NeoAcademic

The IKEA Effect refers to the tendency for people to value things they have created/built themselves more than if made by someone else – in fact, nearly as much as if an expert had created the same item.  I recently came across a fascinating article by Norton, Mochon and Ariely^[1] in the Journal of Consumer Psychology (i.e. marketing) testing this.  Although not scientifically tested until this paper, the effect has been well known among product designers for some time, as the authors explain:

When instant cake mixes were introduced in the 1950s as part of a broader trend to simplify the life of the American housewife by minimizing manual labor, housewives were initially resistant: the mixes made cooking too easy, making their labor and skill seem undervalued. As a result, manufacturers changed the recipe to require adding an egg; while there are likely several reasons why this change led to greater subsequent adoption, infusing the task with labor appeared to be a crucial ingredient.

This suggests that by asking consumers to do a little legwork, you can increase their belief in the value of the product they have created, even if it would have been better constructed by professionals.  Perhaps the best-known application of this principle is the theory’s namesake, Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA.  IKEA furniture is sold in boxes, with sometimes a great deal of assembly required.

I can attest personally to the power of the IKEA effect.  We actually purchased an entire kitchen from IKEA, which I assembled and installed myself.  And it is a hundred times better than anything professionals could have made!

As intuitively appealing as this theory is, it was left untested scientifically until this paper, in which Norton and colleagues manipulated several characteristics of the IKEA effect to explore the conditions under which it is most evident.  Here’s what they did:

• Experiment 1A: Participants either inspected an IKEA pre-built box or assembled it themselves.  Afterward, they were asked to bid on the box they had either seen or built.  If their bid was above a random number, they would pay that amount to keep the box; if it was lower, they couldn’t keep it.  Participants were also asked to self-report on the value of the box.  An effect was found in both cases; on average, participants bid 62% more when they built the box versus when they simply inspected it.  On average, participants also self-reported liking the self-built box more than the inspected boxes.
• Experiment 1B: A similar design as Experiment 1A was used, except replacing IKEA boxes with origami cranes and frogs.  There were no differences in value between the types of origami (cranes vs frogs), although participants bid 460% more for their own origami creations versus ones created by others, almost the market-driven value of cranes and frogs created by origami experts.  The authors also discovered that participants thought others would value their origami creations highly, despite assigning little value to the amateur creations of others.
• Experiment 2: Participants built small Lego sets (10 to 12 pieces) in pairs and were asked to bid on their own and their partners’ sets.  Participants were either given a built Lego set (prebuilt condition), asked to build a Lego set (build condition), or asked to build a Lego set and then take it apart (unbuild condition).  Participants universally applied more value to their own sets versus those of their partners.  Most interestingly, the unbuild condition only produced slightly higher values than the prebuilt condition, while the build condition produced much larger values.  Apparently, we placed increased value on assembled objects only if they are completed.  Sounds pretty Gestalt to me.
• Experiment 3: Participants were asked to built an IKEA box once again, but this time, a random half of participants were stopped halfway through construction.  As expected, incomplete items were not valued as highly as completed items – especially interesting since a successful bid would mean that the participant could finish building the item later.

One of the reasons that the authors used IKEA boxes and tiny Lego kits was to account for increased perceived value in customization.  For example, you are likely to value your furniture more if you did something to it to make it better for you personally.  In these experiments, no customization was possible, further supporting the idea that it is the act of assembling the items itself that drives this effect.

The authors note, and it is an important caveat, to remember that all of these effects were done with simple, straightforward items.  Would the IKEA effect hold in more complex situations?  Is this the reason that open source software proponents are so “enthusiastic” about their products while the general market resists them – because those proponents had a hand in developing them?  If I assigned a student to edit Wikipedia for the better, am I unknowingly increasing that student’s faith and value placed in Wikipedia?  All interesting questions for future research!

1. Norton, M., Mochon, D., & Ariely, D. (2011). The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love Journal of Consumer Psychology DOI: 10.1016/j.jcps.2011.08.002 [↩]

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to continue talking about grad school, but this time from the other side: what to expect during your first year of graduate school. Often students think of graduate school as simply being “the next step” of their education without ever pausing to think about what that 2-to-6-year experience will actually be like. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of what is for most folks their 20s, so the sacrifice of that experience should not be taken likely.  Just what will you actually be doing during that time?

The first year is probably the most intense for new graduate students, simply because it is such an incredible change from their college life.  But how you experience that change will depend on what kind of student you were.  In my experience, there are generally three kinds of students:

• The Overachiever.  The overachiever is going to grad school because it is the next great challenge.  The overachiever doesn’t score highly on standardized tests as those in the other two categories do (although the overachiever still did quite well – s/he got into graduate school, after all).  Where the overachiever excelled was classwork – perfect GPA or near-perfect GPA.  The overachiever did this because s/he is incredibly organized and put in as much time as it took to get things perfect.  The overachiever got into grad school because of an incredibly powerful work ethic that drove this person to do as well as possible on every challenge s/he faced.
• The Natural.  The natural is going to grad school because s/he has raw talent.  The natural did well in school – maybe not a perfect 4.0 but close – not because s/he identified study needs and did whatever it took to achieve them, but instead because s/he cruised by on raw talent.  If you barely ever studied for a class in college but still got over a 3.5, you’re a natural.  The sure sign of a natural is high standardized test scores but weaker GPAs.
• The Ideal Graduate Student.  The ideal is going to grad school because s/he has both raw talent and a thirst for achievement.  The ideal could have cruised through college with a 3.5, but saw what it would take to push to a 4.0, and went for it.  You can spot an ideal because they clearly love learning.  The ideal enjoys reading research articles because they help the ideal understand the world just that much better.  If you’re the ideal, you’re probably reading this because you’re doing research on graduate school two years early.

If you aren’t the ideal, don’t worry – not many are, even among accepted graduate students.  And if you are the ideal, you already have this whole studying/life thing figured out, so you probably don’t even need this advice!

If you’re an overachiever, the challenge in your first year of graduate school will simply be the quantity of work you need to do.  You’ll see a clear path from start to finish, understanding what you need to do to achieve everything you need to achieve, but it will be difficult to see how you’ll have enough time in a week in order to get it all done.  This is a feeling you will need to learn to accept.  You’ll have 80 to 100 hour weeks, and you still won’t get everything done.  The biggest challenge for the overachiever is therefore to prioritize research and classes appropriately, being willing to sacrifice your work quality in some areas in order to meet your deadlines.  Otherwise, you’ll burn out very quickly.

If you’re a natural, the challenge in your first year of graduate school will be the workload.  You have probably become accustomed to putting in very little effort and getting high grades.   That is unfortunately about to end.  It may not happen on Day 1, but somewhere along the line, you will suddenly find yourself very confused about the material you are learning, and it will be very disorienting.  Don’t be afraid to ask questions.  It doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly become stupid.  Rather, you have been thrown in with a large group of very smart people.  Just being smart is not enough to stand out.  Now you need to work hard too.

If you are a natural or an overachiever, one of the biggest threats you’ll face is called imposter syndrome.  Imposter syndrome is a psychological condition where it is difficult to accept your own accomplishments.  In short, because you’re in grad school and struggling, because you never really had to struggle ever before, you start to feel like a fraud.  “I shouldn’t be here.”  “Why did they accept me when I clearly can’t cut it?”  This is normal.  I believe this is more common in women than in men, but it can affect anyone.  You were selected to be a graduate student for a reason.  We know you don’t know anything yet; that’s why you’re in graduate school.  You’re still learning, just much faster than you ever have before.  We know it, and you should remember it.

