How to Cite Course Materials and LMS Content

Almost everything inside a learning management system is unpublished. A Canvas module page, a Moodle lecture recording, a Blackboard announcement or a PDF handout exists for one cohort on one unit, and the link in your reference will not open for anyone outside it. That is why several university guides tell you to cite something else — the textbook chapter or the paper your lecturer drew on — and why, when you do cite the material itself, your reference is doing a narrower job: identifying the item for a marker who already has access.

Because this material is inherently private, the entries below are of two kinds only. Where a style authority or a university library publishes its own worked example, that example is quoted and attributed. Everywhere else you will see a bracketed template to fill in. Nothing here is a made-up lecturer, unit or link.

What to Collect

• The author: the lecturer, the teaching team, or the faculty or school
• The title of the item, as it appears in the LMS
• The unit or course code and its title
• The format: lecture recording, slides, module page, handout, discussion post
• The platform: Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, or the institution's own name for it
• The institution
• The date the item was delivered, posted or last updated
• The URL inside the LMS, and the date you accessed it

Before You Cite It At All

Two published rules are worth reading first.

The University of Sheffield's Harvard guide, under "Lecture notes, lecture recordings, handouts and other unpublished teaching materials", states:

Citing informal or unpublished materials, such as handouts, lecture recordings and lecture notes, is not generally recommended. Instead you should look to cite a primary source (such as a textbook or journal article) which describes or summarises the idea you are referring to. You may wish to ask your lecturer for recommended reading.

The MLA Style Center, answering "Should I cite notes I took on a lecture or other type of presentation?", states that you should not cite your notes and should cite the presentation itself instead. Its own worked example of citing a presentation you attended live:

And the University of Queensland's Vancouver (AMA) guide adds a practical warning on its lecture-materials page: check whether it is appropriate for you to reference lecture materials, because some lecturers do not permit it.

Quick Reference by Major Style

APA (7th Edition)

APA's Common Reference Examples handout publishes one classroom example, under "PowerPoint From a Classroom Website". This is APA's own, verbatim, and note that its URL is a login page:

The University of Queensland Library's APA 7th guide publishes three templates for this family of sources. All three are UQ's, verbatim:

Filled in as a template for your own material:

In-text: ([Lecturer Surname], [Year])

For a reading in a unit reader, Murdoch University's APA guide publishes a form that keeps the original publication first. Its example, verbatim:

MLA (9th Edition)

MLA publishes no template for LMS content, and its stated position, above, is to cite the presentation or the underlying source rather than your notes. Where the item itself is genuinely the source — a module page your lecturer wrote, for instance — follow the MLA template of core elements, which is MLA's own stated approach for source types it has not covered separately:

In-text: ([Lecturer Surname])

Chicago (18th Edition)

The free Chicago Citation Quick Guide has no course-materials entry. Murdoch University's Chicago author-date guide does, under "Course Materials", and both of the following are Murdoch's own published examples, quoted as its guide prints them:

Murdoch's Readers/Study Guides entry, also verbatim, shows the reprint pattern:

As a template for your own material:

Harvard (Cite Them Right)

Sheffield's guidance is to avoid citing this material where you can. The University of York Library does publish a VLE entry, and this is York's own example, verbatim:

As a template:

In-text: ([Author or team], [Year])

IEEE

The IEEE Reference Guide has a section headed "Course", with two forms. Both templates and both examples below are IEEE's own, verbatim:

Note that IEEE's course form puts the university, not the lecturer, in the author position.

Vancouver / AMA

The University of Queensland Library's Vancouver (AMA) guide publishes a lecture-materials template, verbatim:

Filled in as a template:

Missing Elements

No named author. Many module pages are institutional. Use the faculty, school or teaching team, which is what UQ's learning-module template and York's VLE example both do.

No date. LMS items often show only "last modified". Use that, label it as such, and give the date you accessed the page.

A URL that only works for enrolled students. Give it anyway, and say in your text that access is restricted. APA's own classroom example links to a login page.

A recording with no title. Describe it — "Week 4 lecture recording" — and keep the description factual.

Material your lecturer has asked you not to cite. Then do not cite it. Find the source it is based on, or ask for a reading.

Common Mistakes

• Citing lecture slides for a claim that comes from a paper the slides were summarising
• Citing your own notes rather than the lecture
• Treating an LMS page as a published web page, with no indication that it is behind a login
• Leaving out the unit code, which is what identifies the material to your marker
• Copying a reading's details from the reader's contents page instead of from the original article
• Citing a discussion-board post by a fellow student without their agreement — that is a consent question before it is a formatting one

Sources for These Formats

• APA Style, Common Reference Examples handout, 7th ed. (last updated 3 March 2026), PowerPoint From a Classroom Website
• University of Queensland Library, APA 7th guide, "Lecture notes and slides" (three templates), and its Vancouver (AMA) guide, "Lecture materials"
• Murdoch University Library, APA guide, Readers/Study Guides; and its Chicago 18th author-date guide, Course Materials and Readers/Study Guides
• MLA Style Center, "Should I cite notes I took on a lecture or other type of presentation?"
• University of Sheffield Library, "Harvard referencing" (based on Cite Them Right), "Lecture notes, lecture recordings, handouts and other unpublished teaching materials"
• University of York Library, Harvard guide, VLE
• IEEE Reference Guide, section D, Course
• The Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide — checked for a course-materials entry and found not to have one

Full style rules: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver.