October 4, 2023 • 37 mins
Remember the dreaded words, "This is a group project"? Yikes! Dr. Yuliana Zaikman is on a mission to transform the group project experience using team-based learning. In this episode, she shares how she uses team-based learning in her social psychology course at Texas A&M - Corpus Christi to provide experiences that empower her students to engage actively with both the coursework and their peers. Listen as she explains how her student-centered approach promotes academic engagement as her students work together to understand the core concepts of psychology while improving real-world skills like communication and collaboration. Ready to say farewell to lackluster group work? Come drink the team-based learning Kool-Aid with us! Learn more about Yuliana's publication, The One About Social Psychology at www.grl.pub/Zaikman
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Can I Get a Retake, where we explore the accomplishments of our innovative community.
(00:09):
Each month we speak with one of Great River Learning's higher ed instructors and authors.
Together we discuss trends in education, areas of study, and a variety of teaching styles
and philosophies.
My name is Michaela, your marketing coordinator.
My name is Michelle, your web design supervisor.
And this is Great River Learning's Can I Get a Retake?
(00:35):
Today on Can I Get a Retake, we are speaking with Dr. Yuliana Zeichmann.
Yuliana is an assistant professor of psychology and graduate program coordinator for the Department
of Psychology and Sociology at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Yuliana has also researched and written many articles related to gender inequality, sexual
(00:57):
double standards, and perceptions of members of the LGBTQ plus community.
She is a champion for team-based learning, utilizing it in her courses, writing extensively
about the benefits in psychology classes, and leading workshops at regional and national
conferences.
Most importantly, but we're biased, Yuliana is the author of the textbook, The One About
(01:20):
Social Psychology with Great River Learning.
Have you ever been asked by your students, can I get a retake?
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Yes, quite frequently, actually, more frequently than they should because it's in the syllabus.
And we all know they read the syllabus like the Bible, so probably not very, I guess,
depending on who.
Yeah, I get obviously questions about retaking quizzes and doing better and things like this.
(02:09):
So my approach is that you get one shot, one opportunity.
But no, it's just a different philosophy.
Like I have colleagues who do give multiple opportunities to take a quiz, given that the
goal of my quizzes, for example, is to make sure they read, just read.
(02:32):
Like I don't even look for a level of much of understanding.
I think one take is sufficient.
Yeah, agree.
But that's my approach.
We just like, yeah, getting the feedback from different people and hearing those different
approaches.
I'd be interested in knowing a little bit about your background and how you came to
(02:55):
teach.
Okay, how far are we going?
I was born in Ukraine and grew up in Israel and came to the United States for my college
degree, which I completed in a small liberal arts university in Illinois.
Then got my master's in PhD in New Mexico State University, and that's where I drank
(03:16):
the Kool-Aid about team-based learning.
And then once I got my PhD, I applied for jobs and got a job at Texas and a university
corpus Christi.
So this is how I ended up here.
And my PhD is in experimental psychology, but the focus is social psychology.
So that's kind of like where social psychology comes into play.
(03:40):
And then a lot of my research interests focuses on gender inequality in its large sphere of
everything.
The biggest element I focus on relates to the sexual double standard.
So the idea that women who engage in sexual behavior, especially high levels of it, they're
(04:04):
interviewed much more negatively than their male counterparts.
And I've been focusing since I started doing research on understanding the reasons why
are there individual characteristics that impact your evaluations of said scenarios
and so on.
(04:25):
More recently, my research has been a little bit kind of all over the place.
It depends on what my students are interested in researching.
So I had one who was interested in seeing how women's photoshopped photos of their pregnancy
on Instagram impact their own perceptions of their own bodies compared to more naturalistic
(04:50):
and not photoshopped photos.
Other research focuses on people's perceptions of public breastfeeding and why people seem
to have not favorable evaluations of those.
Do they really, or is it just anecdotally, we hear more about the negative experiences
(05:11):
than the positive ones.
We don't usually have a news article of like, mother breastfed in public successfully.
We hear the nasty comments and things like that.
That's kind of my research in a nutshell as well.
But that sounds really interesting.
I've never heard of experimental psychology.
I guess can you explain what that is?
(05:33):
Yeah, so oftentimes, you know, the main two categories is like you either get a PhD in
clinical psychology and then you can go and help people mentally and things like this.
And then all the other ones who are not equipped to do that, it's usually considered like an
experimental psychology.
It just makes it's more general psychology degree.
(05:58):
It focuses more on like the methodology components.
And oftentimes there is a subsection like, oh, I got a PhD in experimental, but like
developmental psychology or something like this.
So I am not trained to help people despite oftentimes when you say like, I'm a psychologist,
(06:19):
not that type of psychologist.
You're trained to study that.
Yes, yes.
How has COVID really impacted your like what you're teaching and how you're teaching because
it really, it was a, it really impacted all of us socially being shut at home and impacted
(06:40):
students now as well as they're coming into universities and trying to adapt.
So has that impacted your courses at all?
I think that especially spring of 2020 when we did the transition after the spring semester,
I felt that my transition was much smoother than others.
(07:02):
And I attribute it for the biggest component due to the team-based learning.
Because my students were working in teams, when the pandemic happened, we just moved
online.
So using Zoom breakout sessions, it's as if nothing has changed.
So I got all the teams into a different breakout session.
(07:24):
I did my whole like a quick lecture at the beginning, like clarifying things and so on
and so on.
I got each team into their own breakout session.
And then I moved from breakout session to breakout session in a similar fashion as I
moved in class from team to team, answer questions, clarify things, see how much they're working
(07:45):
on their activities and so on.
And their activities, they would work on them on black, you know, like on the online platform
and just submit it online.
So in a way, I felt like the transition was really smooth in a way.
And I think because they were already in teams, that really helped their like mental support.