In terms of your day-to-day experience in your first year, this varies widely.  You will likely be balancing your days between research and classes, and sometimes working for the university.  Try to get a sense from your new adviser as to which of these is most important.  Some faculty would prefer you sacrifice classes to research, and others prefer you drop research to focus on your classes if you begin to struggle too much.  Just remember that you have input too; don’t be afraid to say, “I think I shouldn’t be doing as much research because I don’t have the time.”  Just be absolutely sure that’s true before you say it.

If you didn’t get a fellowship and aren’t taking out huge student loans, you are probably going to be working for the university as part of your compensation package.  To accomplish this, you will probably be doing one of five things, and this will likely change from year to year:

1. Teaching Assistant (TA).  You’ll be assisting a course instructor who is teaching a class.  You might grade papers, hold office hours, or a variety of other tasks.  You might be asked to attend classes; don’t be afraid to ask the instructor if you can skip classes when your workload is too high.  This is the lowest-stress teaching position.
2. Section Leader.  You’ll be running a section of a course.  For example, there might be a large statistics course where the instructor lectures, and you’ll lead a once-a-week lab section.  Your lecture/demonstration materials will generally be given to you, so your responsibilities will generally only be to facilitate the section based on what your instructor tells you to do, and grading.  This is the middle-stress option.
3. Instructor.  You’ll be running an entire course!  This is everything; course design, writing a syllabus, grading, putting together teaching materials, and classroom management.  You generally won’t do this until you already have experience as a TA or section leader.  This is the highest-stress option, but the only teaching option that you can put on your vita.  If you want to be a professor some day, you’ll need experience teaching a course or two.
4. Research Assistant (RA).  Lucky!  You’ll be paid to conduct research that you probably would have been doing anyway while also holding down a TA. This generally involves designing research studies, running research participants, analyzing results, and writing papers.
5. A grant-funded position.  These vary greatly.  If your mentor has a federally funded project, you could be brought on to fill a variety of roles, e.g. project manager, analyst, or any type of RA role.

If you are concerned about what kind of position you’ll have during your first year and how much time it will take (and you should be concerned), this is something important to ask about during interviews.

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to continue talking about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: what to expect and do at your interview/visit. This is a continuation of my first discussion on preparing for the interview/visit.

With your fancy tie and background research, you are certainly prepared for your interview/visit experience.  But the actual experience itself will vary widely from school to school.

An old standard was the two-day visit – you’d arrive Thursday night, have two full days of interview events, and then go home early Sunday.  Due to budget cuts that predate the poor economy, many schools have shortened this to either a one-day visit or even a half-day.  But whatever the case, you should get a schedule from the person that sent you the acceptance letter/e-mail at least a few days before the visit.  It will likely have a variety of events on it, with some combination of the following typical interview/visit events:

• Talk by the Department Chair or Graduate Programs Director (GPD).  This event is designed to give you specific technical information.  How many years do students spend in the program, is there likely to be funding, when will decisions be finalized, etc.  Any specific technical detail you want to know about the graduate school experience, you should ask at this meeting.  You will generally be in a room with all potential graduate schools, including from other programs (i.e. outside I/O).  So save your I/O-specific questions for later.
• One-on-one meetings with faculty.  These events are intended for you and your potential mentor/adviser to get to know each other. When you get your schedule, you should take extra time to learn about these faculty members, as you will likely be alone in a room with them for at least half an hour.  Some faculty will ask you questions; others will expect you to ask your own.  Either way, be prepared.
• Groups of applicants meeting with individual faculty or labs.  These events are intended for a faculty member to share their research area with a large group.  Sometimes this is because the faculty members doesn’t think you are a mentor-match with him/her and thus don’t need a one-on-one meeting, and sometimes it is just to save time.
• Groups of applicants meeting with all I/O faculty. These events are intended for you to get information about the I/O program.  While you will get your general questions answered about funding, office space, etc. by the GPD at the first meeting, the I/O faculty will be able to answer specific questions about your curriculum, placement, and other I/O-related questions.
• Groups of applicants meeting (often over lunch) with the current graduate students.  This is your opportunity to get the “truth” about the program.  Everyone has a different opinion, and you should try to get as many as possible.  If you hear about a difficult-to-work-with faculty member or anything that even vaguely sounds gossipy, ask follow-up questions, and then try to get corroboration from other students.
• Social dinner/get-together.  These events are intended to either prove to you that you can have a social life as a graduate student, or to get you to loosen up and talk about yourself.  Or both.  It’s also a good opportunity to see how faculty and students socialize.  Do they chat together or do faculty stay off on their own?  This will give you a window into whether you’ll be treated as a colleague-in-training or a subordinate.

During these events, you should have a list of questions in mind that you want to get answered.  Don’t be scared of asking folks point-blank, but try to ask the right person.  For example, funding questions should be directed at the GPD, curriculum questions should be directed at the I/O faculty, and culture questions should be directed at everyone.  This is not an exhaustive list:

• General
  • What are the school’s/program’s strengths and weakness?
  • Which faculty are best/worst to work with?
  • Do students work with one faculty or several?
  • How long do students typically stay in the program before graduating?
• Classes/Training
  • What kind of statistics/methods training is available?  Are there elective courses? (you might ask about SEM, HLM, and social network analysis, specifically)
  • Are classes regularly available?  Do you ever need to wait for courses to become available?
  • Do students get to work in industry during school?  (is there a practicum?)
• Research/Mentoring
  • Is the program more scientist-focused or practitioner-focused?
  • What role/duties do graduate students typically have on research projects?
  • How much latitude is there for independent projects?
  • Do students present at SIOP?  Do they have first-author presentations?
  • Do students publish?  Do they have first-author publications?
  • Do students publish their theses? (only if a Ph.D. program with a M.S/M.A. along the way)
  • Where have recent students gotten jobs after they graduated?
• Funding/Expenses
  • Is funding available?  Guaranteed?  For how long?
  • Is summer funding available?
  • Are there teaching expectations?  If so, how much?
  • Are students supported by grants?
  • Where do students typically live?  What is it like to live there?  Is the funding available enough to cover living expenses in the area?
• Culture
  • Do the faculty get along/is the department very political?
  • Do the students get along?  Do they socialize outside school?
  • Do the faculty and students socialize outside school?
  • Is this a drinking culture? (this is pretty common in I/O – probably comes from the business influence!)

Remember that the interview/visit is a two-way process.  You’re collecting information about the school and the school is collecting information about you.  Everyone you talk to (including the grad students) will likely have an impact on the admission decision.  For example, I always ask my graduate students if they think the interviewees would fit well in the graduate student culture in our program.

Finally, one general recommendation: get a nice folio (search for it on Amazon) so you can easily carry documents around with you. This will give you a place to put any papers you are given, and also a place to keep notes (for example, you could write the answers to each of the questions above as you got them!). If you are applying to a Ph.D. program, you might also consider carrying a copy of your admissions materials with you (especially your vita), just in case someone asks. This also gives a general impression of preparedness.

