Richard N Landers | University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (original) (raw)

Papers by Richard N Landers

Background and Aim: Gamefulness is commonly cited as the primary goal of gamification, a family o... more Background and Aim: Gamefulness is commonly cited as the primary goal of gamification, a family of approaches employed in education, business, healthcare, government, and elsewhere. However, gamefulness is defined imprecisely across the literature. To address this, we present a theory of gamefulness that splits gamefulness into more specific constructs and outlines their effects in a process model.

Method: We integrate extant literature from psychology, human-computer interaction, and other fields to define gameful design, systems, and experiences. Most critically, we argue that gameful experience is the core focal construct of this theory and define it as an interactive state occurring when a person perceives non-trivial achievable goals created externally, is motivated to pursue them under an arbitrary set of behavioral rules, and evaluates that motivation as voluntary.

Results: We present six resulting propositions: (1) gameful systems lead to gameful experiences, (2) gameful systems impact psychological characteristics, (3) effective gameful design leads to gameful systems, (4) effective gameful systems lead to behavioral change, (5) appropriate behavioral change causes the distal outcomes gamification designers target, and (6) individual differences moderate the effectiveness of gameful systems.

Conclusion: Gameful experience theory provides researchers with a unified foundation to study gamification from any social scientific lens.

Describing the current state of gamification, Chamorro-Premuzic,Winsborough, Sherman, and Hogan (... more Describing the current state of gamification, Chamorro-Premuzic,Winsborough, Sherman, and Hogan (2016) provide a troubling contradiction: They offer examples of a broad spectrum of gamification interventions, but they then summarize the entirety of gamification as “the digital equivalent of situational judgment tests.” This mischaracterization grossly oversimplifies a rapidly growing area of research and practice both within and outside of industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology. We agree that situational judgment
tests (SJTs) can be considered a type of gamified assessment, and gamification provides a toolkit to make SJTs even more gameful. However, the term gamification refers to a much broader and potentially more impactful set of tools than just SJTs, which are incremental, versatile, and especially valuable to practitioners in an era moving toward business-to-consumer (B2C) assessment models. In this commentary,we contend that gamification is commonly misunderstood and misapplied by I-O psychologists, and our goals are to remedy such misconceptions and to provide a research agenda designed to improve both the science and the practice surrounding gamification of human resource processes.

The theory of gamified learning (Landers RN, Simul Games 45(6):752–768. doi:10.1177/1046878114563... more The theory of gamified learning (Landers RN, Simul Games 45(6):752–768. doi:10.1177/1046878114563660, 2014) presents a theoretical model in which game elements, drawn from the serious games literature, are used in isolation or in limited combination to gamify existing instructional processes in order to improve learning. Critically, individual game elements must be linked to specific behavioral, motivational, or attitudinal outcomes, which in turn must be linked to learning outcomes, in order for gamification to be effective. Without establishing such links, gamification may appear to be unsuccessful when implementations have in fact succeeded. In this chapter, we expand upon the theory of gamified learning by providing applied examples of each of the nine major categories of game elements and linking those elements theoretically to the behavioral and attitudinal constructs they are best predicted to affect. In short, we explain how to gamify learning in a scientifically supported fashion. We conclude with recommendations for both research and practice of gamification in learning.

Background: Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, has become a popular tec... more Background: Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, has become a popular technique to improve instructional outcomes in both organizational and educational contexts. In the organizational context, the Technology-Enhanced Training Effectiveness Model [TETEM] provides a framework to understand how technologies, like gamification, can effect change in various instructional outcomes. Specifically, application of TETEM suggests that gamification may not effect change in instructional outcomes when learner attitudes towards game-based learning and experience with video games are low.

Method: In this study, we test this model in the gamification context by assigning potential learners to read scenarios describing gamified instruction or traditional, PowerPoint instruction in a random order and assessing their training valence.

Results: On average, participants anticipated greater value from gamified instruction, but as predicted by TETEM, this effect was moderated by both video game experience and attitudes towards game-based learning. Among potential learners with high experience and attitudes, gamification produces better outcomes than PowerPoint, but among potential learners with low experience and attitudes, gamification produces worse outcomes than PowerPoint.

Implications: We provide empirical support for TETEM and conclude that for gamification to be successful , the attitudes and experience of participants must be assessed and ensured before gamification is implemented.

