PsychSessions: Conversations about Teaching N' Stuff

E245: Krisstal Clayton: Teaching with heart, empowering students, and unpacking introductory psychology

·57 min·5 clips

Crystal Clayton discovered her students average only five hours of sleep, forcing her to redesign her psychology course.

The episode is an interview between host Garth Neufeld and guest Dr. Krisstal Clayton, a professor of psychology at the University of North Texas. Clayton teaches large introductory psychology sections, with 625 students across face-to-face and online formats. She begins by describing how she adapts her teaching based on student feedback, such as learning about severe sleep deprivation, which leads her to incorporate wellness topics. A significant portion of the conversation focuses on AI usage, with Clayton noting that 40% of her online students use AI, primarily due to overwhelming life circumstances like full-time work and caregiving. She emphasizes educating students about AI's limitations rather than simply penalizing its use. Clayton details her classroom strategies for large lectures, including weekly team activities and team exams to foster connection among 210 freshmen. She shares a specific assignment where students design ultra-processed foods for the Texas State Fair to learn about sensation, perception, and neuroscience. The discussion shifts to textbook authorship, as Clayton explains her transition from contributor to first author of the new edition of an introductory psychology textbook published by Sage. She describes incorporating pedagogy like 'What's Your Prediction?' features and adding content on mindfulness, international perspectives from study abroad experiences, and practical wellness tools like the hand method for portion control. Clayton also outlines how she decides what content to include or omit in her course, prioritizing student-relevant issues like vaping, social media's impact on mental health, and neurodiversity over traditional topics like hypnosis. Throughout, she frames her approach as responsive to Gen Z students' needs for relevance and connection, balancing content delivery with skill development in cognitive, digital, and interpersonal areas.

As heard by us

A practical look at teaching that starts with what students actually tell the instructor.

Crystal Clayton’s teaching story lands in the concrete details of the classroom. She says sleep only became a focus after she asked how many hours students were getting and heard answers like five, which nudged the course toward what the room seemed to need.

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Why you'd press play

A sleep question and a state-fair food project can shake your next class out of autopilot.

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