(08:09):
Because it's like, oh my God, now I'm on this online class.
Some students never have taken online classes before or had very minimal experience with
that.
And having those small teams, I feel like really supported them in that transition.
So I considered myself very lucky and honestly felt very low level of disturbance when we
(08:35):
transitioned.
We do want to talk about team-based learning a little bit more.
We go back to that topic because your publication with us, you obviously use in your classroom.
And can you tell us a little bit more about what team-based learning is and how you gravitated
toward that teaching style?
(08:55):
Sure.
So team-based learning is a fairly novel, but not really.
Like it has been depending on which field you're looking at in education.
It has been a while for a couple of decades.
But in terms of psychology, it has been more getting into that field more recently.
(09:19):
But the idea of team-based learning is you have a small group teaching approach where
you emphasize team cohesion and using individual accountability in order to administer your
material.
(09:41):
So it's more like you are the bus driver, taking your students to the different locations
in order for them to engage with the material.
So the role, the focus of team-based learning is not on you standing in front of them and
(10:04):
lecturing at them, but rather designing these activities for them to do in class, in groups.
And the reason why I love the group element is because my background is in social psychology,
I think the idea of working with others, learning from others, supporting others while interacting
(10:32):
with the material, especially when it's social psychology class, it's just very conducive
to that.
And it's very helpful for them to see the material live, so to speak.
Yeah.
What strategies do you use to construct your teams?
So the way I do it is I have them on the first day of class.
(10:58):
So the role of the teams is to make sure they are as diverse as possible while trying to
have strength as well as weaknesses distributed along all of the groups.
So the way I create groups is on the first day of classes, I read out a list of questions
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and if statements.
If a statement applies to a student, they gather their belongings and they line up.
And then if a statement, the next statement applies to another student, they get up and
start to line up.
If they're already lined up, they don't move.
So for example, one of my first questions usually is have you had a team-based learning
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class before?
Because it can be very helpful if you have at least one person per team who has had that
experience before.
Some of the strengths, for example, that I ask is like, are you a senior?
Sometimes, I'm asked about their major, like being a psychology major.
(12:10):
Have, what other?
Oh, have you read more than two books over the past break?
And things like this.
So I try to identify certain strengths that could be good distributed across the board.
Across the teams.
And then I have questions that are identifying weaknesses, quote unquote.
(12:32):
So for example, are you part of a sanctioned university group that is likely to be traveling
and potentially having you miss class?
Because I don't want to have a whole group missing on Tuesdays, right?
Or something like this.
Or do you live more than X amount of miles from the university?
(12:55):
Or do you have a full-time job and or parent, right?
So potentially kids get sick.
We all know that, right?
So it's kind of like I want to make sure I don't have all the parents clustered in the
same group.
So and then I count them off by the once they're all lined up.
So I count them by the number of groups that I have.
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So let's say 10.
I hand to the first 10 assigned that says one, two, three, whatever.
And then once I'm done, all the ones get together and sit together, all the twos and so on and
so on.
And then I have them come up with a team name that relates to the topic of the class.
In human sexuality, the names of the groups are perfect and hilarious, especially because
(13:39):
they very quickly realized, I will need to vocalize said names in order to refer to them
as a group.
So a lot of them go with very intriguing names, as you can imagine.
But then they kind of like have like get to know each other and so on.
And that's how they start building that group cohesiveness.
(14:02):
And yeah, and then we kind of dive into the material.
Do you find that they, the students like the team-based learning or is it a mixed response?
So usually I have students who, it depends, but if I do have any comments about the group
(14:27):
component at the end of my course evaluations, I would say it's about maybe like 50, 60%
that say loved it.
Loved my group, loved the group work, all okay.
When I get maybe like, I forgot my percentages, but there are a good portion that say I was
(14:51):
concerned about the group work because of previous bad experiences, but this actually
was really implemented well and I'm happy that this was a group work.
I even have a couple where like, I built a long time, like lifelong friendships because
(15:11):
of this class.
And I know that for a fact, because I sometimes have the same students in other classes and
I know for a fact they're still friends with some of those that they met in my class in
that same group.
And then of course you sometimes have like one group that was just absolutely did not
work no matter what you did, no matter what they did.
So it's, you kind of have that as well.
(15:33):
Yeah.
When I was in school and I had to do a team project, I did not ever like it because I was
the one who, you know, it's going to do a lot of the work.
But there are ways to try to make sure that the typical issues with groups are minimized
as much as possible.
So the biggest issues with teams is that you need to make sure everybody's accountable
(15:57):
to decrease instances of social loathing and diffusion of responsibility and things like
this.
So one way to do that is with peer evaluations.
And that's a huge component of team-based learning.
I have students evaluate themselves and their group members at the end.
And this is kind of at the discretion of the instructor.
(16:18):
Some do it at the end of every day, every week, sometimes every unit, right, a module that
they do.
Because then they know that, okay, well, they're going to evaluate me.
I can't just be here sitting on my phone all the time, right?
So that definitely helps with that.
Yeah.
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How is team-based learning particularly effective when it comes to social psychology?
I think the reason why it's really helpful for team-based learning is because the team
components, the idea of like, how do we work with teams?
How is a leader emerging?
How do we minimize social loathing?
(17:01):
How does working with other people from different backgrounds can help decrease prejudice towards
a member of said group, right?
And things like this.
That's all social psychology.
So kind of having that experience and working with teams, it's really helpful to illustrate
(17:24):
to them those concepts and how they act and operate in the real world.
Yeah.
They're basically researching on themselves almost in a way.
You might read about a certain social topic and then you're living it in your group work.
Yeah.
Which probably helps them learn it a bit better as well and be more self-aware.
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Yeah, what if, what if, what if, yeah.
One of your chapters is about pro-social behavior.
