My PhD dissertation was on the political role of intellectuals according to Michel Foucault, and since then I published and presented on Foucault’s work for a number of years. Please see my CV for a list of my publications as well as my conference presentations.
Since the early 2010s, though, I have focused my research on teaching and learning. Please see below for a few of my research projects on teaching and learning topics.
Selected teaching and learning research projects
Studying students’ use and perceptions of open textbooks at UBC. Primary investigator, with Stefan Reinsberg and Georg Rieger (both from Physics at UBC) as co-investigators.
- In the Fall of 2015 Physics 100 at UBC adopted an open textbook, and we conducted a survey of students who took the course in Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 to gauge their use and perceptions of that open textbook. We also asked them about how the cost of textbooks has affected them, such as whether they have ever gone without buying a textbook, whether they have dropped a course because of the textbook cost, etc.
- We published an article on this research in the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning:
- Hendricks, C., Reinsberg, S. and Rieger. G. (2017). The adoption of an open textbook in a large physics course: An analysis of cost, outcomes, use, and perceptions. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i4.3006
- We conducted a similar survey for students who took Physics 100 in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017.
Pilot research project investigating the impact of peer feedback on writing in Arts One (2013-2015). Primary investigator, with Jeremy Biesanz (Associate Professor, Psychology, UBC) as co-investigator.
- We studied the “dose-response curve” in student peer feedback on writing: how many “doses” of peer feedback sessions are needed before one begins to see results in the form of students using the feedback from their peers, and are there diminishing returns after a certain number of sessions? This question has not been adequately addressed in the SoTL literature on peer feedback: there have been many studies showing that peer feedback improves students writing, but little on how many sessions of peer feedback are needed to provide optimum results.
- Our research questions included:
- To what degree do students use peer comments to improve their later essays (both those they receive from peers and those they give to peers)? Many research studies on peer feedback focus on the use of peer comments on drafts of a single essay, rather than looking at whether students transfer peer comments to their work on later essays.
- Do students tend to use peer feedback comments (given and received) more after a few feedback sessions, or do they use such comments even just after one peer feedback session? Are there diminishing returns after many sessions? We call this the “dose-response” curve: how many doses are needed before one gets a response? Arts One is a good environment to study this question, because students write an essay every two weeks and have a peer feedback session on every essay, with a group of four students plus their instructor.
- As the data analysis for this project was quite complex, we started with a pilot project involving 12 students in my Arts One seminar group for 2013-2014, to refine our data gathering and analysis procedures in preparation for a larger study involving more Arts One students. We collected ten essays from each of the 12 students in the pilot group, as well as all of the peer and instructor comments on each essay.
- We received a grant in 2014 from the UBC Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning to conduct this research.
- I have given several presentations on this research See the conference presentations section of my CV
- This research was the subject of an article on the BCcampus website in February 2015
- We had hoped to extend this pilot study into a larger study with more Arts One students, but were no able to secure funds to do so.
