Mary Loder (00:02): Welcome to course Stories produced by the instructional design and new media team of Ed Plus at Arizona State University. In this podcast, we tell an array of course, design stories alongside other ASU online designers and faculty on today's course story. Laura Clemens (00:17): So first and foremost, we educate around, Hey, on neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity, and yes, and also the fact that we all make mistakes. , right? We mm-hmm. . And we are not defined by our mistakes. Uhhuh and these minor setbacks. They are great for growth. Yeah. We can learn from them. And here are all the ways that we move forward. A setback isn't just like this deep void that we fall into , right? And so being able to first and foremost educate people on guess what, , we all have the potential for growth, and this is how you engage this growth mindset is, I think, foundational to our courses. Speaker 3 (00:57): Hi, Mary Loder (00:57): I'm Mary Loader and instructional designer from ASU Online. Ricardo Leon (01:00): I'm Ricardo Leon. I'm a media specialist at the same place. Yeah, we work together. Let's get on with the show. Okay. Hey, Mary. Mary Loder (01:09): Hi Ricardo Leon (01:09): Ricardo. What have we listening to today? Mary Loder (01:11): We are listening to two professors speak about two different courses. Whoa. Ricardo Leon (01:15): Why would we do two courses in one episode? Mary Loder (01:18): Because we're trying to shove it all in. There's so many courses to cover, but also because they're complimentary to one another. Oh, they're super complimentary. So then, and they're based on the same research project, Uhhuh , that actually investigated how the online student experience goes down for the online students. Like how do they feel? What motivates them? So there's some really nice gems shared in this interview, Uhhuh , that any online instructor will walk away from and be able to implement. Ricardo Leon (01:43): Okay. So what, who are they? Mary Loder (01:44): Laura Clemens and Natalie Faber. Mm-hmm. . And they are two instructors that not only came in for our podcast, but they have their own podcast. Ricardo Leon (01:52): Do they? Mary Loder (01:53): They do. That was produced by the King of podcast, Ricardo Leon. Really? Ricardo Leon (01:57): The king. You might know him. Podcast Mary Loder (01:59): . I'm still trying to make up for that Andrew Maynard comment last season, Ricardo Leon (02:02): . Mary Loder (02:03): But anyhow, uh, Natalie and Laura are joined by Narn Lao, who's an instructional designer. Associate mm-hmm. to our team. He's great working on lots of projects, not just ASU online. Yeah. But he is interviewing them today. One, because he's a fan of the podcast and told me the first day he came to our office and I was like, I gotta find a way to get you on the podcast, . And two, because this is an area of interest for him as well. It's around positive psychology. Right. Because he's also an instructor. Ricardo Leon (02:27): Mm. A lot of connections going on here. And yeah. Like you said, the podcast, which is called Sundevil Psych, the pod. Ooh. Which is available wherever you listen to podcasts. And it, I would describe it as a mentorship podcast for, for students. Interesting. It kind of explores different careers. It talks to the faculty and the administrators in the psychology department. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, it's really cool. And it's so fun because Natalie and Laura have known each other for 15 years. Whoa. They're good friends. And it's so fun to like listen to their vibe, like they, how well they know each other. And you're gonna hear it too today, listeners though, how they, they will finish each other's sentences. It was pretty Natalie Faber (03:02): Adorable Ricardo Leon (03:03): Watching them when the recording, right? Right. Yeah. And when are we gonna get to that point, Mary, where you're finishing my sentences. Oh, hey. Lemme do that. Oh, . So yeah, this is a big episode. So maybe without further to-do, are we ready? Yeah. To jump in. Let's do it. All right. Narin Lao (03:21): Hi, I'm Naden Lao. I'm an instructional designer associate with the instructional design and new media team at EdPlus. I support instructional designers and faculty in the design and development of ASU online courses. Natalie Faber (03:33): Hi, Nara. Nice to see you. Hi. Hi, Natalie . I'm Dr. Natalie Faber. I'm a teaching professor for the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences based on the ASU West Campus, and I teach undergraduate and graduate psychology courses. I'm here to talk a little bit about my Positive Psych course, the Psychology of Academic Success, which is actually technically now called Psych three 40, psychology of Academic Motivation and Growth. Laura Clemens (04:01): Hi everybody. I'm Laura Petroli Clemens, PhD, assistant teaching professor here at asu, as well as the Professional Field Experience Coordinator with our Psychology digital immersion program. I am super excited to be here today to talk a little bit more about my second course in emotional intelligence that I recently launched at the university. Also, I am the co-creator and co-host of Sundevil Psych Online, the pod with Natalie. That's, that's right. And our podcast is dedicated to creating a space awareness, community inclusivity and belonging for our psych community here and at Narin Lao (04:39): Large. Thank you, Laura and Natalie for joining us today. Perhaps a great place to start will be for both of you to share a little bit about the research project that you both conducted mm-hmm. mm-hmm. , and how that played a role in the development of your respective courses. Natalie Faber (04:52): Yeah, sure. So, Laura and I, and we call each other by our first names, um, . We, uh, joined some other instructors, some other full-time faculty in the online undergraduate psychology courses through the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, as well as some online students who became our research assistants, both undergraduate and graduate students, to really do some extensive qualitative study of our students, especially our new online psychology