Now that you have a sense for how to join a conversation, you may wonder how you should integrate other sources and maintain your voice in your writing. There are a few different ways to use sources in your text.

• One option is to put your sources into conversation with each other. For example, in researching the use of virtual lectures, you found that one scholar's use of assessments in a virtual lecture did not seem to yield the same kinds of benefits as did a virtual lecture on plagiarism, which also included papers, quizzes, and other kinds of assignments. An effective way to include these two different findings in your dissertation is to put the two researchers into conversation. As an example, you might write something like this:

  Smeaton (n.d.) integrated various assessments into the virtual lecture, and while the learners did not find the assessments too demanding, they did not demonstrate an increased understanding of the material (p. 49). However, Guertin (2005) discovered a direct link between the learners' comprehension of plagiarism and the use of a variety of interactive assignments (p. 136).

  In this example, the use of however signals to the reader that the second scholar has a slightly different perspective than the first scholar, and in this way, you have created a conversation between Smeaton and Guertin about the use of assignments and assessments in conjunction with virtual lectures.


• Putting sources into conversation with each other is not the only way to integrate sources into your writing. Another common method is to use sources as evidence to support your own main points. Let us say that in your dissertation is a section discussing how designing collaborative learning assignments for the virtual lecture would provide a richer learning experience for learners. A passage where you use sources as evidence might look like this:

  Without collaborative learning assignments, virtual lectures can be very effective. But combining the two can provide an even more optimal learning environment for learners. Guertin (2005, p. 136) and Smeaton (n.d., p. 49) have both shown that virtual lectures can successfully replace the traditional lecture. At the same time, Gokhale (1995, p. 261) and Davis (1993, p. 16) have shown conclusively that with collaborative learning, learners learn better to think critically and they retain information more readily.

  You only mention each source once early in this section, keeping the focus on your ideas rather than on the sources themselves.

  Thus, if collaborative learning is combined with virtual lectures - using group work to respond to certain parts of a lecture, for example - the learners' increased engagement with the material, along with their improved critical thinking and retention of material, could result in better-prepared learners.

In this passage, rather than leading with your sources and making them central, you have used them selectively as evidence to support your assertion that collaborative learning and virtual lectures could be a winning combination. In