So do you feel like team-based learning kind of helps teach your students some pro-social
behaviors?
I hope so.
I mean, I would hope that my students come out for my classes better human beings than
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worse human beings.
I think working with other people for the duration of a whole semester and potentially
overcoming struggles and issues and disagreements in a constructive, respectful manner, hopefully
makes them better citizens, right, and human beings for the future.
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Because to be honest, like they could just Google a lot of the concepts that we cover,
right?
So I'm a big proponent of like teaching my students skills in addition to the content
that we're covering.
And a skill of working with other people is a skill they're going to have to know and
(18:53):
do pretty much in any job that they will have in the future.
So that's why it's kind of really important.
And I, despite, you know, the handful of students that I have, like, no, I don't want to be
in the group and all that will too bad.
Imagine this is like, it's not a group project for a grade, but this is potentially your
job on the line.
(19:14):
Like what are you going to do?
Can I switch groups?
No, you can't because if you're in your job, you're in a team, you can't switch teams because
somebody has been mean to you or something like this.
Like let's learn how to communicate.
Let's kind of figure this out.
So yeah, those are very important.
I mean, any job that you have, unless you're going to live, you know, in your parents'
(19:38):
basement and never leave for the rest of your life, you have to know how to.
You still need to talk to the people upstairs, right?
About who's paying rent and who's buying groceries, right?
And there are social psychology techniques that can help you be successful with that.
So yeah, well, and so speaking of your publication that you created with us, are there anything
(19:59):
of any specific components that you put in your book to assist with the team-based learning?
The team-based learning element is a very like, flipped nature component to it, right?
So I have my students read the material before they come to class.
And when I was using traditional social psychology textbooks, they tend to be lengthy.
(20:26):
Every chapter is like 20, 30 pages long, like full on pages.
That's wonderful.
That's really in-depth information.
Oftentimes good examples, good, you know, writing and all of that.
For an introduction type of level class, I felt like it was too much information.
(20:52):
And I prefer my students to kind of hone in on exactly the material that is going to help
them with the hands-on activities that I'm going to have them do.
That's kind of why the idea of the team-based learning, the flipped nature of the class,
(21:16):
really helped me come to the conclusion that like, I need something different.
I would say what was the process of writing your text like?
So the process was me being on crazy pregnancy hormones and thinking that I could do this
(21:41):
while I'm maternity leave.
It was okay.
It ended up being okay.
But for the first year of my oldest life, I was writing textbooks in the evenings.
It was good.
It was a lot of work.
(22:01):
But it was interesting because I was like, I have a kind of creative component to me
that I was able to articulate in the field that I'm at.
So that was kind of really cool.
I enjoyed it.
(22:22):
It was stressful.
It was a lot of work.
But I think for the most part, it was really cool to see like a chapter at the end of it
and see like a product at the end that came to be.
Yeah.
And you've a fun naming convention and everything too for each of the titles and the chapters.
(22:45):
So yes.
I want to touch on one thing really quick.
You had mentioned how moving to Zoom have been really seamless during COVID.
Well, the latest kind of disruptor is generative AI and chat, GPT and Claude and all of those.
Do you feel like because of the way you have things structured with team-based learning
(23:07):
that it's kind of immune to some of those issues or negative effects of AI that are
affecting higher education?
I don't think I have as a scientist.
I don't think I have enough sufficient data and experience to articulate a concrete yes
(23:28):
or no response.
But based on what I'm seeing, AI has been disrupting in that students use it.
They use it for discussion posts.
They use it for papers sometimes.
(23:49):
I've had good experience in identifying those because there is a nature to how it's articulating
itself that I think after reading 50 posts, you read one and you're like, hold on.
So there is, I think, some way to kind of identify it or at least kind of like red flag it.
(24:17):
I think with team-based learning, given that it's in person, they're doing activities in
class with their groups.
When we talk about those type of activities, I think it is to a degree not as impacted
by AI because you have four or five, depending on how many people you have in a group, other
(24:42):
people who might not be cool with you using AI to look up answers or things like that.
So I think that kind of having group work can safeguard students from going that route.
Also, because of a lot of my questions and scenarios are more applied in nature of what
(25:07):
they're actually doing in class.
So like I'm giving them a scenario of like, you're trying to convince your best friend
to watch your dog over the weekend.
What social influence techniques that we covered this week could help you in doing that, right?
(25:29):
Or like, what would be the best one?
If you were to answer that question and chat GTP, it's very likely that they might provide
a semi-accurate response, but it's likely they might bring up components that we did
not cover in class.
So unless they literally just copy pasted, like I would be able to tell like this is
not from our class.
(25:51):
I just had that in one of my classes.
I asked about follow-through effect.
And it's media psychology class.
And it's the idea that a lot of the times media would centralize and follow up on a crime,
but then kind of leave it at that.
It will not follow through with telling you what was the conclusion, was the culprit found,
(26:15):
was the suspect, the actual person who did it, or was that suspect clear and things of
that.
And then I had four or five students talk about things related to our ability to follow through
in the actions that we're doing as it relates to productivity and mental health.
And I'm like, huh, cool.
(26:36):
Yeah.
So I think if we create with team-based learning, how I try to create with my publication, these
types of scenarios, I think chat GTP is not always perfect in coming up with those solutions.
(26:57):
Thank you.
I just like to kind of check in with a lot of our authors and instructors on how they're
handling it and how they're seeing students using it.
And you're right, they're using it.
But like you also said, it's often easy to identify by I, this isn't something that we've
covered or this isn't something that maybe is at the student's skill level.
(27:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes they provide references that don't exist.
Yeah.
I've noticed that too.
Is there any advice that you would give to someone who's looking to implement, I guess,
implement team-based learning, but we're also interested in talking about your book with
us.