… journal of clinical …, 2009

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is the most widely used and researched... more The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is the most widely used and researched clinical personality assessment instrument in personnel selection. This instrumental study addresses the comparability of the MMPI-2 in assessing Spanish-speaking employees to the performance of English-speaking employees. A sample of 332 Puerto Rican power plant repairers and installers, who were administered the test in Spanish, were compared with 327 English speaking employees from the U.S mainland. The overall MMPI-2 performance of both groups of participants was highly similar and well within the normal range with most scales within the standard error of measurement. A few scales, such as the Lie scale (L), showed small differences with Hispanic clients scoring higher than the Anglos, a finding that has been reported in other studies. The MMPI-2 symptom scales for Hispanics are generally similar to the Anglo scores and do not require adjustments in interpretive strategies. In personnel settings where test defensiveness is common, interpreters need to assure that the applicant's L score is within the interpretive range.

Serious Games and Edutainment Applications, 2011

The use of leaderboards is a common approach to the gamification of employee performance, but lit... more The use of leaderboards is a common approach to the gamification of employee performance, but little is known about the specific mechanisms and mediating processes by which leaderboards actually affect employee behavior. Given the lack of research in this domain, this study proposes goal-setting theory, one of the most well-established motivational theories in psychology, as a framework by which to understand these effects. In this study, a classic brainstorming task is gamified with a leaderboard in order to explore this. Participants were randomly assigned to four classic levels of goal-setting (do-your-best, easy, difficult and impossible goals) plus a leaderboard populated with initials and scores representing identical goal-setting conditions. The presence of a leaderboard was successful in motivating participants to performance levels similar to that of difficult and impossible goal-setting, suggesting participants implicitly set goals at or near the top of the leaderboard without any prompting to do so. Goal commitment, a common individual difference moderator in goal-setting theory, was also assessed and behaved similarly in the presence of the leaderboard as when traditional goals were provided. From these results, we conclude that goal-setting theory is valuable to understand the success of leaderboards, and we recommend further exploration of existing psychological theories, including goal-setting, to better explain the effects of gamification.

Game-thinking is beginning to appear in a wide variety of non-game contexts, including organizati... more Game-thinking is beginning to appear in a wide variety of non-game contexts, including organizational support settings like human resource management (HRM). The purpose of this chapter is two-fold: 1) to explore the opportunities for game-thinking via gamification and serious games in HRM based on current and previous HRM literature and 2) to identify future research areas at the intersection of game-thinking and HRM. Prevailing HRM theories will be applied to the use of game-thinking in different sub-fields of HRM, including recruitment, selection, training, and performance management.n

There is increasing interest in using examination of behaviors during videogame play as measureme... more There is increasing interest in using examination of behaviors during videogame play as measurements of human knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics. Such a shift reflects a growing dissatisfaction with traditional assessment methods, like surveys, tests, and interviews. Game-based assessment addresses this dissatisfaction in three ways. First, test-taking motivation is likely to increase due to the motivating nature of well-designed games. Second, scores may be less contaminated in high-stakes contexts if games are perceived as less threatening than cognitive tests. Third, the validity of measurement may increase because gameplay is a behavioral outcome, whereas other approaches require respondents to engage in accurate self-reflection. Fortunately, the cost of game development has decreased to the point where it is now feasible for individual researchers to develop their own videogames or modify existing videogames in order to test these concepts. Rigorous experimental designs, large sample sizes, a multifaceted approach to validation, and in-depth statistical analyses are recommended, so that the assessment game literature meets the same standards as the validation literature at large, with the long-term goal of replacing many traditional assessments with game-based variations of equal psychometric strength. One day, perhaps "assessment" will be synonymous with "fun."

Sampling strategies have critical implications for the validity of a researcher's conclusions. D... more Sampling strategies have critical implications for the validity of a researcher's conclusions. Despite this, sampling is frequently ignored in research methods textbooks, during the research design process, and in the reporting of our journals. This lack of guidance often leads reviewers and journal editors to consider sampling using simple rules of thumb, which leads to the unnecessary and counterproductive characterization of sampling strategies as universally "good" or "bad." Such oversimplification slows the progress of our science by considering legitimate data sources to be categorically unacceptable. Instead, we argue that sampling is better understood in methodological terms of range restriction and omitted variables bias. This considered approach has far-reaching implications, because in I/O psychology, as in most social sciences, virtually all of our samples are convenience samples. Organizational samples are not gold standard research sources; instead, they are merely a specific type of convenience sample with their own positive and negative implications for validity. This fact does not condemn our science but instead highlights the need for more careful consideration of how and when a finding may generalize based upon the particular mix of validity-related affordances provided by each sample source that might be used to investigate a particular research question. We call for researchers to explore such considerations cautiously and explicitly in both the publication and review of research.

