Do you remember Microsoft’s “My Computer” and “My Music” etc.? When creating an online course that interacts in some way with learners, when should you use “Your” and when should you use “My”? In summary, there are no hard and fixed rules, but there has been a significant shift from using “My” and it now tends to be used only when the user is interacting with the site.

The move away can be seen in how Microsoft moved from “My Computer” to “Computer” to “This PC”. Amazon seems to have moved totally to “Your”. The current advice would be not to use “My” unless the user had a hand in deciding on this content, and to use “Your” to indicate where material has been presented specifically for them. Thus in Moodle it is fine to have “My Courses” and “My Modules” because students chose to do that programme of study.

So if you have a bibliography in your course that is the same for everyone then just call it “bibliography”. If you have explained to students that you have tailored it for different users (and they only see the one for them) then calling it “Your Bibliography” is best. However if you use, say, the database tool for students to create their own bibliography as they go through the course then that is “My Bibliography”.