students. Just to understand who you are and to understand what your experiences are like, especially as new students, what was helpful to you? What was maybe not so helpful to you about the experience, you know, why you're here, what your goals are, what you're wanting to get out of it, where you're at in your life. You know, we asked a number of different open-ended questions and we, we got over 600, about around 600 full responses. Wow. Laura Clemens (05:50): 613. Oh, good. Usable responses. Natalie Faber (05:53): . Yes. . That's right. And then a handful of our students helped us with the qualitative coding because honestly, our, our respondents gave us very rich data to, to work from, to really understand, and, and we came up with some codes. Our students came up and us came up with some codes to kind of represent some of the main themes. And do you wanna, absolutely. Looks like you've got some, some themes there. and Laura will tell you about what we learned. And then that's really what informed, well what partly informed the development of these, these courses, as well as some other services that we'll talk Laura Clemens (06:28): About. Mm-hmm. . So basically, our goal in this research was to better understand the makeup of our student population and learn more about the new student experience here at ASU online from the perspectives of the students themselves. And in doing all of this, like Natalie identified, we actually had some really great student support. We had student, yeah. Research assistants. Mm-hmm. . And so this was really meaningful for us because something that we were hearing, not just in this research, but from our students, was, Hey, we wanna gain some more experience in the field. That's, and some of that experience that we wanna gain is research experience. Mm-hmm. . So this was a really cool project, twofold. One, we were getting to really learn mm-hmm. about the student experience in a very open-ended way and space. Yeah. And two, we were able to listen to what we've heard from our students and provide them with experiences that they were looking for. And ultimately what we learned from this research was that overwhelmingly students were reporting positive experiences as new students here at asu. They were feeling a sense of belonging and support and resources. Like our student success coaches mm-hmm. were so Natalie Faber (07:38): They love the students' success coaches. Yes. That came up over and over again. Yes, Laura Clemens (07:42): Absolutely. And those were supports that were really meaningful to them, and we were able to provide that information to our program as well as to some of those services. Other things that we learned was that students wanted a little bit more support. They wanted support and mapping out their long-term academic and professional goals. Mm-hmm. , they wanted some support with time management and managing cognitive load. And so some of our takeaways from this research were that we need to help the success coaches to know and understand their role with the students and to reaffirm this and to actually help them to capture and cast a wider net mm-hmm. in order to capture those students helping transfer students. Because we looked at students who were in Psych 1 0 1 and SBS 300. So Psych 1 0 1 is one of those first classes that you take when you're thinking about being a psych major. (08:35): And SBS 300, which is a lesser known course here at ASU online, is careers in Psychology. And that course is something that's required of students that are transferring into the university. Maybe they're coming from a ground program, maybe they're coming from another online college or university. So we're learning about the experiences of new students that are either transfer students or just first time students. So we wanted to be able to create specific information or recommendations for these different students. And then other feedback that we heard and that we listened to was, Hey, we want simple clean courses. We want consistent courses where the modules look the same from week to week. And we want to have better conduits to these resources, such as career counseling, advising. Mm-hmm. and Success Coaching. That's right. And a lot of this information help to not only inform classes that Natalie and I work currently teaching at the time, but to generate some new classes that we are gonna speak to you more about today. Narin Lao (09:37): Awesome. Thank you. Mary Loder (09:43): Okay. So I do wanna take a pause. Mm-hmm. , and just give a shout out to our student success coaches, much like Laura and Natalie did. This is a very unique thing to ASU Online Student success coaches might exist in other universities now, but we are the ones who started it first. And student success coaches are assigned to students and they're basically like the point of contact when students are in need. Mm-hmm. . So they have certain, like matrices for contact to reach out to a student to see if, if they need help to offer services, to make them aware of what services are available to online students. And that's pretty critical to create that feeling of community. And that is probably one of the biggest reasons I love student success coaches, is they make our students feel seen and cared for and know where to go. Ricardo Leon (10:24): So what are some of these matrices that they're, they're looking for to know when they're supposed to reach out to these Mary Loder (10:28): Students? Well, there's academic reports that come out. Mm-hmm. . And if there's anything that makes us aware as a university that a student is not doing well mm-hmm. success coaches will reach out. Yeah. I think they also reach out if they get a positive academic student report. Great. And I think we might be talking to someone next season about that. Oh, great. Yeah. Anyhow, back to the episode. Narin Lao (10:50): Can you tell us a little bit about each of your courses? Natalie Faber (10:54): Sure. Definitely. This research, especially the sense of just time management, especially with the asynchronous learning and pacing and just skills, wanting to gain some time management and self-discipline skills to help with academic success, was