AOM 2011 Coverage: Schedule Planning | PDW Reactions | Scholarly Day 1 | Scholarly Day 2

Tuesday was the second day of the scholarly program at the Academy of Management 2011 conference, and it’s full of videos!

I spent the morning listening to Charles O’Reilly III’s talk commemorating his receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior division of AOM.  It was a fascinating talk about the past, current, and future of organizational behavior, giving a real sense of perspective on how much things have changed and how much they still have to change.  Rather than waxing philosophical, I’m embedding it below so that you can watch it yourself.

In the afternoon, I participated in a panel discussion with Gordon Schmidt, Julia Teahen, and Barton Halpern on the future of management and social media. We discussed the current and future role of social media in the practice of management, from the perspectives of external, customer-centric social media as well as internal, employee-centric social media. Internal social media strategy is my expertise, so that is where I had the most to contribute. You can see our panel embedded below.

That’s it for AOM 2011! I hope you enjoyed my coverage. Final tweets appear below:

AOM 2011 Coverage: Schedule Planning | PDW Reactions | Scholarly Day 1 | Scholarly Day 2

Today was the first day of the scholarly program at the Academy of Management 2011 conference, and it was a long one.

I started the day by facilitating a fascinating discussion in Why Minds Matter: Learning, Knowledge and Development in Organizations.  Papers were quite diverse with a few threads in common.  One of my favorites was a piece on “The Games Managers Play,” an exploration of the concept of play in developmental activities.  Play is an integral part of child development, and the skills gained in play have many parallels to the skills needed by successful managers.  There was even a suggestion in the paper that by teaching children not to play too early (e.g. a well-meaning teaching encouraging “serious” behavior in 1st grade), their ability to lead later in life might be inhibited.  I look forward to the paper in Academy of Management Learning and Education.

After a brief meeting with my editor at SAGE and lunch with my collaborator, @iopsychology, I attended a caucus entitled, Use of Digital Social Networks by Companies: What is Different in Latin America from Asia?  I was a little concerned that the caucus would be completely focused on Latin America and Asia (only because I don’t know anything about social media in those areas!), but fortunately it turned into a general discussion of cross-cultural differences in social media strategy across cultures.  Fascinating stuff!

After passing out in my hotel room for an hour (4 hours of sleep is apparently a bad idea), I went to the OB Division Social Hour where, as Technology Czar for the OB Division, I managed the presentation and took photos of award winners, which will eventually make their way onto the OB division website.

So here’s my Twitter stream for today!  If you missed it, I’ll be live again tomorrow!

AOM 2011 Coverage: Schedule Planning | PDW Reactions | Scholarly Day 1 | Scholarly Day 2

It’s Sunday night, which means the “practical” program is over, and the academic program is beginning Monday.  It’s been an eventful few days for me personally, both in terms of presentation and attendance.

On Friday, I presented a piece of @AOMConnect‘s session, Connecting the Academy through Technology.  My section was entitled, Social Media and Gameification in the Classroom, in which I discussed various social media platforms that one might use for teaching, as well as a preview of a gameification research project that I’ve been working on.  Thanks to my lovely wife/camera assistant (the order of those terms is important), I am able to share that presentation, which you can find on our lab’s Facebook page or embedded below.

On Saturday, I spent the morning attending Introduction to Social Media Analysis.  Never having used social media analytic tools, I was very curious what was possible, especially in the context of examining the evolution of online social communities.  What I heard was very promising – especially regarding its ability to ask cross-level questions (e.g. what characteristics of this social network or its members are related to relationship formation?).

Later that day, I spent two hours giving another workshop, Researching and Teaching a Second Life: A Tutorial on Virtual Worlds.  We had nearly a full house (much to my surprise!) although no one brought a laptop.  My original plan had been to bring the group in attendance along with me as we cavorted around the virtual environment, so I had to make a last minute gameplan change – but I think it worked out for the best.  I gave my first 30 minutes of content via a presentation, followed by 75 minutes of live demonstration in Second Life, followed by 15 minutes of questions.  Several folks were really engaged – which is always fantastic to see – and there were a lot of interesting questions on top of the usual newbie questions.  So it was great!

Today, after a morning at the national landmark “The Alamo,” I attended the annual meeting of the executive committee of the Organizational Behavior division (for which I serve as Technology Czar), followed by @AOMConnect‘s tweetup (at which I received an almost forgotten award for being an active social media participant), followed by our executive committee dinner.

Tomorrow is a long day starting at 8AM, and I’ll be actively covering the academic conference via Twitter, so make sure to tune it.  You can find my Twitter transcript from the first few days below:

iopsychology	8/10/2011	11:56 AM	#AOM2011 Sat 1:30 pm PDW: Researching and Teaching a Second Life: A Tutorial on Virtual Worlds by @rnlanders Grand Hyatt RM Bonham B #HR
iopsychology	8/10/2011	11:56 AM	@rnlanders your PDW sounds very cool, I will be there as long as there are no plane delays (my schedule Sat is tight making it there)
iopsychology	8/10/2011	12:01 PM	RT: @rnlanders NeoAcademic: Grad School: Preparing for Inteviews and Visits (http://t.co/YGU7wag) #gradschool #phd #psych Great advice #ed
rnlanders	8/10/2011	11:03 PM	Shazzam! I am in San Antonio for #AOM2011. Now we just need to drop the temperature 30 degrees.
rnlanders	8/10/2011	11:04 PM	RT @iopsychology: #AOM2011 Sat 1:30 pm PDW: Researching and Teaching a Second Life: A Tutorial on Virtual Worlds by @rnlanders Grand Hyatt RM Bonham B #HR
rnlanders	8/10/2011	11:05 PM	@iopsychology I feel like I probably should have originated that rather than RTing it!
rnlanders	8/10/2011	11:07 PM	@NBereman Thanks! I am also hopeful it will go well.
Gricomet	8/11/2011	1:10 AM	@rnlanders Ha, I could understand that perspective. Makes it sound less like self-promotion as a retweet somehow thou.
iopsychology	8/11/2011	1:13 AM	@rnlanders ha, yeah but somehow it feels less like self promotion when you retweet it. Most APA presentations I mentioned did the same.
AOMConnect	8/11/2011	8:36 AM	Maybe some needed rain today @rnlanders Shazzam! I am in San Antonio for #AOM2011. Now we just need to drop the temperature 30 degrees.
iopsychology	8/11/2011	1:30 PM	#AOM2011 Tues 3:00 pm Panel: The Future of Management & Social Media San Antonio C Center Rm 206A #HR My panel w/ @rnlanders #psych
AOMConnect	8/11/2011	2:47 PM	RT @iopsychology: #AOM2011 Tues 3:00 pm Panel: The Future of Management & Social Media San Antonio C Center Rm 206A #HR My panel w/ @rnlanders #psych
rnlanders	8/11/2011	11:51 PM	RT @iopsychology: #AOM2011 Tues 3:00 pm Panel: The Future of Management & Social Media San Antonio C Center Rm 206A #HR My panel w/ @rnlanders #psych
rnlanders	8/11/2011	11:55 PM	@SAGEeducation I tried to find my editor at SAGE on Twitter, but evidently you’re as close as I can get!
rnlanders	8/12/2011	9:00 AM	NeoAcademic: AOM 2011: Schedule Planning (http://rlnd.us/58) #aom #aom2011 #iopsych
AOMConnect	8/12/2011	9:04 AM	Our first blog post! RT @rnlanders: NeoAcademic: AOM 2011: Schedule Planning (http://rlnd.us/58) #aom #aom2011 #iopsych
rnlanders	8/12/2011	2:08 PM	At Connecting the Academy… Will be presenting on #socialmedia and #gamification in 20 mins! Come on by! #aom2011
CesimFinland	8/12/2011	2:23 PM	@rnlanders In which room Richard?
rnlanders	8/12/2011	2:23 PM	Trying to find code for this session to target tweets, but can’t! #AOM2011
rnlanders	8/12/2011	2:25 PM	@CesimFinland the one I’m presenting in, which is a terrible problem to have! Connecting the Academy, on right now
AoMParties	8/12/2011	2:26 PM	More folks at #AoM2011: @sekoubermiss @mcscharf @AOMConnect @Verbeteraar @iyaddae @maijare @Kwekoolio @abweekes @rnlanders #FF
billsoPhD	8/12/2011	2:28 PM	@rnlanders I’m sorry I’m missing your talk! Just landed an hour ago. Good luck! #aom2011
rnlanders	8/12/2011	2:29 PM	@billsoPhD don’t worry, there are several more! #aom2011
MattSuppa	8/12/2011	2:47 PM	Enjoying “Connecting the Academy” session w/ @rnlanders, @AOMConnect & others… #AOM2011 119
rnlanders	8/12/2011	3:09 PM	Presentation done and only now do I know how to tweet on this session #aom2011 119
CesimFinland	8/12/2011	3:19 PM	And a great session indeed @rnlanders I found the motivational effect of gamification really interesting. #aom2011 119
rnlanders	8/12/2011	3:24 PM	@CesimFinland Thanks! I think we are right at the front of unlocking what #gamification can do for learning #AOM2011 119
entrep_thinking	8/12/2011	9:55 PM	RT @CesimFinland: And a great session indeed @rnlanders I found the motivational effect of gamification really interesting. #aom2011 119
abutaleb000	8/13/2011	12:55 AM	@rnlanders Is your business on facebook? Check out our free Facebook Business Fan Page Creator http://t.co/dvIGA1Y & http://t.co/V9nD3Ae
rnlanders	8/13/2011	7:30 AM	See my AOM talk on social media and gameification from yesterday here: http://t.co/V4Q4qOi #AOM2011 119
AOMConnect	8/13/2011	7:52 AM	AWESOME job! RT @rnlanders: See my AOM talk on social media and gameification from yesterday here: http://t.co/pHdZdm7 #AOM2011 119
rnlanders	8/13/2011	8:12 AM	In Intro to Social Network Analysis #AOM2011 209
rnlanders	8/13/2011	8:23 AM	Flows more important than standing relationships in social network analysis #aom2011 209
michaelaroberto	8/13/2011	10:25 AM	RT @AOMConnect: AWESOME job! RT @rnlanders: See my AOM talk on social media and gameification from yesterday here: http://t.co/pHdZdm7 #AOM2011 119
StevenLJohnson	8/13/2011	10:52 AM	RT @AOMConnect RT @rnlanders: See my AOM talk on social media and gameification from yesterday here: http://t.co/izbheLa #AOM2011
Kwekoolio	8/13/2011	11:07 AM	RT @StevenLJohnson: RT @AOMConnect RT @rnlanders: See my AOM talk on social media and gameification from yesterday here: http://t.co/izbheLa #AOM2011
rnlanders	8/13/2011	11:59 AM	Social networks very interesting but 4 hours of it almost killed me #aom2011 209
iopsychology	8/13/2011	12:13 PM	As long as I don’t hit some unforseen complications going to register at #AOM2011 & then at 1:30 pm go to @rnlanders Second Life PDW
iopsychology	8/13/2011	1:37 PM	At @rnlanders Second Life PDW at #AOM2011. Very interesting.
AOMConnect	8/13/2011	1:38 PM	Hangin’ with the cool kids in Second Life RT @iopsychology: At @rnlanders Second Life PDW at #AOM2011. Very interesting.
AOMConnect	8/13/2011	1:54 PM	Session packed on Second Life with @rnlanders
AOMConnect	8/13/2011	2:00 PM	Session packed at #AOM2011 with @rnlanders
AOMConnect	8/13/2011	11:03 PM	Slides and video posted for Connecting the Academy through Technology session at #AOM2011 http://t.co/0JLC7dB w thanks @rnlanders for vid.
rnlanders	8/14/2011	1:44 PM	@iopsychology how is Monday at 11:30 for lunch? I’ve got a session to attend at 1:15
iopsychology	8/14/2011	4:03 PM	@rnlanders Sure Monday at 11:30 pm would work for me. Where do you want to meet?
rnlanders	8/14/2011	5:48 PM	I am tweeting from @AOMConnect ‘s social media meeting, which I think puts me in a social media möbius loop #aom2011
rnlanders	8/14/2011	6:00 PM	@billsoPhD I choose to defy all logic and use both #aom2011 and #aom2011tweetup … How can you take sides?
rnlanders	8/14/2011	7:09 PM	At the OB division executive committee dinner… And surprisingly not making a fool of myself… I think #AOM2011
iopsychology	8/14/2011	7:14 PM	@rnlanders sounds good, now you just have to keep that going. It is a vigilance task.

AOM 2011 Coverage: Schedule Planning | PDW Reactions | Scholarly Day 1 | Scholarly Day 2

Like last year, I’ll be live-blogging via Twitter from the AOM conference, which begins today. This post contains my hypothetical schedule. Of course, the events that you want to see are not always the events you end up seeing, so this is not necessarily definite.  I’ll be copying my live-blogs into daily posts, along with summaries of each day’s events as I experienced them.

I’m also participating in AOM’s first experiment in live blogging the conference at http://meeting.aomonline.org/news/.  While you’ll get all of my content in both places, also check out the official conference blog for the other contributors.

Much like at SIOP this year, I noticed that coverage of “technology at work” is reduced at AOM. I am beginning to wonder whether this is a trend!

Personally, I’m involved in four pieces at AOM this year, which are highlighted in the chart below.  I strongly recommend the three where I’m presenting:

1. The all-academy PDW, Connecting the Academy through Technology, which will be a combination of presentations and table discussions on various technology-oriented topics. I’ll be personally presenting on Social Media and Gameification in the Classroom during this session on my work with social media and gameification as a way to improve college student outcomes. We’ve got a fascinating line-up, including discussion on recruiting, training, and performance appraisal applications of virtual worlds (like Second Life).
2. My OB/HR/OCIS PDW, Researching and Teaching a Second Life: A Tutorial on Virtual Worlds, in which I will be introducing attendees to the virtual world, Second Life, and how to use it to support research, as a subject of research (e.g. how to use virtual worlds to facilitate virtual teamwork), and as a tool for teaching.
3. The Future of Management and Social Media, a panel organized by Gordon Schmidt in which a variety of industry folks and academics (including me!) will be discussing… well… the future of management and social media! What are the implications of social media for the world of work, for education, for research? Come find out!

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: how to prepare for interviews and visits.

A graduate school will offer you an interview or a visit after they make initial admission decisions, usually several months after applications are due.