Background. The theory of gamified learning provides a theoretical framework to test the impact o... more Background. The theory of gamified learning provides a theoretical framework to test the impact of gamification efforts upon learner behaviors and attitudes, as well as the effect of these behavioral and attitudinal changes on learning. It does so by providing mediating and moderating processes linking specific game elements to learning outcomes.

Aim. This article links specific game elements common to leaderboards (conflict/challenge, rules/goals, and assessment) with a focal learner behavior, time on task, by exploring educational research on competition and psychological research on goal setting theory.

Method. The mediating process of the theory of gamified learning is tested experimentally by assigning learners completing an online wiki-based project to a gamified version with a leaderboard or to a control version without a leaderboard. Leaderboard achievement was not tied to course grades.

Results. Random assignment to leaderboards supported a causal effect. Students with leaderboards interacted with their project 29.61 more times, on average, than those in a control condition. Bootstrapping was used to support the mediation of the effect of gamification on academic achievement by this amount of time.

Conclusions. The mediating process of the theory of gamified instruction is supported. Leaderboards can be used to improve course performance under certain circumstances.

Background and Aim. Gamification has been defined as the use of characteristics commonly associat... more Background and Aim. Gamification has been defined as the use of characteristics commonly associated with video games in non-game contexts. In this article, I reframe this definition in terms of the game attribute taxonomy presented by Bedwell and colleagues (2012). This linking is done with the goal of aligning the research literatures of serious games and gamification. A psychological theory of gamified learning is developed and explored.

Conclusions. In the theory of gamified learning, gamification is defined as the use of game attributes, as defined by the Bedwell taxonomy, outside the context of a game with the purpose of affecting learning-related behaviors or attitudes. These behaviors/attitudes, in turn, influence learning by one or two processes: by strengthening the relationship between instructional design quality and outcomes (a moderating process) and/or by influencing learning directly (a mediating process). This is contrasted with a serious games approach, in which manipulation of game attributes is typically intended to affect learning without this type of behavioral mediator/moderator. Examples of each game attribute category as it might be applied in gamification are provided, along with specific recommendations for the rigorous, scientific study of gamification.

Electronic Inspection Copy available for instructors The essential introduction to statistics ... more Electronic Inspection Copy available for instructors

The essential introduction to statistics for business students , this book will equip you with the knowledge and skills required to succeed in your studies and use statistics in your workplace.
In a clear and engaging way, Richard Landers guides the reader through the vital role statistics play in the business decision-making process and carefully explains and demonstrates how they are applied in practice.

The book covers everything from collecting data to summarising your findings and presenting them. It also revisits all the basic maths skills required to work with data and statistics effectively, with step-by-step screenshot illustrations in both Excel and IBM SPSS.

Chapters open with an example of a common business situation which then runs throughout the chapter, encouraging the reader to identify appropriate solutions to real-world quantitative questions. Each chapter concludes with a second example and discussion for you to test your newly gained statistics knowledge.

The book also comes with a comprehensive Companion Website which hosts:

- Click-by-click video tutorials for how to use Excel and IBM SPSS

- Unlimited datasets and worked solutions for practicing your statistics skills

- A full instructor's manual with in-class activities plus PowerPoint presentations for lecturers.

Visit the Companion Website at www.sagepub.co.uk/landers

Social Science Computer Review

Although social media are increasingly used by employees during work, little is known about what ... more Although social media are increasingly used by employees during work, little is known about what employees are actually doing on social media or why. To remedy this key gap in the literature, a series of three studies were conducted. In Study 1, a qualitative critical incident study was conducted to develop a taxonomy of social media behaviors that are beneficial to work performance, along with a taxonomy of behaviors that are harmful. In Study 2, the Work-related Social Media Questionnaire (WSMQ) was developed to measure these behaviors. In Study 3, cross-validation and criterion-related validity evidence was collected on the WSMQ. Behaviors identified by employees as harmful to job performance were positively related to counterproductive work behaviors and negatively related to task, contextual, and adaptive job performance. Behaviors identified by employees as beneficial to job performance were generally unrelated to actual job performance. Thus, behaviors identified as harmful by employees were indeed harmful, but behaviors identified as beneficial were not beneficial. This suggests limited value in permitting access to social media by employees without a particular plan in place to utilize the features of social media productively.