something that we learned. Mm-hmm. . And that informed the development of a class, A special topics class, at least at first, it was offered as a summer special topics class called the Psychology of Academic Success. And the students who took it just loved it and wish they had taken it right from the very beginning of their courses. Laura Clemens (11:26): This an Natalie Faber (11:27): Yes, and it really was just giving you what you've said that you wanted, but with an, of course, an academic, a research twist, making it really grounded in the psychology literature and kind of helping you to understand how to take in the information as sort of psychologists and training or having at least a psychology outlook on the information. You know, really critiquing where this information is from and how it was created. The course was first launched the summer of 2020 as a special topics course called The Psychology of Academic Success. And like I said, it was just really well received by the students. We got amazing feedback on the course. And I believe actually that the Tempe campus the next summer launched a similar course. It is now, uh, under the Code Psych three 40 with the new title of Psychology of Academic Motivation and Growth. And it will start being offered to students during the fall semesters. And, you know, this course was long in the making our research on the students needs and experiences, especially our new students, but also my dissertation back from a while ago on growth mindset and Stereotype threat, which used a randomized clinical trial to test a growth mindset intervention that was delivered online. So this has just been a really long interest area. Laura Clemens (12:46): I remember coming to your dissertation defense with your baby, and I had just had to fill up and I was there and it was, it's still one of my favorite defenses. I really Natalie Faber (12:56): Appreciated that you attended my dissertation. Laura Clemens (12:59): I really appreciated your dissertation. Natalie Faber (13:01): , go ahead. Narin Lao (13:01): So it, it seems like, uh, both of you, you know, know each other really well. Natalie Faber (13:06): That's right. . That Laura Clemens (13:07): Is true. Oh, and that's correct. Our first episode of our podcast, . Yes. Sundevil Psych online, the pod. You'll find out more about that . That's right. So listen to that podcast. We do a little bit more information Natalie Faber (13:19): Today. We met during our beginning years of our PhD program here in Tempe, at asu in the counseling psychology department. And so we did our many, many, many, many years of research and clinical training in preparation of becoming psychologists. So, and then, you know, of course we've been working as colleagues for five years. Five years now. Yeah. As teaching professors, lectures and now, but even Laura Clemens (13:43): Prior to those five years, we were both working here at the university in different capacities. Natalie Faber (13:47): Yeah, that's correct. So we have been working together since history 2000 and other, Laura Clemens (13:53): I believe. And ASU Narin Lao (13:54): , if I'm not wrong, you, you're a licensed psychologist. Uh, Natalie. Mm-hmm. . And I think Laura, you are. Laura Clemens (14:01): I am not a licensed psychologist. I am a counseling psychologist by training like Natalie, but I am not licensed. Narin Lao (14:08): Can you Natalie Faber (14:09): Put you're licensed eligible Laura Clemens (14:10): ? I am licensed eligible. I choose to focus as an educator at this stage. And I do do workshops and I present and things of that nature. And I am hopeful that in the future , I may integrate all of that a little bit more into private practice. But at this point in time, I do a lot of consulting work and I do a lot Gotcha. Education. I Narin Lao (14:34): See. Thank you. Natalie Faber (14:35): That's correct, . Narin Lao (14:37): Yeah. Yeah. So it, that's very interesting. You know, I didn't know, you know, the difference between mm-hmm. , a licensed psychologist mm-hmm. , um, as opposed to a counseling psychologist. So can you tell me a little bit about the difference? I thought if you do a psychology degree, you know, the only pathway would be, you know, a licensed psychologist. But I didn't know until, you know, Laura just mentioned that there's actually many other career paths. Natalie Faber (15:02): We love these questions. Laura Clemens (15:02): Yeah. This is a very common question that we receive from our students all of the time. Yeah. And typically PhD programs, which is the type of program that Natalie and I both attended is a research practitioner scholar model. Mm-hmm. . And so in this type of program, you are being trained to be an academic, to be a researcher, and to be a practitioner. So many of us follow all of those paths and oftentimes in an integrated fashion. And some of us elect to specialize more in one track or the other. And that may evolve over time. And in our podcast we talk a lot about the different fields of psychology and the different pathways and the pathways you can take from a BA to an MA to an MS to an E D M. I'm just throwing out a lot of letters that will make sense to people who are in the field. Yeah. And our listeners Natalie Faber (15:54): . Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's extremely confusing, but we participate in a program that trains you to become a research professor, you know, a tenure track professor and or more of a clinical licensed psychologist doing the clinical track. And not all PhDs prepare you for that. Actually, most PhD doctoral programs are more, you know, they prepare you to do research and so you teach, you do research. Those are sort of your, your options. Or I guess you could go into industry depending on, you know, if you're engineering or biochemistry or whatever it is. And within psychology, you know, if you get a psych, social psychology, PhD or cognitive or developmental, those are not necessarily the clinical tracks where you're completing all of the clinical training and the specific courses that the American Psychological Association needs you to be taking to be approved as an APA program. (16:51): That would be one of the many requirements to become a licensed psychologist depending on your state. So we were trained to become professors and we were also trained to become clinicians and teachers as well. And so we basically have those three or consultants, we have those three, those four areas. And you can't do 'em all perfectly and you have to kind of choose which one you focus on or do. I actually started out as a full-time staff psychologist for universities and for university health centers. So I got my training after all the many years of practicums and field placements within our, you know, main counseling psychology PhD program. Then I went on to the official internship at uc Davis in Stress and Wellness and their counseling center. And then did a postdoc residency in their health services. Mm-hmm. , um, with a behavioral health emphasis. (17:44): Then I came to asu, uh, and I love when people are interested cuz usually people aren't that interested in my career , so I'll just talk at you for hours if you have actual real questions. And then did my behavioral health, which is helping to integrate the psychology counseling services, mental health services with the medical services so that we can kind of treat the whole person when students come in to health services with panic attacks thinking that they have a, having a heart attack, et cetera, et cetera. Or suicidality statements of harming of to self or others. So just a real push in the field to integrate medical practitioners with mental health practitioners and sort of spearheading that. And then I came to ASU as a staff psychologist, so doing full-time clinical work, adjuncting for this program for several years. And then helping to start an integrated behavioral health program in the ASU health services. (18:36): So I was working with students very much as a clinician and very much mm-hmm. doing mm-hmm. , you know, not teaching them being their therapist. Um Wow. And assessing them and doing crisis intervention work with them. And then I decided to switch to full-time teaching and then I started a very small private practice cuz I decided I like that ratio of doing the teaching cuz I love talking about psychology, not always doing the applied science. And I like teaching. And, and then the research component for me was, you know, became a kind of a smaller, a much smaller sort of part. You know, we're not research track professors, we're very much teaching, teaching professors. So that's how my Path know came about. Narin Lao (19:22): Thank you for sharing it. It definitely seems like you have extensive knowledge and experience and I think that is great. Laura Clemens (19:30): Mm-hmm. , I think too, everything that Natalie is highlighting in terms of the extensive training that we have, you know, my training is in play therapy and neuropsychology and health psychology and mm-hmm. , when I transitioned into being a full-time faculty member, I was still working in forensic psychology mm-hmm. and have sort of transitioned out of that. But all of that and all of the training we engaged as doctoral students and doctoral candidates and all of that research mm-hmm. informs the way we engage, think about mm-hmm. and teach our courses. Our courses are very applied in nature and especially our positive psychology concentration courses that we're gonna be speaking more about today. Mm-hmm. , I think that what we've learned is it's really important to acquire knowledge, but what is most important is to be able to apply that knowledge and make your own meaningful contributions to your learning in, in the process. And I think that's why the courses that we're speaking about today are so unique mm-hmm. and meaningful. Natalie Faber (20:37): A hundred percent. It's all about process because the content I, I was telling Narin in, in our pre-meeting that the content is really, it changes, you know, it, the field of psychology, what we learn about psychology gets sort of debunked because that's how science works, you know, Right. You know, we learn new things and something, some information, you know, we, we get more evidence for it. Sometimes we, we get more nuanced evidence or the field kind of goes in a different direction. So it's very process oriented. The process of taking in information. Laura Clemens (21:09): I think as counseling psychologists and coming from a counseling psychology background, one of the greatest tenets of our field is that prevention is the best intervention. And I think as a society, we tend to wait until after the fact. We tend to wait to have some sort of breakdown. Right. And to like, and it could be hundred percent physical, emotional, spiritual, whatever. And what's cool in this era, and maybe it started pre pandemic and maybe it's the results somewhat of our pandemic learning, is we've entered a new age in which we have greater awareness around factors related to health and wellbeing. We want as instructors to be able to support our students, our colleagues, our community in realizing engaging and actualizing our sense of agency around our wellbeing, be it academic, professional, emotional, et cetera. And so these courses that we've designed are designed with that mindset, that growth mindset. Mm-hmm. Natalie Faber (22:09): at the forefront. A hundred percent. Narin Lao (22:10): Yeah. I think one word came to mind. Mm-hmm. , the word praxis. Yeah. It's, it's praxis is like research as well as like practical experience. How, you know, research and the PR practical experience, you know, inform each other. And how I think that informs, you know, the way you approach designing and developing your courses. A hundred percent. I think that's really meaningful. That's your students are lucky, , you know, like you, they get both worlds, you know, in that course, right? Yeah, absolutely. Um, research as well as like, you know, practical experience and knowledge that you put into the course. Natalie Faber (22:43): Yes, definitely. Laura Clemens (22:45): So I think a lot of what you're speaking to mm-hmm. is how we really wanna nourish and nurture mm-hmm. this growth mindset in our students mm-hmm. to, to know that ability is not crystallized. It's something