Discussion

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55 Despite, the overall TBL was not associated with anxiety, some specific parts or activities had the potential to influence anxiety positively or negatively. Tweddell et al. (2016) and Ofstad & Brunner (2013) revealed that in the beginning, team-based learning could be anxiety-provoking for faculty members and students that were not familiarized with the process or not comfortable with their active learner roles. In this study, this fear of the unknown issue was raised in the qualitative analysis with students mentioning that they were anxious, in the beginning, due to the number of tests and activities that composed TBL and it was confirmed in the quantitative analysis with 55% of the students agreeing that it was an issue in the anxiety context. When focusing on the student’s active role, 36% of the students referred that not having the teachers explain the contents caused anxiety, and most of them also mentioned that they missed some explanations from the professors before the class. Despite that, during these classes, the students had the opportunity to clarify their doubts or discuss questions with the teachers or through burning questions, which 38% of them recognize as a good practice that helped them to reduce anxiety along with contents explanation by the teachers after the tests contributed also to decrease their anxiety. These results are following those obtained by Punja et al. (2014) who mentioned that despite being an active learning practice where students have the opportunity to account for their learning process, teachers' roles are essential as facilitators and experts.

Regarding the pre-class preparation, the student majority did not identify this phase as anxiety-provoking, however, some parts of it contained elements to increase it. The amount of articles, videos, and overall contents to study was one of those having 44% of the students agreeing with it and mentioning that they felt anxious when seeing the number of pages, or videos they had to study being afraid of not being capable to understand and memorize all the contents. Nonetheless, as in previous studies (Cooper et al., 2018; Ofstad & Brunner, 2013), students agreed that as they became more aware of the content their anxiety decreased.

The iRAT tests were the individual elements in TBL. In this component, 36% of the students agreed on having anxiety associated. As verified before, from the continuous evaluation TBL elements this was the one where students presented the lower grade averages and the second lowest if we analyze all the continuous evaluation elements. In this specific case, anxiety may be interfering with the student’s performance on the individual tests affecting their grades negatively as pointed out by England et al. (2017). This anxiety was also associated when students gave incorrect answers or when they did not know the answer to a question having 33% and 36% of the students, mentioned it, respectively. Again as reported by Cooper et al. (2018) and England et al. (2017) one of the main causes of anxiety in active learning practices are grades as students are worried about losing points or about the impact on their final grades instead of being just focused on learning contents.

In the tRAT, students did not feel anxious. Although some authors, namely, Chen et al. (2008) and Cooper et al. (2018), discovered anxiety associated with team discussion, as some of the students were not comfortable sharing their thoughts with their team members or when their team could not reach a consensus, in this research the opposite occurred having 42% of the students felt less anxious as they had their team support and the possibility to learn with the others. These opinions are in accordance with Rezaee et al. (2016) that referred that discussion could reduce anxiety while increasing students' awareness. Cooper et al. (2018), also found that possible anxiety sources could be related to other students knowing their answers and making some judgment about

56 a wrong answer, but in this tRAT phase, 42% disagreed on feeling anxiety when knowing that others could see their answers, mentioning that was several times a good thing for questions discussion.

When asked about anxiety's relation with perceiving the individual impact on the team’s answers or about the team answer's impact on the individual grade students did not perceive those as anxiety-provoking. On the other hand, the content awareness of the team members acted as an element to decrease the anxiety as the students felt more secure when knowing that the others were also aware of the contents. The same happened when they did not know the correct answer to a question the other teammates could help them (Al Kawas & Hamdy, 2017; Cooper et al., 2018). The only circumstances in which the student majority agreed on having anxiety occurred when their team answered incorrectly to several tRAT questions. Finally, the students mentioned that they did not feel anxious regarding the team choice made by an algorithm and some of them confessed that this method allowed them to work with people that they would not have the opportunity to work with otherwise, being this perspective in opposite with the one exposed by England et al. (2017) that students need to have high confidence on their group members to trust them to know the correct answers as the assignments were turning into grades.