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or i... more The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Dec 2012

Many organizations have adopted virtual worlds (VWs) as a setting for training programs; however,... more Many organizations have adopted virtual worlds (VWs) as a setting for training programs; however, research on appropriate evaluation of training in this new setting is incomplete. In this article, we address this gap by first exploring the unique issues relevant to evaluation faced by training designers working in VWs. At the macro-organizational level, the primary issue faced is an organizational culture unreceptive to or otherwise skeptical of VWs. At the micro-organizational level, two major issues are identified: individual trainees unreceptive to VWs and general lack of experience navigating VWs. All three of these challenges and their interrelationships may lead to poor reactions, learning, and transfer from VW-based training despite strong, pedagogically sound training design. Second, we survey the training evaluation research literature, identifying the most well-supported training evaluation models, discussing the suitability of each for evaluating VW-based training. Third, we propose a new integrative model based upon this literature, incorporating solutions to the unique issues faced in VWs with the most relevant portions of the models discussed earlier. Fourth, broad thematic implications of this model are identified and applied to prior VW literature. Finally, we provide specific recommendations to practitioners and researchers to evaluate their VW-based training fully.

Serious Games and Edutainment Applications, Jan 1, 2011

International Journal of Selection …, Jan 1, 2012

A concern about unproctored Internet-based testing (UIT) without follow-up verification is that b... more A concern about unproctored Internet-based testing (UIT) without follow-up verification is that because applicants are able to cheat when completing tests, test validity decreases to an unknown extent. However, this view ignores a potential advantage to UIT: Should UIT increase applicant pool size, an organization with a fixed goal in terms of the number of candidates to advance to the next stage of the hiring process can increase the cutoff score and thus be more selective. In this study, a simulation was conducted to determine if this advantage outweighs the cheating disadvantage in the prediction of job performance. When the applicant pool is increased substantially through UIT, job performance outcomes are often higher even when many applicants increase their test scores through cheating.

Personnel Psychology, Jan 1, 2007

Background and Aim: Gamefulness is commonly cited as the primary goal of gamification, a family o... more Background and Aim: Gamefulness is commonly cited as the primary goal of gamification, a family of approaches employed in education, business, healthcare, government, and elsewhere. However, gamefulness is defined imprecisely across the literature. To address this, we present a theory of gamefulness that splits gamefulness into more specific constructs and outlines their effects in a process model.

Method: We integrate extant literature from psychology, human-computer interaction, and other fields to define gameful design, systems, and experiences. Most critically, we argue that gameful experience is the core focal construct of this theory and define it as an interactive state occurring when a person perceives non-trivial achievable goals created externally, is motivated to pursue them under an arbitrary set of behavioral rules, and evaluates that motivation as voluntary.

Results: We present six resulting propositions: (1) gameful systems lead to gameful experiences, (2) gameful systems impact psychological characteristics, (3) effective gameful design leads to gameful systems, (4) effective gameful systems lead to behavioral change, (5) appropriate behavioral change causes the distal outcomes gamification designers target, and (6) individual differences moderate the effectiveness of gameful systems.

Conclusion: Gameful experience theory provides researchers with a unified foundation to study gamification from any social scientific lens.

Describing the current state of gamification, Chamorro-Premuzic,Winsborough, Sherman, and Hogan (... more Describing the current state of gamification, Chamorro-Premuzic,Winsborough, Sherman, and Hogan (2016) provide a troubling contradiction: They offer examples of a broad spectrum of gamification interventions, but they then summarize the entirety of gamification as “the digital equivalent of situational judgment tests.” This mischaracterization grossly oversimplifies a rapidly growing area of research and practice both within and outside of industrial–organizational (I-O) psychology. We agree that situational judgment
tests (SJTs) can be considered a type of gamified assessment, and gamification provides a toolkit to make SJTs even more gameful. However, the term gamification refers to a much broader and potentially more impactful set of tools than just SJTs, which are incremental, versatile, and especially valuable to practitioners in an era moving toward business-to-consumer (B2C) assessment models. In this commentary,we contend that gamification is commonly misunderstood and misapplied by I-O psychologists, and our goals are to remedy such misconceptions and to provide a research agenda designed to improve both the science and the practice surrounding gamification of human resource processes.

