E245: Krisstal Clayton: Teaching with heart, empowering students, and unpacking introductory psychology
From PsychSessions: Conversations about Teaching N' Stuff by Garth Neufeld, Eric Landrum
February 24, 2026 · 57 min · Season 10 · Episode 245
About this episode
Krisstal Clayton discusses teaching strategies and the importance of AI literacy in psychology education.
In this episode Garth interviewed Krisstal Clayton from the University of North Texas in Denton, TX. Krisstal shares how heavy workloads, commuting, work, and caregiving contribute to students' AI use and argues for explicitly teaching AI literacy, its limits, and responsible use. She describes building connection and engagement in a 210-student lecture hall through weekly team activities, team exams, and gamified, real-world assignments (including an ultra-processed "Texas State Fair food" concept-mapping activity). She explains her approach to required reading, attendance-based course design, and Sage Vantage quizzes to track learning and spot irregularities. She also discusses becoming first author on a new edition of an Intro Psych textbook, what pedagogical features they kept ("What's Your Prediction?" and applied examples), and updates she "went hard" on, including a methods-focused chapter, mindfulness and wellness content, and topics driven by student needs (sleep, social media/mental health, vaping, neurodiversity). [Note. Portions of the show notes were generated by Descript AI.]
People in this episode
Guest: Krisstal Clayton
Topics covered
- AI literacy
- student engagement
- introductory psychology
- pedagogy
- mental health
- neurodiversity
Keywords
- Texas State Fair food
- team activities
- gamified assignments
- Sage Vantage quizzes
- textbook updates
Mentioned in this episode
Products: Descript AI, Intro Psych textbook
Books & works: What's Your Prediction
Places: Denton, TX
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