The SEIRA approach: course embedded activities to promote academic integrity and literacies in first year engineering

Abstract

Students enrol into STEM programs with varying degrees of confidence with citing and referencing texts in their written work. Students often have an inclination to choose numbers over written language throughout schooling which means less opportunity to practice referencing and citation. This is compounded by large numbers of students for whom English is an additional language or who articulate from different cultural ways-of-doing. The Search, Evaluate, Integrate, Reference and Act Ethically (SEIRA) modules were developed to provide discipline-relevance to a confounding task. Data Analysis looking at the student engagement with the SEIRA site and subsequent student success provides an indication of the value of this approach to developing academic literacy across the STEM disciplines.