Hsingchi von Bergmann
Research Classification
Research Interests
Relevant Thesis-Based Degree Programs
Research Options
Research Methodology
Recruitment
Online Teaching & Learning in Higher Education
Population oral health
Professional Identity and Professionalism
Admission/Selection
Have published in peer-review journal(s)
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- Familiarize yourself with program requirements. You want to learn as much as possible from the information available to you before you reach out to a faculty member. Be sure to visit the graduate degree program listing and program-specific websites.
- Check whether the program requires you to seek commitment from a supervisor prior to submitting an application. For some programs this is an essential step while others match successful applicants with faculty members within the first year of study. This is either indicated in the program profile under "Admission Information & Requirements" - "Prepare Application" - "Supervision" or on the program website.
- Identify specific faculty members who are conducting research in your specific area of interest.
- Establish that your research interests align with the faculty member’s research interests.
- Read up on the faculty members in the program and the research being conducted in the department.
- Familiarize yourself with their work, read their recent publications and past theses/dissertations that they supervised. Be certain that their research is indeed what you are hoping to study.
- Compose an error-free and grammatically correct email addressed to your specifically targeted faculty member, and remember to use their correct titles.
- Do not send non-specific, mass emails to everyone in the department hoping for a match.
- Address the faculty members by name. Your contact should be genuine rather than generic.
- Include a brief outline of your academic background, why you are interested in working with the faculty member, and what experience you could bring to the department. The supervision enquiry form guides you with targeted questions. Ensure to craft compelling answers to these questions.
- Highlight your achievements and why you are a top student. Faculty members receive dozens of requests from prospective students and you may have less than 30 seconds to pique someone’s interest.
- Demonstrate that you are familiar with their research:
- Convey the specific ways you are a good fit for the program.
- Convey the specific ways the program/lab/faculty member is a good fit for the research you are interested in/already conducting.
- Be enthusiastic, but don’t overdo it.
G+PS regularly provides virtual sessions that focus on admission requirements and procedures and tips how to improve your application.
ADVICE AND INSIGHTS FROM UBC FACULTY ON REACHING OUT TO SUPERVISORS
These videos contain some general advice from faculty across UBC on finding and reaching out to a potential thesis supervisor.
Graduate Student Supervision
Doctoral Student Supervision
Dissertations completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest dissertations.
Background: Wellbeing is a complex multifaceted construct that gathered attention in oral health sciences education. Supporting students’ wellbeing is essential for their performance and quality of life. While many definitions and frameworks of wellbeing exist, their applicability to oral health sciences education remains unknown. Further, less is known about the elements that shape the pre-clinical students’ wellbeing in dentistry. Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore the students’ perspectives of their wellbeing in comparison with theoretical frameworks from other disciplines, and identify the role of learning environments, particularly the foreign ones with pre-clinical hands-on activities, in shaping their wellbeing. The second aim was to explore the students’ wellbeing management strategies and needs for support. Methods: A qualitative study that utilized Interpretive Description and Case Study methodological frameworks was conducted. Individual and group interviews were conducted with 68 pre-clinical dental and dental hygiene students at the University of British Columbia. Data was analyzed inductively and deductively. Quantitative data from the same institution collected separately in 2012/2013 survey were utilized as a form of triangulation. Results: Students identified six domains as relevant to their wellbeing: physical, psychological, eudaimonic, subjective, and social, and spiritual. Wellbeing threats included microaggressions in the learning environment, peer pressure, and transitions. Hands-on learning activities also contributed to students’ cognitive overload and impacted their physical, subjective, and psychological wellbeing. Most students utilized management strategies that targeted the consequences of wellbeing threats, rather than root causes. Students learning and wellbeing support needs in foreign learning environments were categorized as the TIPSS Support framework, which stands for Time, Instructor’s Capacity Building, Peer Learning, Safe Learning Spaces, and Spiralling Curriculum.Conclusions: Existing theoretical frameworks seemed to be useful to understand wellbeing in oral health sciences education but needed to be expanded to include a new domain, Spirituality. Given the threats to pre-clinical students’ wellbeing, interventions should focus on easing dental students’ transition into foreign learning environments and removing barriers preventing them from maintaining their wellbeing. The emerging TIPSS Support framework is a porotype that can guide future studies in exploring its applicability and effectiveness in supporting students’ learning and wellbeing.
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Master's Student Supervision
Theses completed in 2010 or later are listed below. Please note that there is a 6-12 month delay to add the latest theses.
Objective: To investigate the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the dental education, preparedness and productivity of Canadian dental students in two schools. Methods: Research data was collected via three primary methods. The first was through the Student Oriented Learning Online (SOLO) Survey. Survey responses from third and fourth year dental undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia and University of Toronto were compiled and analyzed. Secondly, clinical procedural productivity data was collected from the University of British Columbia Faculty of Dentistry for the dental student cohorts of 2016-2025 and analyzed. Lastly, data was collected from semi-structured interviews with dental students at both of the aforementioned universities. Analysis of the interview data revealed important themes. Results: From the SOLO survey data, it was found that UBC students showed higher scores for all six studied outcomes in comparison to UofT students. No significant differences were found among UBC respondents between Terms 1 and 2, but for UofT students two of the six outcomes were significantly decreased in Term 2 compared to Term 1. From the clinical procedural productivity data, it was found that there was a significant decrease in the number of procedures completed by the Classes of 2020 and 2021. Lastly, from the semi structured interviews, six overall themes were identified as to how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted these Canadian dental students.Conclusions: The two Canadian dental schools’ students felt that the COVID-19 pandemic had a significantly negative impact on their dental education and level of preparedness. The pandemic and related restrictions resulted in a decline of the number of clinical procedures completed by dental students. This study sheds light on various clinical preparation questions dental educators should consider.
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Entry to Practice Competencies and Standards is a document that sets the guidelines of curriculum for all Canadian dental hygiene programs. Within the document, a competency-based curricular aim is emphasized. As contemporary educational literature have been suggesting, student centered learning has become a dominant guiding principle of pedagogical approaches for competency-based education. With shifting curricular aims and pedagogical principles many current educators of dental hygiene programs may be teaching new curricula different to that which they experienced when they were students in dental hygiene programs. Furthermore, many of them may be expected to implement pedagogical approaches that are different from how they were taught due to traditional conceptions of how people learn. This study explores the perspectives on teaching and learning held by clinical dental hygiene instructors at one Canadian institution. The objective is to understand which teaching and learning perspectives dental hygiene instructors hold. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with fifteen instructors. The results show that instructors tend to think of their teaching as student-centered, yet in a set of 'simulated teaching' questions, the responses were found to be teacher-centered. The research also revealed that the process by which one learns to become a clinical dental hygiene instructor is multifactorial. These factors include but are not limited to the following: instructors' perceptions of their own learning experiences, instructors' experiences of inter- instructor collaboration, and instructors' methods of facilitating student self-efficacy. Given curricular change and the emergence of literature supporting a student-centered approach to teaching and learning, this study shows that it is critical to uncover the teaching/learning beliefs of the instructor's prior to designing faculty development programs. Integrating instructors'preconceptions into the program design may create an environment that is more accommodating of the transition towards the new pedagogical culture.
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Publications
- An interprofessional model of care for oral health during pregnancy (2022)
Journal of Interprofessional Care, - Pregnant women’s perspectives on integrating preventive oral health in prenatal care (2021)
BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, - Creating a test blueprint for a progress testing program: A paired-comparisons approach (2018)
Medical Teacher, 40 (3), 267--274 - When I say … validity argument (2018)
Medical Education,
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