Most first-year students meet referencing as a rule before they meet it as a habit of scholarship. The ACRL Framework for Information Literacy says novice learners often first meet intellectual property "through rules of citation or warnings about plagiarism" (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016). A session that opens with the rules tends to close with them.
This guide, published by EdCitation for lecturers, librarians and writing-centre staff, gives a 50-minute session plan for a first-year class: timings, activities, how to talk about AI tools and invented references, and how to assess it. The plan is ours, built from library and writing-centre practice read at source on 27 September 2026, from the ACRL and SCONUL frameworks to Sheffield Hallam, Nottingham Trent and UW–Madison teaching materials.
The spot-the-error activity uses a five-reference list with one wrong year and one invented source, which we ran through EdCitation's free Verify references. What came back is quoted word for word, ready for class.
How do I teach referencing to first-year students in 50 minutes?
Teach why before how: purpose, then judging sources, then the parts of a reference, then paraphrase, then checking, with a short task at the end. The table is the whole session plan.
| Time | Activity | Aim | Where the idea comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 to 5 min | Why do scholars cite? | Name citing as joining a conversation | Sheffield Hallam's paired discussion; ACRL's "Scholarship as Conversation" |
| 5 to 15 min | Which source would you cite? | Judge a news story, a textbook and a journal article on one claim | Williams et al. (2014); SCONUL's Evaluate pillar; CSU Chico's CRAAP questions |
| 15 to 23 min | Build the reference | Name every part of a book and an article reference | Williams et al. (2014), referencing frames; SCONUL's Gather pillar |
| 23 to 33 min | Look away, then write | Paraphrase without patchwriting, and cite it | UW–Madison Writing Across the Curriculum |
| 33 to 45 min | Spot the error | Find a wrong year and an invented source, then check the list in EdCitation's Verify references | Ours, with the run below |
| 45 to 50 min | Exit task | One full reference and one cited paraphrase, handed in | Sheffield Hallam's post-session activity; ours |
Sheffield Hallam's own one-hour lesson plan, written for level 4 and level 7 students new to referencing, gives 12 minutes to why referencing matters and 15 to APA basics (Sheffield Hallam University Library, 2026). Ours gives more time to practice, for a reason Williams et al. (2014) give: errors persisted into the final first-year essay after tutorials on layout, so they taught concepts first and conventions after.
What to prepare
- The course's style, named, on a one-page handout. EdCitation's free Check your paper reads the module's brief into a checklist, style and source rules included, each with the sentence it came from.
- One claim and three printed sources: a news story, a textbook page and the journal article behind both.
- Reference frames: a book and an article reference printed large, punctuation in place, words cut out and put in an envelope.
- A paraphrase passage from the module's own reading, the worksheet below, a device per pair, and exit slips.
What do library frameworks say a referencing session should cover?
Both major frameworks put citing inside a larger skill, judging information and using it honestly.
The ACRL Framework and SCONUL's Seven Pillars
The Association of College and Research Libraries adopted its Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in January 2016. Of its six frames, three fit this session: "Information Has Value" expects learners to credit others through attribution and citation; "Scholarship as Conversation" expects them to cite the work their own builds on; and "Authority Is Constructed and Contextual" asks them to see that they are developing an authoritative voice of their own, with a duty of accuracy (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2016).
SCONUL's 2011 core model names seven pillars: identify, scope, plan, gather, evaluate, manage and present (Bent & Stubbings, 2011). Gather includes knowing the elements of a citation; Evaluate, why citation matters; Manage, citing sources in a suitable style and meeting standards of academic integrity. A learner, it adds, can slip down a pillar as well as climb it.
Learning outcomes (ours)
By the end, each student can say why scholars cite, choose the stronger of several sources for a claim, name every part of a reference in the course's style, paraphrase and cite without copying phrasing, and check a reference against its published record.
How do I run each activity?
Keep each to its time; the spot-the-error activity needs its full twelve minutes.
Why do scholars cite? (5 minutes)
Pairs write three reasons. Most will say "to avoid plagiarism"; collect the rest, such as showing where evidence comes from and crediting someone's work. End on the ACRL idea that a reference is how a student joins scholarship.
Which source would you cite? (10 minutes)
Groups decide which source they would cite, and what each reveals about its evidence. Williams et al. (2014) ran this with newspaper articles and used it to introduce peer review, which students said they had not met before university.