(27:41):
So we'll start with team-based learning.
I mean, is there anything that a new instructor or professor should know going in?
It's a completely, you will need to completely change the way you think about your role as
(28:02):
an instructor.
So a lot of the things you do as an instructor for team-based learning is behind the scenes.
It's in the prep.
Once you get there, yes, you will clarify whatever they don't understand, but your job
is pretty much walking from team to team, making sure you answer any questions or clarify.
(28:24):
So it's hard to make that mental shift unless you do it super early or you're just really
adamant about doing it.
So as I said, I drank the team-based learning coolant in grad school.
My mentor, Dr. Laura Madsen at New Mexico State University, she's a team-based learner
(28:46):
all through and through, and she caught me in a way before I ever taught a single class.
And that's how I fell in love with the team-based learning.
So I didn't even have to redo any of my approach to teaching because that's all I know.
But that does not mean to say that you can't.
(29:07):
I have a colleague right now who is like, I'm going to try team-based learning with your
social psychology textbook because he also teaches social psychology and he's really
motivated and really excited to be doing these things and he's having fun for what he's
telling me.
So it is possible.
(29:28):
There's a lot of workshops that are available.
Some of them are free.
Some of them you need to kind of pay for.
But professional development, you can learn how to do that.
I'm actually writing a chapter right now for a book that talks about teaching social psychology
(29:48):
and the book chapter I'm co-authoring with Dr. Madsen is about implementing team-based
learning while teaching social psychology.
So there's a lot of resources one can kind of learn.
And you mentioned one of your questions to students is if they'd had a team-based learning
(30:08):
class before.
Are there quite a few team-based learning classes at Texas A&M?
I don't think we have as many.
Funny enough, up until recently, the only other instructor who taught team-based learning
was my husband who also came from New Mexico University who also drank the Kool-Aid.
(30:34):
So usually I'm like, okay, so have you taken a team-based class or are you in a class with
parents?
So that's kind of how I know.
I know it's more popular in medical kind of classes and nursing because it is so skills-based.
I don't think it's as popular at my current university as it is in some others, but I
(31:00):
also think there are other universities where they potentially never heard about team-based
learning.
So I think it's kind of over.
So we have a section at the end called You're Wrong, which is You Are Wrong, where we give
you a chance to take two to three minutes to give us a rant about a miscommunication
(31:24):
or misconception in either social psychology or team-based learning.
What keeps you up at night that you need to address and correct right now?
I think that with team-based learning, sometimes the misconception is because the teams, the
(31:45):
groups are working together, you are not assessing individual work.
And that it's a super easy class because of course everybody's going to be getting
A's when you're working together, four or five people together.
And if you know social psychology, that's not correct.
(32:07):
Sometimes when you get into a group and if you have a very strong opinionated speaker,
they can completely take the group into the wrong direction and it doesn't matter if you
have four or five people, you will still get things wrong.
I think that that's a big misconception that everybody's getting A's and it's super easy
(32:33):
and there's no accountability.
But that's not true.
What research on team-based learning shows in terms of students' performance is that
the eight students are going to get A's still in team-based learning.
But what you're doing is you're shifting the lower end of your grade distribution a bit
(33:01):
higher.
So you're having the stronger students help the less stronger students or the students
who are struggling a little bit more to help them.
And it's not just with grades, it's with actual understanding.
Students prefer to talk to their peers than to me, as hilarious and awesome I am.
(33:27):
They prefer to talk to their peers.
So it's like if they don't get a certain concept, it's easier from be like, yo, what
did she mean by that?
Rather than raise their hand in front of a class of 55 students and ask me that question.
So I think that is a misconception that like, oh, because you're doing team-based learning,
(33:48):
you know whatever.
And I think another misconception, if I'm already renting here, is that because like
if you were to come and observe me teach a team-based learning class, a lot of what
I'm going to be doing is again, walking around between groups and answering questions.
And it looks like, is she even teaching?
(34:12):
But she is.
She's building all of these activities before with learning objectives in mind.
Is refining this activity after she's saying if a certain question or scenario didn't work,
you know, or things like this.
She's clarifying things.
In fact, I would make an argument that it's almost as if I have 10 tutoring sessions going
(34:35):
consecutively.
Because I might get asked the same question by multiple teams.
And then I respond to the same question to explain the exact component they didn't get.
So I think that also sometimes is misconception of like, are you even teaching?
It's like, yes, I am.
(34:55):
But let's operationally define teaching.
If your definition of teaching is standing and lecturing in front of a class for 50,
75, 75 minutes, then yes, I'm not teaching.
But if your definition of teaching is guiding and helping students understand and implement
(35:21):
and apply the material to scenarios to their everyday lives, then I would make an argument
that I am teaching.
Friends then.
Yes.
My good job.
Awesome.
That was great.
(35:41):
Thank you so much.
You're welcome to join in talking with us.
It was fun.
Thank you, Juliana, for joining us on today's episode and sharing your experience using team-based
(36:03):
learning in your social psychology course.
Education is a shared journey of discovery.
As more instructors drink the team-based learning Kool-Aid and challenge the lecture-based
model of the past, and as students embrace responsibility in other pro-social behaviors,
transformative learning will continue to unfold.
Our conversation with Juliana contains valuable insights for both instructors and students.
(36:28):
For educators, it's a call to assess the effectiveness of the traditional classroom
structure.
Student-centered approaches like team-based learning empower learners to engage actively
with both the coursework and their peers.
They build critical thinking and collaboration skills that will and do as Juliana has proven,
(36:49):
serve them far beyond a single class or semester.
Can I Get a Retake is hosted by Michelle Manneman and Makayla Alby.
The show is edited by Makayla Christensen.
Artwork for the podcast was designed by Michelle Manneman.