If you get a visit, that means you have been accepted outright – it is up to you as to whether or not you wish to accept that offer and attend graduate school there.  If you get an interview, that means the place you are applying wants to meet you first – the school has not yet made you an offer and will not necessarily accept you.

Typically, only the best of the best schools offer visits.  This is because these schools are competing to attract the very best of the best graduate students and realize that if you are given both a visit and an interview, you are likely to have a much more favorable view of the school offering you a visit.  But here’s the dirty secret – the education you get at the school offering you a visit will not necessarily be any better for you.  It just means they have a bigger budget for admissions.  Schools offering visits will often pay your travel and provide lodging (usually with current graduate students in the program), while this will vary widely for schools offering interviews.

Either way, you are on the short list for the school.  For many, that means the school has narrowed their applicant pool down from 100 applicants or more down to less than 10.  So even if you get an interview, you’ve already passed some major hurdles.  If you get a visit, you’ve passed even more.  Either way, you want to make a good impression.

If you are interviewing, you want to make a good impression because that impression will help the faculty decide whether or not you should attend.  If you are visiting, you want to make a good impression because that will change how the faculty interact with you once you get there.  Graduate school is very unlike undergraduate in that you are now receiving focused career training rather than general studies.  In addition to the next two to six years, you will likely know and interact with the faculty at your graduate school for the rest of your life.  These people can make or break your career.  You want them to like you.

You should first make a good impression by dressing the part.  Just like with job interviews, how you appear during graduate school interviews will be interpreted as the best you will ever be dressed as a graduate student.  If you can’t pull it together enough to look good for an interview, you won’t look good for class or clients.  Suits are only the top end though – as long as you look professional, you’re fine.  If you’re not comfortable in suit and tie, just go for nice khakis and a button up.  Definitely don’t show up in ratty jeans or shorts.  If you’re interviewing at a business school I/O program, play it safe and put on the suit.

You should second make a good impression by being informed.  This includes:

• Learn about the program.  What classes look interesting?
• Learn about the faculty.  Who do most you want to learn from?
• Learn about the faculty’s research.  Which projects do you want to be a part of?
• Figure out what you want out of the program.  What do you want to learn?
• Have answers ready to standard graduate school interview questions:
  • Why do you want to go to graduate school?
  • What do you want out of graduate school?
  • What attracted you to I/O psychology?
  • What did you do in college to prepare for graduate school?
  • Why did you apply here?
  • Why should we accept you?
  • What are your research interests?
  • What did you mean by [___] in your application essay?
  • I noticed you worked on [___] project (or with [__] person).  How did that go?
  • What was your role on [___] project?
  • What would you do if you weren’t accepted to graduate school?
  • Do you want to be an academic or practitioner after graduate school?
  • Any standard job interview questions (just replace “job” with “school” or “program”)

You should third make a good impression by following this simple rule: don’t be a jackass.  If you’ve reached the interview stage, the faculty has already decided that your qualifications are sufficient to go to graduate school.  The remaining question becomes, “Should you come to this graduate school?”  In I/O terms, one of the major goals of the faculty at this point is to assess your fit – how well would you match both the program itself and the other graduate students already in the program.  Being arrogant/a know-it-all, bored/uninterested, unprofessional/overly familiar, condescending, dishonest – these are all signs that you will be a poor colleague to your fellow students and a pain to have in the program.

Of course, if you really are these things – do us all a favor and don’t apply in the first place.

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: choosing where to apply.

The variety of schools makes choosing where precisely to apply a daunting (and often expensive) task.  You want to balance several factors:

1. Don’t overload your letter writers with too many letters.
2. Apply only to programs you would actually attend if accepted.
3. Apply only to programs for which you are qualified.

In practice, this means you should apply to no more than a dozen schools, typically a balance of 6 to 10 primary targets and 2 to 4 backups.

You should start the selection process by getting a list of graduate schools with either Master’s or Ph.D. programs (depending on which degree you are going for) and then try to narrow it down based on any other major limitations.  You can find an excellent search tool to do this on the SIOP website.  If you are absolutely tied to a particular region of the country, you can limit your search to one region, but this is a little risky, because program quality is not even across the country.

Create a spreadsheet (use OpenOffice.org, if you don’t already have another spreadsheet program).  Put the name of each school in the first column, its location in the second, and program type in the third.

When deciding where to apply, you should start by considering the quality of school that you can get into.  If you have exceptionally high GRE scores, that means you can get into a highly selective program.  If your GRE scores aren’t so strong, then you should not even apply to those schools.  Many graduate programs post the average GRE scores of applicants to their programs, so this is something you can find on their websites or using the search tool linked above. Add these values to your chart.

You should also not aim too low; if your GRE scores are 700/700, you should probably not be considering programs with averages at 400/400. As you eliminate programs, remove them from your chart.

As you go through the SIOP listings, add other columns that would influence your decision: region of the country, program size, number of faculty, etc. If these things are important to you, they should be in your chart.

Once you are down to a list of 30 or so programs that you are qualified for, open their websites and check out the faculty. Who has interests most similar to yours? As an undergraduate, you may or may not have specific research interests, but even if you don’t, some topics will sound more interesting than others. Job satisfaction, organizational justice, online social media? Again, add this information to your chart.

With your completed chart, consider your list of programs and trim them down to your final list. Really think about which features are most important to you, and which programs you are most qualified for.

One of the most surprising and scary aspects of applying to graduate school for most undergraduates is that just because you meet the minimum qualifications does not mean you will be accepted. This is true for undergraduate applications as well, but it is even worse for graduate school because competition is much fiercer. Many competitive programs have between 40 and 300 applicants and 5 or fewer spots to fill. This means that faculty sometimes make decisions based upon criteria that you can’t predict – perhaps Candidate Q had a cover letter that really resonated with one of the faculty and Candidate P’s undergraduate adviser is a close personal friend of another faculty member. Now your chances have gone from 5/300 to 3/300. This is why you should apply broadly.

Remember that earlier I mentioned having “backup” schools – these are schools where your GRE scores are right around (or slightly higher than) their current average. This is to increase your chances that even if you are quite unlucky, you’ll still be able to go somewhere. Don’t choose just one backup school – the same strange selectivity can occur at those locations as well. When I applied to graduate school nearly a decade ago, I got into 80% of my primary choices and none of my backups. It happens.

Finally, if you are at a school with I/O faculty, don’t underestimate the value of simply scheduling a meeting and chatting with them about where they think you should apply. When a student comes to me individually, I can consider a lot more about their particular situation and give them more targeted advice.

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: getting recommendations.

Ph.D. programs generally require 3 or 4 recommendation letters, while Master’s programs require the same number of either recommendation letters or references.  That is because different programs want different information from recommendations.

A reference is simply someone that the selection committee (the group that will be deciding whether or not to accept you) can e-mail or call to ask questions about you.  This requires much less work on the part of the person providing the recommendation.  References are usually contacted by the selection committee a month or two after you turn in your application, if at all.

A recommendation letter is a letter in which someone with more experience than you explains why you would be a good graduate student, which becomes part of your graduate school application.  That means the most valuable letters contain several pieces of information about you:

• Your overall “readiness” for graduate-level work
• Your reliability in meeting your commitments
• Your personality
• Your intelligence/ability level
• Your creativity/innovation
• Any major accomplishments that are relevant to graduate work

That means for a letter writer to write a good recommendation letter, they need to 1) know you and/or your work pretty well and 2) have sufficient experience to know what’s important to be a successful graduate student.

