Introduction to Harvard Referencing

When writing academic work, you're required to complete a large amount of research. This includes reading a lot of information which has been written by others. Researching this information will help you formulate your answers, put forward arguments and formulate discussions. As part of your qualification with ITG Instructor Training, with universities and many other training providers, you will be required to reference your work. This is a method used to prove that you have researched the subject. Referencing means an instance of referring. In essence, it means to refer the reader to the point that you found the information.

Harvard Referencing is the most common system used to reference in the UK. It is approved by most universities and accepted as a form of referencing for academic qualifications. Harvard Referencing allows you to acknowledge the research that you have done, to give credit to the work done by others and to prevent any issues with plagiarism. Referencing can be daunting at first, but once you understand the basic principles, it is an easy and straightforward process. During these few videos, we will explain how to successfully reference your work using the Harvard system, and you will be able to watch the whole process unfold in front of you and this may make it easier for you to understand.

Firstly, we need to understand that there are two stages to the Harvard Referencing process. These are citing and referencing. Citing is the words you include within the body of your argument. These words are simply used to highlight that you are incorporating someone else's work. Referencing is where you include the full details of the source of the information you have used. Referencing is completed in a separate section, usually at the end of your work. You will need to follow the process for both citing and referencing when following the Harvard Referencing system. In the following videos, we are going to look at different ways of referencing your work.