Our intro and outro music was created by Coma Media.
(37:12):
If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please subscribe,
share, rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
To join the conversation, you can find us on Instagram at Can I Get a Retake?
For show notes and episode transcripts, visit GreatRiverLearning.com slash podcast.
Welcome to Can I Get a Retake, where we explore the accomplishments of our innovative community.
(00:09):
Each month we speak with one of Great River Learning's higher ed instructors and authors.
Together we discuss trends in education, areas of study, and a variety of teaching styles
and philosophies.
My name is Michaela, your marketing coordinator.
My name is Michelle, your web design supervisor.
And this is Great River Learning's Can I Get a Retake?
(00:35):
Today on Can I Get a Retake, we are speaking with Dr. Yuliana Zeichmann.
Yuliana is an assistant professor of psychology and graduate program coordinator for the Department
of Psychology and Sociology at Texas A&M Corpus Christi.
Yuliana has also researched and written many articles related to gender inequality, sexual
(00:57):
double standards, and perceptions of members of the LGBTQ plus community.
She is a champion for team-based learning, utilizing it in her courses, writing extensively
about the benefits in psychology classes, and leading workshops at regional and national
conferences.
Most importantly, but we're biased, Yuliana is the author of the textbook, The One About
(01:20):
Social Psychology with Great River Learning.
Have you ever been asked by your students, can I get a retake?
(01:43):
Yes, quite frequently, actually, more frequently than they should because it's in the syllabus.
And we all know they read the syllabus like the Bible, so probably not very, I guess,
depending on who.
Yeah, I get obviously questions about retaking quizzes and doing better and things like this.
(02:09):
So my approach is that you get one shot, one opportunity.
But no, it's just a different philosophy.
Like I have colleagues who do give multiple opportunities to take a quiz, given that the
goal of my quizzes, for example, is to make sure they read, just read.
(02:32):
Like I don't even look for a level of much of understanding.
I think one take is sufficient.
Yeah, agree.
But that's my approach.
We just like, yeah, getting the feedback from different people and hearing those different
approaches.
I'd be interested in knowing a little bit about your background and how you came to
(02:55):
teach.
Okay, how far are we going?
I was born in Ukraine and grew up in Israel and came to the United States for my college
degree, which I completed in a small liberal arts university in Illinois.
Then got my master's in PhD in New Mexico State University, and that's where I drank
(03:16):
the Kool-Aid about team-based learning.
And then once I got my PhD, I applied for jobs and got a job at Texas and a university
corpus Christi.
So this is how I ended up here.
And my PhD is in experimental psychology, but the focus is social psychology.
So that's kind of like where social psychology comes into play.
(03:40):
And then a lot of my research interests focuses on gender inequality in its large sphere of
everything.
The biggest element I focus on relates to the sexual double standard.
So the idea that women who engage in sexual behavior, especially high levels of it, they're
(04:04):
interviewed much more negatively than their male counterparts.
And I've been focusing since I started doing research on understanding the reasons why
are there individual characteristics that impact your evaluations of said scenarios
and so on.
(04:25):
More recently, my research has been a little bit kind of all over the place.
It depends on what my students are interested in researching.
So I had one who was interested in seeing how women's photoshopped photos of their pregnancy
on Instagram impact their own perceptions of their own bodies compared to more naturalistic
(04:50):
and not photoshopped photos.
Other research focuses on people's perceptions of public breastfeeding and why people seem
to have not favorable evaluations of those.
Do they really, or is it just anecdotally, we hear more about the negative experiences
(05:11):
than the positive ones.
We don't usually have a news article of like, mother breastfed in public successfully.
We hear the nasty comments and things like that.
That's kind of my research in a nutshell as well.
But that sounds really interesting.
I've never heard of experimental psychology.
I guess can you explain what that is?
(05:33):
Yeah, so oftentimes, you know, the main two categories is like you either get a PhD in
clinical psychology and then you can go and help people mentally and things like this.
And then all the other ones who are not equipped to do that, it's usually considered like an
experimental psychology.
It just makes it's more general psychology degree.
(05:58):
It focuses more on like the methodology components.
And oftentimes there is a subsection like, oh, I got a PhD in experimental, but like
developmental psychology or something like this.
So I am not trained to help people despite oftentimes when you say like, I'm a psychologist,
(06:19):
not that type of psychologist.
You're trained to study that.
Yes, yes.
How has COVID really impacted your like what you're teaching and how you're teaching because
it really, it was a, it really impacted all of us socially being shut at home and impacted
(06:40):
students now as well as they're coming into universities and trying to adapt.
So has that impacted your courses at all?
I think that especially spring of 2020 when we did the transition after the spring semester,
I felt that my transition was much smoother than others.
(07:02):
And I attribute it for the biggest component due to the team-based learning.
Because my students were working in teams, when the pandemic happened, we just moved
online.
So using Zoom breakout sessions, it's as if nothing has changed.
So I got all the teams into a different breakout session.
(07:24):
I did my whole like a quick lecture at the beginning, like clarifying things and so on
and so on.
I got each team into their own breakout session.
And then I moved from breakout session to breakout session in a similar fashion as I
moved in class from team to team, answer questions, clarify things, see how much they're working
(07:45):
on their activities and so on.
And their activities, they would work on them on black, you know, like on the online platform
and just submit it online.
So in a way, I felt like the transition was really smooth in a way.
And I think because they were already in teams, that really helped their like mental support.
(08:09):
Because it's like, oh my God, now I'm on this online class.
Some students never have taken online classes before or had very minimal experience with
that.
And having those small teams, I feel like really supported them in that transition.
So I considered myself very lucky and honestly felt very low level of disturbance when we
(08:35):
transitioned.
We do want to talk about team-based learning a little bit more.
We go back to that topic because your publication with us, you obviously use in your classroom.