The theory of gamified learning (Landers RN, Simul Games 45(6):752–768. doi:10.1177/1046878114563... more The theory of gamified learning (Landers RN, Simul Games 45(6):752–768. doi:10.1177/1046878114563660, 2014) presents a theoretical model in which game elements, drawn from the serious games literature, are used in isolation or in limited combination to gamify existing instructional processes in order to improve learning. Critically, individual game elements must be linked to specific behavioral, motivational, or attitudinal outcomes, which in turn must be linked to learning outcomes, in order for gamification to be effective. Without establishing such links, gamification may appear to be unsuccessful when implementations have in fact succeeded. In this chapter, we expand upon the theory of gamified learning by providing applied examples of each of the nine major categories of game elements and linking those elements theoretically to the behavioral and attitudinal constructs they are best predicted to affect. In short, we explain how to gamify learning in a scientifically supported fashion. We conclude with recommendations for both research and practice of gamification in learning.

Background: Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, has become a popular tec... more Background: Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game contexts, has become a popular technique to improve instructional outcomes in both organizational and educational contexts. In the organizational context, the Technology-Enhanced Training Effectiveness Model [TETEM] provides a framework to understand how technologies, like gamification, can effect change in various instructional outcomes. Specifically, application of TETEM suggests that gamification may not effect change in instructional outcomes when learner attitudes towards game-based learning and experience with video games are low.

Method: In this study, we test this model in the gamification context by assigning potential learners to read scenarios describing gamified instruction or traditional, PowerPoint instruction in a random order and assessing their training valence.

Results: On average, participants anticipated greater value from gamified instruction, but as predicted by TETEM, this effect was moderated by both video game experience and attitudes towards game-based learning. Among potential learners with high experience and attitudes, gamification produces better outcomes than PowerPoint, but among potential learners with low experience and attitudes, gamification produces worse outcomes than PowerPoint.

Implications: We provide empirical support for TETEM and conclude that for gamification to be successful , the attitudes and experience of participants must be assessed and ensured before gamification is implemented.

… journal of clinical …, 2009

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is the most widely used and researched... more The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) is the most widely used and researched clinical personality assessment instrument in personnel selection. This instrumental study addresses the comparability of the MMPI-2 in assessing Spanish-speaking employees to the performance of English-speaking employees. A sample of 332 Puerto Rican power plant repairers and installers, who were administered the test in Spanish, were compared with 327 English speaking employees from the U.S mainland. The overall MMPI-2 performance of both groups of participants was highly similar and well within the normal range with most scales within the standard error of measurement. A few scales, such as the Lie scale (L), showed small differences with Hispanic clients scoring higher than the Anglos, a finding that has been reported in other studies. The MMPI-2 symptom scales for Hispanics are generally similar to the Anglo scores and do not require adjustments in interpretive strategies. In personnel settings where test defensiveness is common, interpreters need to assure that the applicant's L score is within the interpretive range.

Serious Games and Edutainment Applications, 2011

The use of leaderboards is a common approach to the gamification of employee performance, but lit... more The use of leaderboards is a common approach to the gamification of employee performance, but little is known about the specific mechanisms and mediating processes by which leaderboards actually affect employee behavior. Given the lack of research in this domain, this study proposes goal-setting theory, one of the most well-established motivational theories in psychology, as a framework by which to understand these effects. In this study, a classic brainstorming task is gamified with a leaderboard in order to explore this. Participants were randomly assigned to four classic levels of goal-setting (do-your-best, easy, difficult and impossible goals) plus a leaderboard populated with initials and scores representing identical goal-setting conditions. The presence of a leaderboard was successful in motivating participants to performance levels similar to that of difficult and impossible goal-setting, suggesting participants implicitly set goals at or near the top of the leaderboard without any prompting to do so. Goal commitment, a common individual difference moderator in goal-setting theory, was also assessed and behaved similarly in the presence of the leaderboard as when traditional goals were provided. From these results, we conclude that goal-setting theory is valuable to understand the success of leaderboards, and we recommend further exploration of existing psychological theories, including goal-setting, to better explain the effects of gamification.