Considering this, some letter writers are better than others.  Here is a rough list, from best to worst:

1. A faculty member in whose lab you worked and whose class you took, with whom you worked closely
2. A faculty member in whose lab you worked, with whom you worked closely
3. A graduate student in a lab where you worked, with whom you worked closely
4. A faculty member in whose lab you worked and whose class you took
5. A faculty member in whose lab you worked
6. A graduate student in whose lab you worked
7. A faculty member whose class you took and did well

You probably noticed that everyone on this list is an academic.  Remember that references for graduate school are professional references, not personal ones.  Your boss at MegaMart doesn’t know what work as a graduate student looks like, so don’t ask her to be your reference.

Note that a faculty member whose class you took and did well in is at the bottom of the list.  That’s because this person is unlikely to have many specific comments about your capabilities in regards to graduate school.  Asking three faculty whose class you took is an extremely poor strategy for collecting recommendation letters.  One such person is fine as a last resort, but you should aim higher in the list, especially if you want a good shot at a Ph.D. program.

Just because some people are higher in the list doesn’t mean you should ask them at the exclusion of others.  For example, if you have worked in a research lab closely with three graduate students, you would not want to ask all of them.  In your final list of references, try to have balance: at least one faculty member, at least one person that has worked with you closely, and at least one person that has taught you.  Hopefully that means at least two faculty.  Many ambitious undergraduates work in two labs in order to have several folks to choose from (plus this looks impressive anyway!).

If you’re pursuing a Master’s degree, then this order is much less important.  Faculty with whom you’ve taken classes and made an impression are probably enough, but higher in the list is still certainly better.  If you are applying to a professional Master’s program, you should also add a professional reference if you have one – someone in the human resources/OB world who can comment on your potential as a practitioner.

You should start planning out who will be your letter writers at the beginning of your Junior year.  As soon as you’ve identified someone you definitely want to be a reference and they know you pretty well, ask them if they’re willing to write a letter for you, up to a year in advance.  This will call their attention to watching your performance, which will help them write a better letter.  If you only need references, you can contact these folks a month or two before you submit applications. You need to work in a lab and you need the faculty with whom you are working to know who you are.

You should give letter writers at least 30 days (a month) to write letters for you.  That means 30 days out, you need to know where you are applying and deliver a recommendation packet to each of your letter writers.

The recommendation packet (which might be paper or electronic) should contain:

• A list of all schools you are applying to.  Include which program you are applying to, e.g. Master’s in I/O, Ph.D. in Human Resources.
• Deadlines for each school.  To be safe, set deadlines for your letter writers a week before the “real” deadline.
• Specific instructions for each school.   Some schools want letter writers to also fill out online forms, some want letters e-mailed, and others want letters snail mailed in an envelope signed across the back flap.  Do this grunt work for your writers – figure out what each school needs, and include this information in your packet.
• Your unofficial transcript.  This will help your letter writer describe your academic qualifications outside of his or her classroom and lab.
• Your resume/curriculum vita.  You need to prepare this for some of your applications.
• The best on-topic paper you’ve ever written.  Find a paper you wrote for your lab, for your thesis, or for your I/O or HR class.
• Any needed letter hardware.  If some of your applications require paper letters, include a pre-addressed stamped envelope.  Not only is it more polite to pay for your letter writer’s stamp, but it also ensures that your letter writer will send it to the right address.

The more organized you are, the less you are relying on your letter writers to remember things on your behalf, and the less likely something will go wrong.  Use spreadsheets.

Finally, don’t ask your letter writers for a copy of the letter they write.  Recommendation letters are generally considered confidential, between the letter writer and the search committee only.  Even if I like a student, I generally won’t write a letter if they want to see it first.

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: How do I prepare for the GREs?

The GREs, although just a couple of numbers in your graduate school application, are absolutely critical.  Poor GREs can sink even a moderately strong application while exceptional GREs can lend strong support to a weak one.  The reason for this is that GRE is a standardized indicator of potential.

Standardization is important because it helps the faculty reading your application put all the other information in perspective.  If you have a strong GPA, it’s hard for us to tell if that’s because you worked really hard, because you took easy classes, or because you cheated your way through.  If you have strong recommendation letters, it’s difficult to know if you had a personal relationship with those faculty or if they send out the same letter for everyone.  If you have research experience, it’s tricky to know what you really learned from that experience.  So while all of this information is useful in putting together a complete picture of your potential as a graduate student, GRE scores are the only thing we can use to directly compare one applicant to another.

The GRE is what’s called a “high stakes” test.  You only have one shot at it, and the results are extremely important.  Because of this, it is absolutely critical that you prepare appropriately for the experience.

There are really two aspects to GRE prep.  The first is long-term preparation, which you’ve been doing since you were born – learning.  The more familiar you are with how the world works and why it works that way, the better you will do.  There are two character traits that will help you here: intelligence and motivation to learn.  The greater your intelligence, the easier you will find it to learn.  The greater your motivation to learn, the more likely you have sought information when you had a question about the world.  When you think to yourself, “I wonder…” do you run to check for the answer online?  That’s motivation to learn.

You can improve your long-term readiness for the GRE by taking challenging classes and taking everyone opportunity you can to learn about the world around you.

The second aspect to GRE prep is short-term preparation, which you should begin during your Junior year of college.  This involves taking some kind of preparatory course on the GRE.  You don’t necessarily take a GRE prep course to learn the content on the GRE, aside from brushing up on vocabulary and mathematics you’ve forgotten.  Instead, you take a GRE prep course to gain familiarity and comfort with the format and time pressure that you’ll experience during the actual testing.

One of the biggest threats to your GRE score is your own insecurity; if you get in that room and panic, your score will suffer and won’t reflect your true potential.  Completing a preparatory course will prepare you in the same way that drills prepare a soldier for combat.  While nothing is quite like real combat (test-taking), you want to go on autopilot when you get in that room.  You want to sit down, know exactly what kind of questions you’ll see, know exactly which techniques and strategies you will use to solve them, and just do it.  That will fight off panic better than anything else will.  Remember, if you’ve done so many practice tests that you’re bored taking them, you won’t be nearly so anxious during the real test.

In terms of the preparatory course itself, you probably don’t need to waste money on an in-person course – some of these run into the thousands of dollars.  All the material you get in person you can get from a book with CD or online course for less than $50.  If you find it hard to motivate yourself to study on your own time, you will likely struggle in graduate school anyway.

The GRE uses an approach to asking questions called computerized adaptive testing.  This means that you only get small groups of questions at a time, and the test adapts its difficulty as it learns about your skill level.  You need a prep course that simulates this adaptive approach.   Testing yourself with banks of GRE questions is not the same; you need to experience practice tests exactly as you will experience the real test.

Create a schedule for your practice and stick to it.  Some CD programs (e.g. Kaplan’s and Princeton Review) will develop these for you, but in general, expect to spend at least 3 to 5 hours per week for the six months leading up to the GRE, with more intense prep closer to the actual testing date.  You might instead start preparing a full year in advance; think about your comfort with test taking, and give yourself more time if you know it will be a challenge.  You should take the GRE as early as possible during your Senior year (usually August), so this means starting GRE prep between August and February of your Junior year.  You want to take it early in case you decide you want to improve your score and take it a second time before applications are due.