that's very fluid. And even if we experience minor setbacks, that's okay, we can get back up and try harder. Right. And so that is Hallmark too positive psychology, right? Mm-hmm. and these courses that we are talking about today are part of this larger positive psychology concentration that as a program we're launching this fall and we're incredibly excited about this concentration. We love the option for our students mm-hmm. , but we also love that we have this real education emotion that, uh, applied adaptive nature of education that you're highlighting is so important. And so in positive psychology, we sort of have this old adage, right? (23:40): Even though positive psychology, honestly within the field is relatively young, wasn't until the 1990s that it really became an arena within psychology that got as much attention as it as it has now. So what is positive psychology? Well that adage is, it is making the shift of focus from what is wrong to what is strong. So that kind of cliche aside , which I really like because I feel like cliches and things that rhyme, like you keep in your mind a little bit more true . Um, and you can kind of like refocus on as a bit of a mantra. But in positive psychology, we are thinking about scientific study around what makes life most worth living in positive psychology, we spotlight individual and societal determinants of subjective wellbeing. We aim to try to capture the factors that help us to enhance and improve our quality of life and determine ways to support and build these factors in ourselves, in others and organizations and systems and the world as a whole. And so that's what we're hoping to do through our courses to help students to have a growth mindset around these factors that we know that they can build such that they can feel better about themselves and make their worlds better places. I'm Narin Lao (25:05): Curious to know, you know, what drives that growth mindset, you know, specifically in the context of, um, online courses, you know, as opposed to on ground. Natalie Faber (25:13): Yeah, I mean I think it's a great question. Um, and , it is a different experience. It is, you know, with the online students experience, especially with the asynchronous design that we offer, it does take a lot of self-discipline, right? Mm-hmm. and time management skills. And we also have students who are a different population from the on the ground students that live on or near campus, right. In terms of like where they're at often in life, you know, like what was the, the story, the journey that brought them there, how long ago it's been since they started school, you know, where they're transferring from, A lot of them are transfer students. I think about a third of them from our research are parents mm-hmm. , you know, with young 29%. And so, yeah. And they're older students on average as well. And so they have lots of amazing life experiences often, and they're actually in some ways might be more motivated or maybe they're the star, a Starbucks achievement student and they never thought they would have the opportunity to go to school. And all of a sudden they're even getting adjusted to the idea of like, oh my gosh, I can do, you know, I'm here mm-hmm. , and you know, and we have a lot of students coming in with lots of different self identities in terms of, you know, veteran students, students who are registered with accessibility services. So we're really interested in that population of students, I Laura Clemens (26:43): First and foremost mm-hmm. , we give them a permission to have a growth mindset. Yes. Because I think a lot of our students, because of some of the factors that you've highlighted, don't necessarily just have that by nature or by experience. Absolutely. So first and foremost, I think in our courses we educate on, hey, what is a growth mindset? Right? What does it mean to believe that all of these abilities and competencies are not crystallized? Yes. They're very fluid, they're very Yes. Like mutable. And so first and foremost we educate around, hey, on Natalie Faber (27:16): Neuroplasticity. Laura Clemens (27:17): Neuroplasticity and yes. And also the fact that we all make mistakes. , right? We mm-hmm. and we are not defined by our mistakes. Uhhuh, and these minor setbacks. They are great for growth. Yeah. We can learn from them. And here are all the ways that we move forward. A setback isn't just like this deep void that we fall into . Right? And so being able to first and foremost educate people on guess what , we all have the potential for growth and this is how you engage this growth mindset is I think, foundational to our courses. Mary Loder (27:55): Okay. One more thing about multimodal design. Oh yeah. So multimodal design, I love that they're talking about one, like the, the way people learn. And I do think that like in certain situations there are certain learning methods that make the most sense, but not because of like the way your brain is wired, but more because of like the environment you're in. Like when I was in my master's program mm-hmm. , I didn't wanna read things cuz I was a mom full-time Yeah. Working full-time. And the only time I had to like consume content mm-hmm. was when I was doing things like folding laundry mm-hmm. , I can't sit down and read while folding laundry, but I can listen to a podcast or I can convert a PDF into a vocal form. Yeah. An audio form and listen to it mm-hmm. . So having the ability to teach your students how to access your materials in multiple ways mm-hmm. (28:40): is super beneficial. Right. We have that in Canvas through this system called Ally mm-hmm. . And then also students and faculty have the ability to provide multimodal content. Right. So if you're a faculty member, you can come in and make lectures, but you can also do a podcast and you can also create sun metals like the pod. There you go. Another plug. Um, or you could like go to the library and get case studies or journal articles or have them read chapters from books mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. I mean, there's lots of ways for content to be consumed and teaching your students that you believe in multimodal design. Right. And