Game-thinking is beginning to appear in a wide variety of non-game contexts, including organizati... more Game-thinking is beginning to appear in a wide variety of non-game contexts, including organizational support settings like human resource management (HRM). The purpose of this chapter is two-fold: 1) to explore the opportunities for game-thinking via gamification and serious games in HRM based on current and previous HRM literature and 2) to identify future research areas at the intersection of game-thinking and HRM. Prevailing HRM theories will be applied to the use of game-thinking in different sub-fields of HRM, including recruitment, selection, training, and performance management.n

There is increasing interest in using examination of behaviors during videogame play as measureme... more There is increasing interest in using examination of behaviors during videogame play as measurements of human knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics. Such a shift reflects a growing dissatisfaction with traditional assessment methods, like surveys, tests, and interviews. Game-based assessment addresses this dissatisfaction in three ways. First, test-taking motivation is likely to increase due to the motivating nature of well-designed games. Second, scores may be less contaminated in high-stakes contexts if games are perceived as less threatening than cognitive tests. Third, the validity of measurement may increase because gameplay is a behavioral outcome, whereas other approaches require respondents to engage in accurate self-reflection. Fortunately, the cost of game development has decreased to the point where it is now feasible for individual researchers to develop their own videogames or modify existing videogames in order to test these concepts. Rigorous experimental designs, large sample sizes, a multifaceted approach to validation, and in-depth statistical analyses are recommended, so that the assessment game literature meets the same standards as the validation literature at large, with the long-term goal of replacing many traditional assessments with game-based variations of equal psychometric strength. One day, perhaps "assessment" will be synonymous with "fun."

Sampling strategies have critical implications for the validity of a researcher's conclusions. D... more Sampling strategies have critical implications for the validity of a researcher's conclusions. Despite this, sampling is frequently ignored in research methods textbooks, during the research design process, and in the reporting of our journals. This lack of guidance often leads reviewers and journal editors to consider sampling using simple rules of thumb, which leads to the unnecessary and counterproductive characterization of sampling strategies as universally "good" or "bad." Such oversimplification slows the progress of our science by considering legitimate data sources to be categorically unacceptable. Instead, we argue that sampling is better understood in methodological terms of range restriction and omitted variables bias. This considered approach has far-reaching implications, because in I/O psychology, as in most social sciences, virtually all of our samples are convenience samples. Organizational samples are not gold standard research sources; instead, they are merely a specific type of convenience sample with their own positive and negative implications for validity. This fact does not condemn our science but instead highlights the need for more careful consideration of how and when a finding may generalize based upon the particular mix of validity-related affordances provided by each sample source that might be used to investigate a particular research question. We call for researchers to explore such considerations cautiously and explicitly in both the publication and review of research.

Background. The theory of gamified learning provides a theoretical framework to test the impact o... more Background. The theory of gamified learning provides a theoretical framework to test the impact of gamification efforts upon learner behaviors and attitudes, as well as the effect of these behavioral and attitudinal changes on learning. It does so by providing mediating and moderating processes linking specific game elements to learning outcomes.

Aim. This article links specific game elements common to leaderboards (conflict/challenge, rules/goals, and assessment) with a focal learner behavior, time on task, by exploring educational research on competition and psychological research on goal setting theory.

Method. The mediating process of the theory of gamified learning is tested experimentally by assigning learners completing an online wiki-based project to a gamified version with a leaderboard or to a control version without a leaderboard. Leaderboard achievement was not tied to course grades.

Results. Random assignment to leaderboards supported a causal effect. Students with leaderboards interacted with their project 29.61 more times, on average, than those in a control condition. Bootstrapping was used to support the mediation of the effect of gamification on academic achievement by this amount of time.

Conclusions. The mediating process of the theory of gamified instruction is supported. Leaderboards can be used to improve course performance under certain circumstances.

Background and Aim. Gamification has been defined as the use of characteristics commonly associat... more Background and Aim. Gamification has been defined as the use of characteristics commonly associated with video games in non-game contexts. In this article, I reframe this definition in terms of the game attribute taxonomy presented by Bedwell and colleagues (2012). This linking is done with the goal of aligning the research literatures of serious games and gamification. A psychological theory of gamified learning is developed and explored.

Conclusions. In the theory of gamified learning, gamification is defined as the use of game attributes, as defined by the Bedwell taxonomy, outside the context of a game with the purpose of affecting learning-related behaviors or attitudes. These behaviors/attitudes, in turn, influence learning by one or two processes: by strengthening the relationship between instructional design quality and outcomes (a moderating process) and/or by influencing learning directly (a mediating process). This is contrasted with a serious games approach, in which manipulation of game attributes is typically intended to affect learning without this type of behavioral mediator/moderator. Examples of each game attribute category as it might be applied in gamification are provided, along with specific recommendations for the rigorous, scientific study of gamification.