And can you tell us a little bit more about what team-based learning is and how you gravitated
toward that teaching style?
(08:55):
Sure.
So team-based learning is a fairly novel, but not really.
Like it has been depending on which field you're looking at in education.
It has been a while for a couple of decades.
But in terms of psychology, it has been more getting into that field more recently.
(09:19):
But the idea of team-based learning is you have a small group teaching approach where
you emphasize team cohesion and using individual accountability in order to administer your
material.
(09:41):
So it's more like you are the bus driver, taking your students to the different locations
in order for them to engage with the material.
So the role, the focus of team-based learning is not on you standing in front of them and
(10:04):
lecturing at them, but rather designing these activities for them to do in class, in groups.
And the reason why I love the group element is because my background is in social psychology,
I think the idea of working with others, learning from others, supporting others while interacting
(10:32):
with the material, especially when it's social psychology class, it's just very conducive
to that.
And it's very helpful for them to see the material live, so to speak.
Yeah.
What strategies do you use to construct your teams?
So the way I do it is I have them on the first day of class.
(10:58):
So the role of the teams is to make sure they are as diverse as possible while trying to
have strength as well as weaknesses distributed along all of the groups.
So the way I create groups is on the first day of classes, I read out a list of questions
(11:22):
and if statements.
If a statement applies to a student, they gather their belongings and they line up.
And then if a statement, the next statement applies to another student, they get up and
start to line up.
If they're already lined up, they don't move.
So for example, one of my first questions usually is have you had a team-based learning
(11:47):
class before?
Because it can be very helpful if you have at least one person per team who has had that
experience before.
Some of the strengths, for example, that I ask is like, are you a senior?
Sometimes, I'm asked about their major, like being a psychology major.
(12:10):
Have, what other?
Oh, have you read more than two books over the past break?
And things like this.
So I try to identify certain strengths that could be good distributed across the board.
Across the teams.
And then I have questions that are identifying weaknesses, quote unquote.
(12:32):
So for example, are you part of a sanctioned university group that is likely to be traveling
and potentially having you miss class?
Because I don't want to have a whole group missing on Tuesdays, right?
Or something like this.
Or do you live more than X amount of miles from the university?
(12:55):
Or do you have a full-time job and or parent, right?
So potentially kids get sick.
We all know that, right?
So it's kind of like I want to make sure I don't have all the parents clustered in the
same group.
So and then I count them off by the once they're all lined up.
So I count them by the number of groups that I have.
(13:17):
So let's say 10.
I hand to the first 10 assigned that says one, two, three, whatever.
And then once I'm done, all the ones get together and sit together, all the twos and so on and
so on.
And then I have them come up with a team name that relates to the topic of the class.
In human sexuality, the names of the groups are perfect and hilarious, especially because
(13:39):
they very quickly realized, I will need to vocalize said names in order to refer to them
as a group.
So a lot of them go with very intriguing names, as you can imagine.
But then they kind of like have like get to know each other and so on.
And that's how they start building that group cohesiveness.
(14:02):
And yeah, and then we kind of dive into the material.
Do you find that they, the students like the team-based learning or is it a mixed response?
So usually I have students who, it depends, but if I do have any comments about the group
(14:27):
component at the end of my course evaluations, I would say it's about maybe like 50, 60%
that say loved it.
Loved my group, loved the group work, all okay.
When I get maybe like, I forgot my percentages, but there are a good portion that say I was
(14:51):
concerned about the group work because of previous bad experiences, but this actually
was really implemented well and I'm happy that this was a group work.
I even have a couple where like, I built a long time, like lifelong friendships because
(15:11):
of this class.
And I know that for a fact, because I sometimes have the same students in other classes and
I know for a fact they're still friends with some of those that they met in my class in
that same group.
And then of course you sometimes have like one group that was just absolutely did not
work no matter what you did, no matter what they did.
So it's, you kind of have that as well.
(15:33):
Yeah.
When I was in school and I had to do a team project, I did not ever like it because I was
the one who, you know, it's going to do a lot of the work.
But there are ways to try to make sure that the typical issues with groups are minimized
as much as possible.
So the biggest issues with teams is that you need to make sure everybody's accountable
(15:57):
to decrease instances of social loathing and diffusion of responsibility and things like
this.
So one way to do that is with peer evaluations.
And that's a huge component of team-based learning.
I have students evaluate themselves and their group members at the end.
And this is kind of at the discretion of the instructor.
(16:18):
Some do it at the end of every day, every week, sometimes every unit, right, a module that
they do.
Because then they know that, okay, well, they're going to evaluate me.
I can't just be here sitting on my phone all the time, right?
So that definitely helps with that.
Yeah.
(16:39):
How is team-based learning particularly effective when it comes to social psychology?
I think the reason why it's really helpful for team-based learning is because the team
components, the idea of like, how do we work with teams?
How is a leader emerging?
How do we minimize social loathing?
(17:01):
How does working with other people from different backgrounds can help decrease prejudice towards
a member of said group, right?
And things like this.
That's all social psychology.
So kind of having that experience and working with teams, it's really helpful to illustrate
(17:24):
to them those concepts and how they act and operate in the real world.
Yeah.
They're basically researching on themselves almost in a way.
You might read about a certain social topic and then you're living it in your group work.
Yeah.
Which probably helps them learn it a bit better as well and be more self-aware.
(17:46):
Yeah, what if, what if, what if, yeah.
One of your chapters is about pro-social behavior.
So do you feel like team-based learning kind of helps teach your students some pro-social
behaviors?
I hope so.
I mean, I would hope that my students come out for my classes better human beings than
(18:11):
worse human beings.
I think working with other people for the duration of a whole semester and potentially
overcoming struggles and issues and disagreements in a constructive, respectful manner, hopefully
makes them better citizens, right, and human beings for the future.
