AU's Write Site slides, a PDF, returned: "That address opens a PDF or another file, which is not read here. Paste the document's DOI or ISBN, or cite the web page it is linked from and add the file's address by hand."
Verify references on AU's own examples
We gave Verify references eight of AU's entries, copied as AU prints them. Five came back verified, two "check this" and one not found:
- Hall, Ibacache and colleagues, and Usuelli and colleagues: verified, "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." AU's Usuelli entry still has two slips to fix by hand, "Essawy, B E." and "Fiorina., P."
- Bonnie (1992), the psychology tutorial's print example: verified, "Title, year and first author match a published record." The record holds 10.1002/bsl.2370100303; add it.
- The nurses' association's Racism in health care page: verified, "The page is at this address, and its title matches."
- Milloy (2017): "check this", "The publisher's record also names McCallum, who is not in your entry. Check the authors." The catalogue settles it: she wrote the foreword.
- AU's microbiome lecture PDF, with the address AU prints, cut short: "check this", "The address works, but the page there has a different title. Check it is the page meant."
- Albertson (2000), AU's no-DOI article example: not found, "No publisher's or registry's record matches this reference." Copy its pattern; do not cite it.
Had a page refused to load, EdCitation would have said "could not check", never "not found". None of this costs anything. Once the whole paper exists, the Pro plan ($8 a month) brings References from a file, which ties each in-text citation to its entry, and Mechanics QA, which tests the formatting against the APA 7 student paper (AU's title page lines are AU's own, so check those by eye). The Max plan ($24 a month) adds Theoretics QA: the paper read against its own assignment, with nothing rewritten. See pricing; no plan promises a grade.
How do you put together an AU reference list?
- Look up the style your syllabus or assignment names; the free Check your paper from EdCitation turns an assignment's instructions into a checklist that names it.
- Search AU Library, or Find sources, which searches about 300 million published works.
- Give Cite a source each DOI, ISBN or web address, and take the APA 7 or MLA 9 entry it builds.
- Make the changes in the table: last pages, foreword writers listed as authors, editions, web page authors and dates.
- Write study guides, course packs, slides and forum posts from AU's patterns.
- Paste the finished list into Verify references; resolve each "check this" before you hand in.
- Set out the page: a bold, centred "References" heading on a fresh page, double spacing, alphabetical order, hanging indent, and AU's title page with your AU ID.
Quick questions
Does Athabasca University use APA or MLA?
Both. AU Library names them as its two most widely used styles; psychology requires APA 7, nursing the current APA manual, and the humanities, English above all, use MLA.
How do I cite an AU study guide in APA?
AU's name as author when no person is credited, the year printed (or the current year), the guide's name in italics, [Study guide] and the address.
When does et al. start in APA at AU?
At three authors. AU's in-text page and The Basics of Documentation use et al. from the first citation on.
Can EdCitation build CSE, ASA or McGill Guide citations for AU courses?
No. Those three sit outside the six styles EdCitation's Cite a source offers (APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver), so write them by hand from the guides AU links.
References
- Athabasca University Library. (2026a). Articles [APA guide]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=745215&p=5393832
- Athabasca University Library. (2026b). Books/eBooks [APA guide]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=745215&p=5393817
- Athabasca University Library. (2026c). Chicago/Turabian [Guide to citation style]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/citationguide/chicago
- Athabasca University Library. (2026d). Citation FAQs [Guide to citation style]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/citationguide/faqs
- Athabasca University Library. (2026e). Course materials & OER [APA guide]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=745215&p=5394479
- Athabasca University Library. (2026f). CSE [Guide to citation style]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=721653&p=5369904
- Athabasca University Library. (2026g). Getting started [Guide to citation style]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/citationguide
- Athabasca University Library. (2026h). IEEE [Guide to citation style]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=721653&p=5369905
- Athabasca University Library. (2026i). In-text citations, quoting & paraphrasing [APA guide]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=745215&p=5393809
- Athabasca University Library. (2026j). Legal citation (McGill) [Guide to citation style]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=721653&p=5393039
- Athabasca University Library. (2026k). Other citation styles [Guide to citation style]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/citationguide/othercitationstyles
- Athabasca University Library. (2026l). Webpages [APA guide]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=745215&p=5394459
- Athabasca University Library. (2026m). What is MLA citation? [MLA guide]. https://libguides.athabascau.ca/c.php?g=746135&p=5403765
- Faculty of Health Disciplines. (2026). NURS 250: Exploration of professional nursing practice [Course syllabus]. Athabasca University. https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/nurs/nurs250.html
- Howorko, A. (2021a). Psychology APA style (7th ed.) tutorial. Centre for Social Sciences, Athabasca University. https://psych.athabascau.ca/open/apa7/
- Howorko, A. (2021b). APA 7th edition standards [Tutorial page]. Centre for Social Sciences, Athabasca University. https://psych.athabascau.ca/open/apa7/standards.php
- Penn State University Libraries. (n.d.). A national crime: The Canadian government and the residential school system, 1879 to 1986 [Catalogue record]. https://catalog.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/28954215
- Violini, C. (2025, April 1). How to cite course materials in APA. Athabasca University News. https://www.athabascau.ca/news/ideas-and-advice/studying-and-learning/how-to-cite-course-materials-in-apa.html
- Write Site. (n.d.). The basics of documentation [PDF]. Athabasca University. https://www.athabascau.ca/write-site/_documents/the-basics-of-documentation.pdf
- Write Site. (2024). Writing in the disciplines. Athabasca University. https://www.athabascau.ca/write-site/academic-writing-resources/writing-disciplines.html
- Write Site. (2025). Citations and references. Athabasca University. https://www.athabascau.ca/write-site/academic-writing-resources/citations-and-references/index.html