Electronic Inspection Copy available for instructors The essential introduction to statistics ... more Electronic Inspection Copy available for instructors

The essential introduction to statistics for business students , this book will equip you with the knowledge and skills required to succeed in your studies and use statistics in your workplace.
In a clear and engaging way, Richard Landers guides the reader through the vital role statistics play in the business decision-making process and carefully explains and demonstrates how they are applied in practice.

The book covers everything from collecting data to summarising your findings and presenting them. It also revisits all the basic maths skills required to work with data and statistics effectively, with step-by-step screenshot illustrations in both Excel and IBM SPSS.

Chapters open with an example of a common business situation which then runs throughout the chapter, encouraging the reader to identify appropriate solutions to real-world quantitative questions. Each chapter concludes with a second example and discussion for you to test your newly gained statistics knowledge.

The book also comes with a comprehensive Companion Website which hosts:

- Click-by-click video tutorials for how to use Excel and IBM SPSS

- Unlimited datasets and worked solutions for practicing your statistics skills

- A full instructor's manual with in-class activities plus PowerPoint presentations for lecturers.

Visit the Companion Website at www.sagepub.co.uk/landers

Social Science Computer Review

Although social media are increasingly used by employees during work, little is known about what ... more Although social media are increasingly used by employees during work, little is known about what employees are actually doing on social media or why. To remedy this key gap in the literature, a series of three studies were conducted. In Study 1, a qualitative critical incident study was conducted to develop a taxonomy of social media behaviors that are beneficial to work performance, along with a taxonomy of behaviors that are harmful. In Study 2, the Work-related Social Media Questionnaire (WSMQ) was developed to measure these behaviors. In Study 3, cross-validation and criterion-related validity evidence was collected on the WSMQ. Behaviors identified by employees as harmful to job performance were positively related to counterproductive work behaviors and negatively related to task, contextual, and adaptive job performance. Behaviors identified by employees as beneficial to job performance were generally unrelated to actual job performance. Thus, behaviors identified as harmful by employees were indeed harmful, but behaviors identified as beneficial were not beneficial. This suggests limited value in permitting access to social media by employees without a particular plan in place to utilize the features of social media productively.

The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or i... more The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction.

Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Dec 2012

Many organizations have adopted virtual worlds (VWs) as a setting for training programs; however,... more Many organizations have adopted virtual worlds (VWs) as a setting for training programs; however, research on appropriate evaluation of training in this new setting is incomplete. In this article, we address this gap by first exploring the unique issues relevant to evaluation faced by training designers working in VWs. At the macro-organizational level, the primary issue faced is an organizational culture unreceptive to or otherwise skeptical of VWs. At the micro-organizational level, two major issues are identified: individual trainees unreceptive to VWs and general lack of experience navigating VWs. All three of these challenges and their interrelationships may lead to poor reactions, learning, and transfer from VW-based training despite strong, pedagogically sound training design. Second, we survey the training evaluation research literature, identifying the most well-supported training evaluation models, discussing the suitability of each for evaluating VW-based training. Third, we propose a new integrative model based upon this literature, incorporating solutions to the unique issues faced in VWs with the most relevant portions of the models discussed earlier. Fourth, broad thematic implications of this model are identified and applied to prior VW literature. Finally, we provide specific recommendations to practitioners and researchers to evaluate their VW-based training fully.

Serious Games and Edutainment Applications, Jan 1, 2011

International Journal of Selection …, Jan 1, 2012

A concern about unproctored Internet-based testing (UIT) without follow-up verification is that b... more A concern about unproctored Internet-based testing (UIT) without follow-up verification is that because applicants are able to cheat when completing tests, test validity decreases to an unknown extent. However, this view ignores a potential advantage to UIT: Should UIT increase applicant pool size, an organization with a fixed goal in terms of the number of candidates to advance to the next stage of the hiring process can increase the cutoff score and thus be more selective. In this study, a simulation was conducted to determine if this advantage outweighs the cheating disadvantage in the prediction of job performance. When the applicant pool is increased substantially through UIT, job performance outcomes are often higher even when many applicants increase their test scores through cheating.

Personnel Psychology, Jan 1, 2007