CSU Chico's CRAAP test supplies questions on currency, relevance, authority, accuracy and purpose (Meriam Library, 2010). Know its limit: many of its questions are answered from the page itself, while skilled checkers leave the page and look the source up, the method our lesson on teaching students to verify sources teaches. Let CRAAP open the discussion and the article's record settle it.
For a later session, Williams et al. describe "Objectology": one student examines a hidden object and "publishes" an account, a second summarises it in a "textbook", and a third writes an essay from the textbook alone. When the object is revealed, the summary has drifted: a vivid lesson in secondary citing.
Build the reference (8 minutes)
Groups rebuild a book and an article reference from the cut-up words, using clues such as italics to tell which part belongs where, as in Williams et al.'s third activity. Then give the article's DOI to EdCitation's free Cite a source on the projector, in the course's style, and compare its entry with theirs, part by part.
Look away, then write (10 minutes)
The UW–Madison handout shows one passage four ways: the original, a word-for-word copy, a patchwork paraphrase and a legitimate one (University of Wisconsin–Madison Writing Across the Curriculum, 2017). The patchwork mixes the author's phrases with the student's, unquoted, so it plagiarises even though it cites. The legitimate version keeps only the field's shared terms. Its advice: understand the passage, then "look away from the source; then write".
Students paraphrase the module passage that way, with a citation, then swap; a neighbour underlines any lifted phrase. Paraphrase, quote or summarise makes a good handout.
What does the spot-the-error list look like, and what did Verify references return?
Pairs have ten minutes to mark each entry real and correct, real with a wrong detail, or invented, noting what they opened. Then the list goes into Verify references on the projector. Print the worksheet without the key.
- Booth, W. C., Colomb, G. G., Williams, J. M., Bizup, J., & FitzGerald, W. T. (2016). The craft of research (4th ed.). University of Chicago Press.
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students' learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100612453266
- Karpicke, J. D., & Blunt, J. R. (2015). Retrieval practice in first-year seminars: A classroom replication. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(2), 311–324.
- Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1159–1168. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614524581
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2007). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255.
The key. Entries 1, 2 and 4 are correct. Entry 5 has a wrong year: it was published in 2006. Entry 3 was invented for this exercise, from real authors, a real journal and a title nobody wrote; searched in Crossref on 27 September 2026, nothing close came back. Never let an invented entry leave the room unlabelled.
What came back
We ran the list on 27 September 2026. Verdicts and reasons, exactly as returned:
| No. | Verdict | Reason, as returned |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Verified | "Title, year and first author match a published record." |
| 2 | Verified | "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." |
| 3 | Doubtful ("check this") | "The closest published record differs in its title. Check it is the one meant, and copy the title from it." |
| 4 | Verified | "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." |
| 5 | Doubtful ("check this") | "The work was published in 2006, not 2007; the record has no date in 2007." |
Totals: 3 verified, 2 doubtful, 0 not found, 0 retracted, 0 unchecked.
What to draw out
- The wrong year was caught, with the right one. The reference built from the record also reads "Roediger, H. L., III", a suffix the worksheet dropped.
- The invented paper was not verified. Entry 3 pointed to the closest record found, a 2014 PsycEXTRA item by Blunt and co-authors titled "Retrieval practice with children in the classroom". The class does what the reason asks: open the record, compare the titles, see that they share only a few words, and conclude that the paper on the worksheet does not exist.
- "Check this" is a prompt to look. A wrong year and a missing paper both came back doubtful; only the record tells them apart.
How should I talk about AI tools and fabricated references?
As a checking skill, openly and without accusation, alongside the module's own rule on AI. The Russell Group's principles commit its universities to helping students become AI-literate, and describe students asking about specific uses "without fear of penalisation" (Russell Group, 2023).
Say three things. A chatbot asked for sources can write references that look right and point at nothing; entry 3 was built the way those usually are, and why AI tools invent references explains the mechanism. A wrong detail and an invented source are different problems, as entries 5 and 3 show. And say what your module allows and how to declare it, using how to declare AI use in an assignment.
That is why EdCitation suits teaching academic integrity to first year students: it finds, cites and verifies sources from the publisher's record and never writes any part of anyone's work.
What mistakes do first-year students make with referencing?
Published studies find wrong details in entries, the wrong kind of source, and sources used a sentence at a time, as what studies say about student referencing mistakes sets out. This plan's sources add four:
- Never having been taught. Williams et al. (2014) cite a UK survey in which three in four first-year students reported no earlier teaching on referencing; one of their students called it "the strangest thing I had to learn".
- Citing the source they did not read, such as a study met only in a textbook. Objectology is the fix.