(18:33):
Because to be honest, like they could just Google a lot of the concepts that we cover,
right?
So I'm a big proponent of like teaching my students skills in addition to the content
that we're covering.
And a skill of working with other people is a skill they're going to have to know and
(18:53):
do pretty much in any job that they will have in the future.
So that's why it's kind of really important.
And I, despite, you know, the handful of students that I have, like, no, I don't want to be
in the group and all that will too bad.
Imagine this is like, it's not a group project for a grade, but this is potentially your
job on the line.
(19:14):
Like what are you going to do?
Can I switch groups?
No, you can't because if you're in your job, you're in a team, you can't switch teams because
somebody has been mean to you or something like this.
Like let's learn how to communicate.
Let's kind of figure this out.
So yeah, those are very important.
I mean, any job that you have, unless you're going to live, you know, in your parents'
(19:38):
basement and never leave for the rest of your life, you have to know how to.
You still need to talk to the people upstairs, right?
About who's paying rent and who's buying groceries, right?
And there are social psychology techniques that can help you be successful with that.
So yeah, well, and so speaking of your publication that you created with us, are there anything
(19:59):
of any specific components that you put in your book to assist with the team-based learning?
The team-based learning element is a very like, flipped nature component to it, right?
So I have my students read the material before they come to class.
And when I was using traditional social psychology textbooks, they tend to be lengthy.
(20:26):
Every chapter is like 20, 30 pages long, like full on pages.
That's wonderful.
That's really in-depth information.
Oftentimes good examples, good, you know, writing and all of that.
For an introduction type of level class, I felt like it was too much information.
(20:52):
And I prefer my students to kind of hone in on exactly the material that is going to help
them with the hands-on activities that I'm going to have them do.
That's kind of why the idea of the team-based learning, the flipped nature of the class,
(21:16):
really helped me come to the conclusion that like, I need something different.
I would say what was the process of writing your text like?
So the process was me being on crazy pregnancy hormones and thinking that I could do this
(21:41):
while I'm maternity leave.
It was okay.
It ended up being okay.
But for the first year of my oldest life, I was writing textbooks in the evenings.
It was good.
It was a lot of work.
(22:01):
But it was interesting because I was like, I have a kind of creative component to me
that I was able to articulate in the field that I'm at.
So that was kind of really cool.
I enjoyed it.
(22:22):
It was stressful.
It was a lot of work.
But I think for the most part, it was really cool to see like a chapter at the end of it
and see like a product at the end that came to be.
Yeah.
And you've a fun naming convention and everything too for each of the titles and the chapters.
(22:45):
So yes.
I want to touch on one thing really quick.
You had mentioned how moving to Zoom have been really seamless during COVID.
Well, the latest kind of disruptor is generative AI and chat, GPT and Claude and all of those.
Do you feel like because of the way you have things structured with team-based learning
(23:07):
that it's kind of immune to some of those issues or negative effects of AI that are
affecting higher education?
I don't think I have as a scientist.
I don't think I have enough sufficient data and experience to articulate a concrete yes
(23:28):
or no response.
But based on what I'm seeing, AI has been disrupting in that students use it.
They use it for discussion posts.
They use it for papers sometimes.
(23:49):
I've had good experience in identifying those because there is a nature to how it's articulating
itself that I think after reading 50 posts, you read one and you're like, hold on.
So there is, I think, some way to kind of identify it or at least kind of like red flag it.
(24:17):
I think with team-based learning, given that it's in person, they're doing activities in
class with their groups.
When we talk about those type of activities, I think it is to a degree not as impacted
by AI because you have four or five, depending on how many people you have in a group, other
(24:42):
people who might not be cool with you using AI to look up answers or things like that.
So I think that kind of having group work can safeguard students from going that route.
Also, because of a lot of my questions and scenarios are more applied in nature of what
(25:07):
they're actually doing in class.
So like I'm giving them a scenario of like, you're trying to convince your best friend
to watch your dog over the weekend.
What social influence techniques that we covered this week could help you in doing that, right?
(25:29):
Or like, what would be the best one?
If you were to answer that question and chat GTP, it's very likely that they might provide
a semi-accurate response, but it's likely they might bring up components that we did
not cover in class.
So unless they literally just copy pasted, like I would be able to tell like this is
not from our class.
(25:51):
I just had that in one of my classes.
I asked about follow-through effect.
And it's media psychology class.
And it's the idea that a lot of the times media would centralize and follow up on a crime,
but then kind of leave it at that.
It will not follow through with telling you what was the conclusion, was the culprit found,
(26:15):
was the suspect, the actual person who did it, or was that suspect clear and things of
that.
And then I had four or five students talk about things related to our ability to follow through
in the actions that we're doing as it relates to productivity and mental health.
And I'm like, huh, cool.
(26:36):
Yeah.
So I think if we create with team-based learning, how I try to create with my publication, these
types of scenarios, I think chat GTP is not always perfect in coming up with those solutions.
(26:57):
Thank you.
I just like to kind of check in with a lot of our authors and instructors on how they're
handling it and how they're seeing students using it.
And you're right, they're using it.
But like you also said, it's often easy to identify by I, this isn't something that we've
covered or this isn't something that maybe is at the student's skill level.
(27:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sometimes they provide references that don't exist.
Yeah.
I've noticed that too.
Is there any advice that you would give to someone who's looking to implement, I guess,
implement team-based learning, but we're also interested in talking about your book with
us.
(27:41):
So we'll start with team-based learning.
I mean, is there anything that a new instructor or professor should know going in?
It's a completely, you will need to completely change the way you think about your role as
(28:02):
an instructor.
So a lot of the things you do as an instructor for team-based learning is behind the scenes.
It's in the prep.
