I am embarking upon two new research projects:
Reflective Writing Models for Sojourn Preparation and Debriefing with Dr. Colleen Kawalilak and Dr. Nancy Arthur. This research collaboration with two experienced researchers is funded by a grant from the Werklund School of Education’s Research Office. We will explore how reflective writing can be used in the preparation and debriefing sessions for students in our Teaching Across Borders program. We start this fall with an intensive writing retreat in which we will explore models of reflective writing and create a hybrid version that best suits our purposes which we will then use with the returning Teaching Across Borders students in January. We will then revisit our model, refine it and use it again with the students who will prepare in the summer for a Fall 2016 departure. This collaboration brings together the fields of language learning, adult learning and counseling psychology. Our product will be a working paper and an application for further research.
Investigation of Students’ Receptivity and Use of Formative Feedback in Online Graduate Research Courses – with Dr. Man-Wai Chu. This Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant from the Werklund School of Education’s Teaching and Learning Office allows us to investigate how students react when peers and the instructor provide feedback to drafts of writing in a graduate course. In addition, we will explore whether they actually use this feedback in their final drafts. This research will be interesting to all instructors who use formative feedback loops in courses where the feedback is subjective.
Updates to both of these projects can be found here (Reflective Writing) and here (Formative Feedback).