The final classes phase explored were the application exercises and handouts where 40% and 38% of the students felt anxiety, respectively, especially due to the short time to solve them in the class similar to what was found by Cooper et al. (2018). In addition, students also indicated that anxiety was associated with situations where they did not understand the application exercise, having some mentioned during the interviews that it was due to the practical scope of the course which could perhaps compromise the projects or even their future labor and expose their knowledge weaknesses to the other members (Cooper et al., 2018). Cooper et al. (2018), also referred that anxiety could be associated with comparisons between students’ knowledge, for instance, students solving exercises faster than others. In this research, 29% of them agreed with that, however, the percentage of students disagreeing with it was similar to the previous.

5.3. D

N

-D

V

R

A

In the demographic variables, namely the gender scope, although females presented higher scores those did not represent big differences when compared with males, as well as in terms of absolute frequency there was no clear evidence of one gender having a large difference in a certain level of anxiety. The same happens when comparing students’ nationality, in a starting point, it was expected that non-Portuguese students could feel more anxious due to the fact that they were in a different country, and having classes in a different context, however that was not confirmed, because although Portuguese students obtained lower average anxiety values in the beginning, the non-Portuguese the differences were not significant, and the latter obtained lower scores in survey B, being the results in accordance with previous studies, namely England et al. (2017) and Sümer et al. (2008), which explored the anxiety felt when applying active learning practices and the international student's anxiety. The results obtained when relating the student's ages and professional status were different than the ones found by Sümer et al.(2008) and Firmino et al.(2018) as in both studies age was identified as a determining factor to explain students’ anxiety, having older people, in the first case, demonstrated more anxiety, and younger people in the second.

Firmino et al. (2018) further state that, differences between working and non-working students can be identified while in this research the samples do not show evidence that older or working students felt more anxiety than others. Concerning the students’ academic characteristics, the master

57 programs, and the classes format the students also maintained similar frequency and averages over the different anxiety levels going along with the research carried out by Seffrin et al. (2022) which, in addition, took into consideration the pandemic context.

It is important to mention that these outcomes may be limited due to the sample size and diversity that restricted the identification of a significant effect in this demographic field.

On the other hand, an association between anxiety and the student's grades was identified especially when observing the anxiety detected at the final of the semester. England et al. (2017) found that students who reported higher anxiety levels had lower course grades while Barbosa-Camacho et al. (2022) noted that anxiety could be functioning as an inspiration to the students to put more effort into their studies leading to better individual performances and suggesting a positive impact of anxiety in this. This research results go along with this final perspective as it was verified that students with higher anxiety scores, namely moderate or severe, were the ones obtaining the higher TBL activities, non-TBL activities, and final grades confirming the positive impact of anxiety in their academic performance which acted as a key driver for them to be better prepared for the classes. Furthermore, students obtained better grades in the TBL activities performed with a group, namely tRAT and handouts, when compared to the individual activities which reinforce the qualitative and quantitative analysis discoveries that students feel less anxious when having to answer with a group and as a consequence of that they obtain better grades.

The previous analyses were also confirmed in the clusters results. By observing the main differences between the two K-Means clusters, it could be concluded that the iRAT was the TBL element in which the students obtained the lowest grades, in each cluster and that the second cluster comprised the students with the lowest overall grades being those associated with the lowest levels of anxiety.

5.4. F

A

R

T

-B

L

A

Having into consideration all the key points discussed before, some adaptations may be implemented by the teachers to decrease the anxiety felt in some of the contexts. To deal with the fear of the unknown, felt at the beginning of the semester teachers can implement a tutorial class for the students to get in contact with the type of classes before the real classes start while to decrease the anxiety related to not having the teachers’ explanations before the tests, they could implement a simple contents summary before each class start or at the final of the previous class. To overcome the anxiety associated with when they do not understand the contents in the preparation the students indicated the implementation of a doubt forum, so, all the students could share their doubts with the professor and have access to the answers. The amount of content to study during that same phase was also pointed out as a cause of anxiety, so the teachers may reduce those or create more dynamic ways to provide them, for instance through gamification. In the following phase, the individual tests, students felt high levels of anxiety mainly related to the grades associated with it, so the teachers could remove the grade associated with it similarly to what is proposed by Deardorff et al. (2014) with group application exercises or decrease the weight associated to this element. Finally, in the application exercise and handouts, the main anxiety issues were associated with the time available to do them in the classes and not understanding those, so the teachers may increase the time associated with those activities and provide closer assistance.

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