You will probably want to take two GREs: the GRE General Test (quantitative, verbal, and analytic writing) along with the GRE Subject Test in Psychology.  Not all programs require the Psych GRE, but it is better to be safe and complete it anyway.  Even if both are required, your General Test score will likely be more important than the Psychology Subject Test in most programs.

At the actual testing date, take all the standard advice for doing well on tests:

1. Don’t do anything test-related the day before the test.  This will help you relax the next day.
2. Get a full night of sleep.  You may be nervous and have trouble sleeping, but try to be in bed for at least 8 or 9 hours to be at maximum strength.  Do NOT try to cram at the last minute.  You’ll be better off sleeping a full night without the last-minute cram session than you will be exhausted.
3. Don’t use energy drinks unless you usually use energy drinks.  There’s nothing worse than sudden unexpected stomach pain in the middle of a test.  If you’ve used energy drinks before in high-pressure testing situations, then feel free – but don’t try anything new that morning.
4. Eat a bland but high energy breakfast.  You need carbs to get your brain moving.  Toast, cereal, granola bars, cereal bars.  Your stomach may have more butterflies than usual; plan accordingly.
5. Plan your route to the testing center the day before.  Even if you have a GPS in your vehicle, print out directions the day before.  No last minute surprises; you never know what might happen.  If your GPS doesn’t work, and you run inside to print directions really quickly, or have to hold your cellphone, etc, all of these things will increase your anxiety and will lower your score.  You might also want to do a dry-run drive (someone I know discovered her directions were to the wrong place after attempting to follow them and ended up at the testing center an hour late).  You want to do your dry-run the day before because you never know when construction will unexpected alter your path.
6. Plan to arrive 45 minutes early to the testing center.  You want to get there early (so there’s time in case you hit traffic or other trouble) but not so early that you sit quietly in the lobby worrying about the test for an hour.
7. Plan something fun for after the test.  Visit an amusement park, go biking, have a nice dinner with friends, something.  This will give you something to look forward to afterward, regrardless of how the test goes.  Ensure it’s something you’ll enjoy doing regardless of how things go.

With adequate prep and a calm attitude, you’ll ace that test for sure.

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology? Lots of decisions, not much direction. I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to. I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association. As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere. That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school. So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about an important step in preparation to enter grad school: How do I get “research experience”?

The amount of research experience you need really depends on your answer to the first big question.  If you’re planning to go into a Master’s program, research experience is nice but not required.  If you’re planning to go into a Ph.D. program, it’s a must if you want to get into even a slightly competitive program.  Remember, almost everyone that wants a Ph.D. is smart; you need to distinguish yourself from other applicants in other ways, and lab experience is an important way to do that.

If you are at a school with a sizable research-oriented psychology program (typically large public universities), then you’ve got it easy; there are probably lots of faculty actively looking for undergraduate research assistants (URAs or sometimes just RAs).  The easiest way to become an RA at such a school is to ask one of the faculty that can vouch for you.  For example, if you were vocal in your Personality Psych class and you have a good relationship with that instructor, ask that person to help you find a URA position.  Even if s/he doesn’t have a lab or isn’t looking, you’ll still get pointed in the right direction.  And believe me, as faculty, a good word about your trustworthiness from a colleague will go a long way. Even if I’m not actively looking for URAs, if another faculty member tells me, “I had a GREAT student and she wants to be an RA,” I’ll often bring that student on board anyway.

You might wonder why trustworthiness is an important quality in a URA – it is in fact the most important quality.  This is because the primary role of an URA is simply to show up where you need to show up, on time and without incident.  We don’t expect URAs to advance the cause of science – we know you’ll be trained later as a graduate student to do that.  Instead, we expect you to fill the vital roles of data coder, session proctor, and recruiter.  These roles are the front lines of research.  You cannot yet imagine how frustrating it is to develop the perfect research study, schedule a URA to run the session, and then to get a series of panicked e-mails from undergraduate research participants at the door of your research lab with no one to meet them.  Avoid that, prove that you are reliable, and that’s also something we can comment on in our recommendation letters – something other faculty are looking for.

So what if you’re motivated to pursue an I/O degree but there aren’t any I/O research labs to join?  Not a problem.  You see, research faculty in I/O know that we are a somewhat rare commodity, and most of us understand that working in an I/O lab is unattainable for many qualified applicants.  So experience is an I/O lab is not critical; you just need experience in any psychology lab.  This shows us that you know what you’re getting into and understand what research really involves.  I/O experience is certainly better – but if you simply don’t have access to it, we understand.

Now we get to the difficult cases: what if you’re at a college without any psychology researchers?  I’ve heard a number of approaches to this problem, including working by remote at other universities (some faculty will take virtual URAs), summer research assistantships (these are often called REU programs), and simply traveling to the big university a few towns over a few times per week.  If you want to go to graduate school, especially if you want a Ph.D., you need research experience and a close working relationship with faculty if you want good chances at getting in.  Do whatever it takes.  And fortunately, if you end up having to go to all this extra effort, you have an added advantage: it’ll be clear that you’re a serious applicant worth consideration.

The results of a poll by Saatchi & Saatchi have recently been floating around the blogosphere indicating that the majority of people want gameification at work. As with any time an online “expert” makes such a reveal, I wanted to check to make sure that methodologically, the conclusions it is drawing (i.e. people want gameification!) are valid given the data and approach it took.

To begin, here are some general details.  The study was conducted via an online survey between May 11 and May 17 with 2004 US respondents, half of which were women.  Ages ranged from 18-44.  The recruiting strategy is not very clear in the materials provided by Saatchi & Saatchi.  They only say that subjects were “recruited via email from Ipsos MediaCT’s Sample Community.” Ipsos is a huge international survey company, but I am not familiar with “MediaCT” or their “sample communities.”

A little research on the Ipsos MediaCT’s Sample Community turns up this document from Ipsos MediaCT.  As far as I can tell, Ipsos MediaCT passively collects data from consumers as they traverse Ipsos’ client websites.  This is a selling point according to the Ipsos document; with their samples, you aren’t tapping people who have completed surveys before, which is a methodological weakness (if all surveys come from the same core group of people, you are less sure that new surveys will generalize outside of that group).  It’s not clear how e-mail addresses are harvested, but spyware is really the only answer I can come up with.  That’s not necessarily bad from a methodological point of view (although it’s a little fishy that this information is not easily accessible), although it might be unethical.

There are also a number of odd features in the way that data is reported.  For example, the report says, “50% of the US online population between the ages of 18 and 44 play social games on a daily basis.”  In terms of realistically deploying gameification in an organization, we’re concerned with the entire US population – not just those already online, nor just those involved in this survey.  Given that no information about sampling is really provided (see above), we don’t have any frame of reference for what “US online population” means.

As to why that might matter, consider this information buried in the Appendix: only 6% of those sampled have less than a high school education and 21% with high school but no college.  Most jobs where gameification would be most easily applicable (and probably well-received) are not high complexity jobs (lawyer, doctor); they are entry-level jobs like basic retail and service industries, where high school educations are less common.  Would gameification work for this group?  Even if we were to ignore the peculiarities with the reporting here, the answer is simply not provided; “interesting” tidbits have been cherry-picked from the data and a comprehensive background is not presented.