Once you get there, yes, you will clarify whatever they don't understand, but your job
is pretty much walking from team to team, making sure you answer any questions or clarify.
(28:24):
So it's hard to make that mental shift unless you do it super early or you're just really
adamant about doing it.
So as I said, I drank the team-based learning coolant in grad school.
My mentor, Dr. Laura Madsen at New Mexico State University, she's a team-based learner
(28:46):
all through and through, and she caught me in a way before I ever taught a single class.
And that's how I fell in love with the team-based learning.
So I didn't even have to redo any of my approach to teaching because that's all I know.
But that does not mean to say that you can't.
(29:07):
I have a colleague right now who is like, I'm going to try team-based learning with your
social psychology textbook because he also teaches social psychology and he's really
motivated and really excited to be doing these things and he's having fun for what he's
telling me.
So it is possible.
(29:28):
There's a lot of workshops that are available.
Some of them are free.
Some of them you need to kind of pay for.
But professional development, you can learn how to do that.
I'm actually writing a chapter right now for a book that talks about teaching social psychology
(29:48):
and the book chapter I'm co-authoring with Dr. Madsen is about implementing team-based
learning while teaching social psychology.
So there's a lot of resources one can kind of learn.
And you mentioned one of your questions to students is if they'd had a team-based learning
(30:08):
class before.
Are there quite a few team-based learning classes at Texas A&M?
I don't think we have as many.
Funny enough, up until recently, the only other instructor who taught team-based learning
was my husband who also came from New Mexico University who also drank the Kool-Aid.
(30:34):
So usually I'm like, okay, so have you taken a team-based class or are you in a class with
parents?
So that's kind of how I know.
I know it's more popular in medical kind of classes and nursing because it is so skills-based.
I don't think it's as popular at my current university as it is in some others, but I
(31:00):
also think there are other universities where they potentially never heard about team-based
learning.
So I think it's kind of over.
So we have a section at the end called You're Wrong, which is You Are Wrong, where we give
you a chance to take two to three minutes to give us a rant about a miscommunication
(31:24):
or misconception in either social psychology or team-based learning.
What keeps you up at night that you need to address and correct right now?
I think that with team-based learning, sometimes the misconception is because the teams, the
(31:45):
groups are working together, you are not assessing individual work.
And that it's a super easy class because of course everybody's going to be getting
A's when you're working together, four or five people together.
And if you know social psychology, that's not correct.
(32:07):
Sometimes when you get into a group and if you have a very strong opinionated speaker,
they can completely take the group into the wrong direction and it doesn't matter if you
have four or five people, you will still get things wrong.
I think that that's a big misconception that everybody's getting A's and it's super easy
(32:33):
and there's no accountability.
But that's not true.
What research on team-based learning shows in terms of students' performance is that
the eight students are going to get A's still in team-based learning.
But what you're doing is you're shifting the lower end of your grade distribution a bit
(33:01):
higher.
So you're having the stronger students help the less stronger students or the students
who are struggling a little bit more to help them.
And it's not just with grades, it's with actual understanding.
Students prefer to talk to their peers than to me, as hilarious and awesome I am.
(33:27):
They prefer to talk to their peers.
So it's like if they don't get a certain concept, it's easier from be like, yo, what
did she mean by that?
Rather than raise their hand in front of a class of 55 students and ask me that question.
So I think that is a misconception that like, oh, because you're doing team-based learning,
(33:48):
you know whatever.
And I think another misconception, if I'm already renting here, is that because like
if you were to come and observe me teach a team-based learning class, a lot of what
I'm going to be doing is again, walking around between groups and answering questions.
And it looks like, is she even teaching?
(34:12):
But she is.
She's building all of these activities before with learning objectives in mind.
Is refining this activity after she's saying if a certain question or scenario didn't work,
you know, or things like this.
She's clarifying things.
In fact, I would make an argument that it's almost as if I have 10 tutoring sessions going
(34:35):
consecutively.
Because I might get asked the same question by multiple teams.
And then I respond to the same question to explain the exact component they didn't get.
So I think that also sometimes is misconception of like, are you even teaching?
It's like, yes, I am.
(34:55):
But let's operationally define teaching.
If your definition of teaching is standing and lecturing in front of a class for 50,
75, 75 minutes, then yes, I'm not teaching.
But if your definition of teaching is guiding and helping students understand and implement
(35:21):
and apply the material to scenarios to their everyday lives, then I would make an argument
that I am teaching.
Friends then.
Yes.
My good job.
Awesome.
That was great.
(35:41):
Thank you so much.
You're welcome to join in talking with us.
It was fun.
Thank you, Juliana, for joining us on today's episode and sharing your experience using team-based
(36:03):
learning in your social psychology course.
Education is a shared journey of discovery.
As more instructors drink the team-based learning Kool-Aid and challenge the lecture-based
model of the past, and as students embrace responsibility in other pro-social behaviors,
transformative learning will continue to unfold.
Our conversation with Juliana contains valuable insights for both instructors and students.
(36:28):
For educators, it's a call to assess the effectiveness of the traditional classroom
structure.
Student-centered approaches like team-based learning empower learners to engage actively
with both the coursework and their peers.
They build critical thinking and collaboration skills that will and do as Juliana has proven,
(36:49):
serve them far beyond a single class or semester.
Can I Get a Retake is hosted by Michelle Manneman and Makayla Alby.
The show is edited by Makayla Christensen.
Artwork for the podcast was designed by Michelle Manneman.
Our intro and outro music was created by Coma Media.
(37:12):
If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to support the podcast, please subscribe,
share, rate and review the show wherever you listen to podcasts.
To join the conversation, you can find us on Instagram at Can I Get a Retake?
For show notes and episode transcripts, visit GreatRiverLearning.com slash podcast.
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