that you are formatting your course intentionally mm-hmm. to interact with all the senses Yeah. As best you can really does help with learning. Yeah. Highly recommend. Good job, ladies. Narin Lao (29:27): So what do students learn in your Natalie Faber (29:29): Course? It's, so again, it's a, it's a fully online asynchronous course and there's really three overarching objectives mm-hmm. of what students learn. And one is to understand the bio psychosocial underpinnings of learning and motivation. Um, so they have sort of a map of their own, you know, a self-awareness of the process that they go through themselves and to kind of normalize that this is normal and to just yeah. Gain awareness and self insight of how they learn and what are the factors related to it. Mm-hmm. , the second overarching learning objective is for students to gain awareness and skills and, and again, confidence in the process of learning. And then to, again, to learn to critique the research literature that regards psychosocial educational intervention and more specifically students learning about the literature on self-regulated learning. They learn mm-hmm. about the environmental factors related to learning socioeconomic individual factors, especially related to academic achievement, motivation or what we call, you know, self academic self-efficacy. Mm-hmm. the biological and cognitive basis of learning. And then a as well as what we were just talking about, we, they learn about neuroplasticity and growth mindset. They learn about memory and information processing systems, which are reinforced in some other classes. Narin Lao (30:51): I'm just curious, can you explain a little bit more what you mean? You know, when you said neuroplasticity, Natalie Faber (30:57): Neuro neuroplasticity, that's a great question. It's just the brain's ability to grow new neurons. You know, it's not just that you're learning over the course of your life, but that your brain can actually change in ways that are not, I see. Just resulting in cognitive decline, but can result in adapting, creating new neurons. Mm-hmm. making new dendritic connections. Maybe even our intelligence in some areas can grow with certain types of experiences, learning experiences that we have. And just the training on understanding the nature of learning, the nature of intelligence. Mm-hmm. in particular is an intervention, a growth mindset intervention in and of itself because then students start to hopefully go from a fixed mindset towards the nature of intelligence to a growth mindset just from understanding mm-hmm. how their brain works mm-hmm. mm-hmm. . And also demystifying myths about what type of person is good at what type of learning skills. (31:56): Taking a look at some of the myths that we have about learning, like, oh, we all have our learning styles and you should mm-hmm. , you should make sure to only learn in your particular learning style. Right. And that's a little bit of a myth and we kind of like go into that literature and we go, actually, it's typically best for anyone to learn something and look at it in a number of different ways. Mm-hmm. mm-hmm. and use a number of different approaches is what really creates a robust learning. And that the more we put time and energy into something, the, the more that we're gonna grow our brain's ability to grapple with that and the easier it's gonna get over time. Right. Laura Clemens (32:32): You are not sort of subject to your brain. Right? Yeah. On some level, on some level level, yes. This prefixed predetermined way of being mm-hmm. , you have a lot of agency on how your brain and how your mind operates and through learning, you create these new neural pathways and you know, I think you do a lot of biofeedback and your clinical work mm-hmm. and a lot of, uh, neurofeedback and a lot of what we do as practitioners mm-hmm. is we help people to retrain the way they think about things and then ultimately it creates different pathways in your brain. Right. Right, right. And it creates different ways for your brain to operate. And so it's that that model and that understanding not only creates hope, but also agency Narin Lao (33:18): Shifting from a deficit view to a potential to transform. Hundred percent. Laura Clemens (33:25): You're getting the positive psychology of it Natalie Faber (33:26): All. A hundred percent. And even for students who've always, sometimes it can be really motivating and exciting for students to learn, oh my gosh. Like if I put a lot of effort and time into something, then I can actually maybe learn it, you know, and maybe not, not just learn it, but actually it becomes easier and easier the more I engage in it. It's not gonna be as hard, you Laura Clemens (33:49): Know, maybe find a little bit more about myself and my purpose in this Natalie Faber (33:53): Process. And for some people who maybe had a fixed mindset and thought they're super, super smart and they don't have to work hard. Right, right. You know, sometimes it can be a little bit of a bummer to be like, oh, you know, it's still a use it or lose it situation. Absolutely. . And we know that when students do adopt a growth mindset, they see certain difficult classes more as a challenge. Mm-hmm. versus this is something that could potentially prove or disprove how smart I am, you know, which can be really discouraging when you encounter challenges. The other thing that students learn in my class, which is really important, is the impact of stress and, uh, of stress and trauma on learning. Right. Right. Mm-hmm. , you know mm-hmm. . And that is just something that so hugely impacts the learning experience and you can't learn in, in an academic way in this type of setting when you're under a lot of stress. Mm-hmm. , honestly, our students are under a lot of stress. You know, all of them have jobs, a lot of them have full-time jobs, they have children, they have lots going on in their lives. Mm-hmm. . So not that this is gonna magically make all of those structural problems disappear, but we do emphasize stress management mm-hmm. skills in, in my class, because that's really very much a foundation to learning is is stress management. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then of course active study. Mm-hmm. study strategies. We do a couple of modules on that. Mary Loder (35:21): Okay. I do wanna just give a shout out to the kind of faculty we have at asu. Natalie being a clinician, having that firsthand experience and understanding from the student's experience what it's like to be stressed, what it's like to help students who are in dire need at like, the end of the spectrum of health. I think that's huge. Ricardo Leon (35:41): Yeah. These are my favorite episodes when the field or the content kind of intertwines with the development of the course too. So not only are they talking about these concepts like positive psychology and uh, and the ways that we learn, they're also incorporating that into how they design the course. Mary Loder (35:55): It's huge. Great skills, actualized results. Mm-hmm. data supported. Mm-hmm. research supported and just generally good human beings. Ricardo Leon (36:03): Yeah. These are great courses. This are great university. I Mary Loder (36:05): Agree with you. . Positive . Okay. Let's, uh, really quickly define neuroplasticity a little less formally mm-hmm. , because I thought they did a great job. Mm-hmm. , because I understand neuroplasticity mm-hmm. , but I just wanted to say that really it's about the lifelong capacity of the brain to change and rewire itself Mm. To see things differently than it did before. Right. And that's a big part of like my yoga practice. Right. Uhhuh, . So we do a lot of breathing exercises and meditations in order to rewire our brains Yeah. So that we aren't in a trauma response mode, but we're more in an activated positive mode. Same idea. Ricardo Leon (36:40): Well, even when they were talking about the learners that are coming into these courses, a lot of them are older learners who are coming in from different, maybe different careers, different life experiences. And when you become a student, you're gonna need that ability to adapt to this new identity as a student. You know? Absolutely. New tasks, the new, the new world that you're walking into. The new paradigm Mary Loder (37:00): And the opportunity to see yourself in your highest form, I think is huge. Mm-hmm. , I have a, not similar practice, but I do tune into my highest self every day. Mm-hmm. with a mantra. Mm-hmm. , same idea. The intent is that you know that a highest self of you exists. Yeah. And that it's possible. Mm-hmm. . And to be able to place yourself in that container of your highest self allows you to see yourself in a way that you may not have been able to see yourself before. Mm-hmm. Your infinite most wonderful angelic self Ricardo Leon (37:27): . I do that every day. Mary Loder (37:28): I do every day. Look in Mirror Nemo de Nemo. But anyways, Ricardo Leon (37:32): Guru de what? Mary Loder (37:34): You know, Ricardo Leon (37:34): Ja. Mary Loder (37:37): That's song. It's such a good mantra too. It's a good meal. It is. That's true. George Harrison was a star . I loved him. Can we just put some of his music in here right now? No. No. Why not? This is illegal. Oh, copyright. Dang Speaker 3 (37:50): . Speaker 7 (37:56): Nothing's gonna change my world. Nothing's gonna change my world. Nothing's gonna change my world. Narin Lao (38:03): So Laura, we've talked a little bit about your positive psychology course, but can you tell us a little bit more about what your students learn in your course? Laura Clemens (38:13): I would love to. My course is p s Y 3 38 Emotional Intelligence, lovingly referred to as the positive psychology of emotional intelligence . This course has had a long and storied history. We first proposed this course in 2019 and it launched as a special topics course in 2021, similar to Natalie's course. And most recently received a permanent course number in January of 22 and was finally run as p s Y 33 this spring. So this course is an emotional intelligence class that calls on us to focus not so much on feeling better, but getting better at feeling emotional intelligence. Caus on us to look at the science of emotion. And in doing so, helps us to challenge many of the myths that we receive about emotions. So Natalie talked a lot right. About challenging myths with regard to learning styles and intelligence being crystallized and things of that nature. (39:14): And so in our course we challenge myths about the way emotions operate. Emotions are really important pieces of information. Many of us have received many messages about emotions over the course of our lives. And unfortunately, these messages have often let us know that we should deny our emotions. Mm-hmm. , we should bottle them up, we should put 'em in a lock box. We're told that at best emotions are useless. And more often than not that emotions cloud our judgment. We're even told that emotion and intelligence are so separate and they're just so diametrically opposed that they emanate from two separate organs, one from the heart and one from the brain. Hmm. Wow. I mean, right. Great. This is great. Saying it out loud. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , it just sounds like an insane, but, but such a good point. How many of you have been on Facebook or Instagram and seeing like, are you left brain or right brain . (40:07): Right, right. Are you a heart person or a brain person? So Right. What type of person are you? Right, exactly. Yeah. Um, so in this course we say, Hey, let's get emotional. And what does that mean? Well, we think of emotional as like hysterical, which don't even like get me on the misogyny of that word, but regardless of that term, we're often taught to distance ourselves from our emotions and to never look back, to put up a wall to shut them down. But the paradox here is that if we avoid our emotions, if we discount our emotions, if we cover them up in an attempt to stifle or repress them and actuality they are just becoming stronger and more cumbersome. Mm-hmm. , it's like a, a seed growing into like a super thorny bush. Hurt feelings don't just vanish on their own. Oftentimes they build and they grow and they mutate into like even worse stuff. (40:58): Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . But with that thorny bush, you know, there's always the roses, there are Right. Are lots of really positive emotions out there too. We tend to hyperfocus on the negative emotions. Right, right. When we think about positive psychology, it's not just this Pollyanna overfocus on like happiness and wellbeing. No. It's the positive psychology of emotional intelligence says, Hey, all of these emotions have importance. Right? Mm-hmm. , when you're feeling sad, how many of you out there a source of information? Right. Great. Yeah. Right. How many of you out there when somebody is feeling happy are you're like, oh, I really feel with them, they're so happy. Right? ? No, it's in sadness. It's in sadness that we really get to experience empathy. And empathy is one of the greatest parts of being a human being. Mm-hmm. . So it's not just the negative emotions that matter and have meaning positive psychology tells us this. (41:48): We need to know when we are happy and what makes us happy. Mm-hmm. , we need to know how to build our happiness and our satisfaction not just in ourselves, but in others as well. So we wanna be able to get that information and use that information to inform choices mm-hmm. in the future. Mm-hmm. . So it's not just the negative that emotions that matter. All emotions matter. Happiness matters. So bottom line feelings are information. And in order to make the most informed decisions, we need to be able to access this information, not deny it. Mm-hmm. . And this course helps us to develop those tools to access that information. We have emotional systems for a reason, and I hope that this course helps us to better understand just how important this system is in our lives and our health, our wellbeing, our cognition, our performance, our relationship, and our satisfaction. I also hope that those that engage this course are able to develop a sense of agency around this system to, to really hone in on that neuroplasticity that Natalie was talking about and that growth mindset that we've been talking about. Mm-hmm. all throughout our discussions around these positive psychology classes. Natalie Faber (42:54): Yes. Thank you. Absolutely. Narin Lao (42:55): Thank you. So Laura and Natalie, how does your core story end for students? Laura Clemens (42:59): I hope that students walk out of this class with a growth mindset. I feel like we've said that over and over and over again, but honestly it comes up so much cuz that is my true hope and I hope that they have this growth mindset around their cultivation of emotional intelligence and emotion related skills. I hope they walk away seeing emotions as allies to cognition and wellbeing. I hope they walk away having dispelled falsehoods around a separation of emotional and rational selves. And with a, a knowledge that emotions help to support so many factors related to living a wonderful, purposeful life. I hope they walk away feeling more integrated, more empowered, more resilient and more agent. Natalie Faber (43:42): Yeah. I would hope that my students would walk away with an increased sense of academic self-efficacy or, you know, academic confidence and self-awareness, self-compassion, you know, and some college specific study skills as well and some, some stress management skills on top of that. And actually most importantly, of course, some, some research, research Laura Clemens (44:07): Skills and maybe the course stories ends with them taking another positive psych class in our positive psych concentration. Natalie Faber (44:14): Yes, absolutely. Narin Lao (44:16): , what would be the name for your podcast? Laura Clemens (44:18): ? Our podcast is Sundevil Psych Online, the pod. Natalie Faber (44:23): And we Laura Clemens (44:23): Are sundevil Natalie Faber (44:24): Psyched Laura Clemens (44:26): . I think you have to say something like to to Oh. To have you listen or I can finish this. Psyched to have you listen or no, let's say like, or our sundevil psyched too. I don't know. We don't have to do it. I'm just trying to make it work guys. I feel like it's mean Girls and I'm trying to make fetch happen. . Speaker 8 (44:45): Okay. We're keeping that the whole Speaker 3 (44:55): Well Ricardo Leon (44:55): That was wonderful. I thought that was a great first episode for Narn. I think that, you know, Natalie and Laura are so fun to be around and, and really kind of gave us some like real great, great Mary Loder (45:06): Tools. Yeah, great tools. Ricardo Leon (45:07): Yeah. Yeah. And again, we wanted you to go check out their podcast, sun Devils Psych, the pod, which will be available wherever you listen to podcasts, just like this podcast Horse Stories is available wherever you listen to podcasts. Mary Loder (45:19): That's right. And stay tuned to their podcast. Soon they'll be covering cults. One of my favorite subjects. Ricardo Leon (45:24): Oh yeah. We should have them back on and, and talk about the cults. Mary Loder (45:27): I love it. Let's do it. Yeah. Okay. I'm Ricardo Leon (45:30): In. And then we want to thank you listeners for being part of our cult, uh, . What, what can offer to the core stories' cult ? What, what can our, what can our, uh, uh, followers do to, to help, uh, support this cult? Mary Loder (45:42): Subscribe. Mm-hmm. , listen. Mm-hmm. , share with your friends. Mm-hmm. like everything on every platform that you ever see us on. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Because you have a designed duty to do so. Mm-hmm. Ricardo Leon (45:53): Mm-hmm. and distance yourself from your family and give us all your money. Speaker 8 (45:56): , Mary Loder (45:58): You can Venmo us at No, I'm just kidding. Ricardo Leon (46:00): . Mary Loder (46:02): No, we're kidding. Listeners have your own minds, but we're happy that you are tuning in and we'll see you at the next one. Mm-hmm. Speaker 3 (46:07): Ricardo Leon (46:12): Core stories is available wherever you listen to podcasts. You can reach us@corestoriesasu.edu course Stories is produced by the instructional design and new media team at EdPlus at Arizona State University. If you're an instructor at ASU online, tell us your core story and we may feature it in the future episode. Thanks for listening.