- Patchwriting: borrowed phrases, unquoted, beside a citation.
- Uncited paraphrase. Sheffield Hallam gives "when to reference" its own slot for this reason.
How do I assess a first-year referencing session?
Assess a task that shows the skill, then look for it again in the first assignment. Williams et al. (2014) are candid: their only evaluation was a module survey, where 78% agreed the tutorials helped their essay writing, and they note such answers do not show students applied anything.
Stronger evidence comes from a trial. Dee and Jacob (2012) randomly assigned 28 undergraduate courses at a selective US institution, 1,259 papers in all, to require an online plagiarism tutorial or not: 18 screens of definitions and side-by-side examples, then a nine-question quiz with feedback. In the working-paper version we read, it cut plagiarism by roughly two percentage points, about two-thirds, through knowledge rather than fear of detection, the authors' survey suggested.
A simple assessment routine
- Mark the exit task on three points: a complete reference in the course's style; a cited paraphrase; no copied phrase.
- Return feedback next session with one anonymised good example.
- Sample reference lists in the first assignment in EdCitation's Verify references; marking reference lists faster and marking APA formatting faster cover the routine.
- Check a doubtful entry by hand before acting. How to spot fabricated references in student work sets out a fair process.
- Run a shorter second session before the next assignment.
Which EdCitation tools fit a first-year referencing session?
For the checking part, Verify references is the best tool for the job, because it does what the session teaches: it looks every entry up in the publisher's record and never writes one. It caught the wrong year above and would not verify the invented paper. It is free with no account, takes a pasted list or a whole paper (then matching every in-text citation to the list), flags retracted papers, and labels an entry it could not check "could not check", never "not found".
- Check your paper, free: reads an assignment's instructions into a checklist, each rule with the sentence it came from. Checking the paper against it is Theoretics QA, in Max at $24 a month.
- Cite a source, free: a reference from a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address, in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE or Vancouver, screened for retraction.
- Find sources, free: about 300 million published works.
- A free account keeps reference lists and a reading list, and shares a list or single sources with classmates and colleagues. See a reading list for a whole class.
- References from a file, Pro at $8 a month: every reference checked and every citation matched to the list.
For a department, the Institution licence covers every student, with LMS integration, sign-in, training and one invoice.
Quick questions
How long should a referencing workshop for first-year students be?
Fifty minutes to an hour; Sheffield Hallam's toolkit runs an hour. A short second session before the next assignment does more than a longer first one.
What citation workshop activities work best?
Ones where students do the work: judging sources on one claim, rebuilding a reference, paraphrasing by looking away, and spotting errors in a practice list checked in EdCitation's Verify references.
How do I teach academic integrity without frightening first-year students?
Start with why scholars cite, not penalties; keep talk of AI open; treat a wrong detail and an invented source differently.
Is there a free tool to check a class's references?
Yes. EdCitation's Verify references checks a list or paper against publishers' records, free with no account, and flags retracted papers.
Does EdCitation write any part of students' work?
No. EdCitation finds, cites and verifies sources and reads a brief into a checklist; every word of the essay stays the student's own.
References
- Association of College and Research Libraries. (2016). Framework for information literacy for higher education. American Library Association. https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
- Bent, M., & Stubbings, R. (2011). The SCONUL seven pillars of information literacy: Core model for higher education. SCONUL. https://www.sconul.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/library-structures-and-strategies/resources-and-links/
- Dee, T. S., & Jacob, B. A. (2012). Rational ignorance in education: A field experiment in student plagiarism. Journal of Human Resources, 47(2), 397–434. https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.47.2.397
- Meriam Library. (2010). Evaluating information: Applying the CRAAP test. California State University, Chico. https://library.csuchico.edu/sites/default/files/craap-test.pdf
- Russell Group. (2023). Russell Group principles on the use of generative AI tools in education. https://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/policy/policy-briefings/principles-use-generative-ai-tools-education
- Sheffield Hallam University Library. (2026). An introduction to referencing and APA [Referencing toolkit and lesson plan]. https://libguides.shu.ac.uk/reftoolkit
- University of Wisconsin–Madison Writing Across the Curriculum. (2017). Acknowledging, paraphrasing, and quoting sources. https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/wac/acknowledging-paraphrasing-and-quoting-sources/
- Williams, G. J., Emerson, A., Larkin, R. F., & Norman, C. (2014). Four activities to promote student engagement with referencing skills. Psychology Teaching Review, 20(1), 90–95. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1149741.pdf