Then there’s this gem, which spurred the popularity of this poll in general: “Among respondents who are employed, 55% would be interested in working for a company that offers games as a way to increase productivity.” The realities of gameification (i.e., game-based incentive systems) versus the vision of gameification that most employees might have when they see a question on a survey (i.e., let’s add FUN!) may be very different. And of course, note the very peculiar limiting to only those who are employed. If the unemployed don’t want to work for a company that offers games, wouldn’t that be a pretty bad sign?

So who really wants gameification at work? At this point, we don’t really know. And should we trust this data otherwise?  I’ll give my standard advice: Trust it as much as you trust anything on the Internet.

One of my core personal missions is to convince the corporate world that gameification is a valuable tool in the arsenal of HR strategists for encouraging particular behaviors from their employees.

From a mechanical standpoint, gameification is no different from any traditional reward system. When you earn “points” for eating regularly at your favorite sub shop, you’re getting all the rewards that gameification can offer. Perhaps even more so, as points at the sub shop are probably tied to a free sub! But there is an important difference between the sub shop’s loyalty program and gameification as HR can use it: fun.  Gameified reward systems are not only rationally “a good idea” but are also themselves enjoyable to participate in.

Convincing management that the workplace can (and should) be fun is a surprisingly difficult task. In the United States at least, there is a perception that work and play should be kept far apart. I’ve attempted to make my own contribution to the argument by publishing a piece on the online social network I developed with gameification elements as “Casual Social Games as Serious Games: The Psychology of Gameification in Undergraduate Education and Employee Training” in an upcoming text published by Springer-Verlag, Serious Games and Edutainment Applications.  With gameification techniques in place, undergraduates took optional online multiple choice quizzes and called them fun, enjoyable, and rewarding.  That’s power!

So given all that, I appreciate the effort by Socialcast to promote gameification with a big manager-friendly infographic (see below).  It reports all sorts of interesting statistics, such as the low mean engagement of employees in the US workforce now, the expanding video gaming market, the wide variety of demographics (especially ages) now playing games, and the parallels between games and jobs.

It is potentially a smidge misleading though.  While the infographic puts game mechanics and engagement right next to each other, it is essentially doing no more than wink wink, nudge nudge, they could be related! There’s not yet a whole lot of scientific evidence that game-focused programs actually do any good (at least, aside from my own and a handful of others).  We also don’t really know the boundary conditions under which gameification works; for example, does the concept of leveling improve outcomes?  And there’s absolutely nothing yet tying gameification to engagement, although I’ve got an open project right now that I hope will do just that (as long as the data look like I hope they will!).

Regardless, for now, the graphic does illustrate some interesting points; perhaps it will now be a part of my manager-convincing arsenal.

By the way, I use the term “gameification” instead of “gamification” quite purposefully.  Why take the game out of gameification?

Grad School Series: Applying to Graduate School in Industrial/Organizational Psychology
Starting Sophomore Year: Should I get a Ph.D. or Master’s? | How to Get Research Experience
Starting Junior Year: Preparing for the GRE | Getting Recommendations
Starting Senior Year: Where to Apply for Grad School | Value of Traditional vs. Online Degrees
Interviews/Visits: Preparing for Interviews | Going to Interviews
In Graduate School: What to Expect First Year

So you want to go to graduate school in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology?  Lots of decisions, not much direction.  I bet I can help!

While my undergraduate students are lucky to be at a school with I/O psychologists, many students interested in I/O psychology aren’t at schools with people they can talk to.  I/O psychology is still fairly uncommon in the grand scheme of psychologists; there are around 7,000 members of SIOP, the dominant professional organization of I/O, compared to the 150,000 in the American Psychological Association.  As a result, many schools simply don’t have faculty with expertise in this area, leading many promising graduate students to apply elsewhere.  That’s great from the perspective of I/O psychologists – lots of jobs – but not so great for grad-students-to-be or the field as a whole.

As a faculty member at ODU with a small army of undergraduate research assistants, I often find myself answering the same questions over and over again about graduate school.  So why not share this advice with everyone?

This week, I’d like to talk about a Big Decision: Should I get a Master’s or Ph.D. in I/O Psychology?

This falls under two categories in my grad school timeline above: Information Gathering and Career.  This is a decision you should try to make during your sophomore year of college, and the decision should be driven by what kind of career you ultimately want.

Careers in I/O psychology are a little different than in most fields.  Because we are so small (in the grand scheme of things), there is less public advertisement of positions than typical in most fields.  You probably won’t find a position for an “I/O psychologist” on Monster.com, for example.  Many positions that I/O psychologists end up in are also not called “I/O psychologist.”  As the “science behind human resources,” I/O psychologists end up in a wide variety of career paths.  This is because the skill set developed as a I/O psychologist in training prepares you for virtually any job involving “people at work,” including consultants, professors, assessors, directors, and CEOs.  For a few examples, see these resources from SIOP.

So when you think about the difference between Master’s and Ph.D.-level training, you’re not comparing specific careers – rather, you are considering different approaches to training.  In a Master’s program, you are training to become an I/O professional.  An I/O professional will consider how to apply the principles of I/O psychology to solve specific organizational problems.  In a Ph.D. program, you are training to become an I/O scholar.  An I/O scholar will do the same tasks as the I/O professional, but will also use those experiences to advance our general understanding of I/O through research.

Thus, I/O professionals (Master’s) are trained to help organizations.  I/O scholars (Ph.D.’s) are trained to advance organizational science, helping organizations along the way.  Master’s students are trained to practice I/O psychology.  Ph.D. students are trained to conduct research in I/O psychology.

In practice, this means that an I/O psychology Ph.D. will generally have more responsibility than an I/O with a Master’s.  If you are in an organization with lots of I/O psychologists, the Ph.D.’s will generally be making “the big decisions,” while the I/Os with Master’s will aid with implementation or conduct background research.  Since many modern organizational problems are at the frontiers of our current understanding of organizations, a person with Master’s level training will generally not be prepared to conduct research within the organization to help answer these questions.  Of course, there are many I/O’s with Master’s that start their own consulting agencies or work as the only I/O psychologist in an organization – but this is a matter of experience and personal drive.

And of course, if you want to be a professor, the only suitable degree is a Ph.D.

All I/O training, regardless of level, centers around (or rather, should center around) the scientist-practitioner model.  This is one of the key differences between an MBA in Human Resources and a degree in I/O Psychology.  While the MBA will make an informed decision, usually based on reasoning from case studies and their own experience as managers (often anecdotal evidence or recommendations from more experienced businesspeople), an I/O will reference the current scholarly research literature to make this same judgment from scientific evidence.  While an MBA simply wants to solve a problem, an I/O wants to understand that problem based on our scientific understanding of human behavior and then solve it.

If you are having a hard time making a decision, assume you’ll go for a Ph.D.   The preparation you’ll do over the next three years for a Ph.D. will be sufficient for a Master’s too, but the preparation needed for a Master’s won’t be enough for a Ph.D.  Better safe than sorry!

Please also note that the guidelines given here are based on “typical” programs – there are certainly scholarship-focused Master’s programs and practitioner-focused Ph.D. programs, but the majority of them follow the model here.

Once you have a degree in mind, you should tailor your efforts to prepare to apply to programs accordingly.  Stay tuned for future features on applying to grad school here on NeoAcademic, which will help you make more decisions along this path.