Richard N. Landers

My name is Richard N. Landers, and I am an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, USA.

My home area is Industrial/Organizational Psychology, the application of psychological principles to the working world.  In particular, I’m interested in how the Internet has and will change the way work is conducted.  Training is my focus right now – using the web to deliver instruction is the likely future of most work-related training, and relatively little research is available to help practitioners design web-based training effectively.  I think I can help.

My current research focuses on the use of virtual worlds and online social media to improve both employee training and higher education.  The biggest project I'm working involves a multi-university interdisciplinary effort to use social media and gaming principles to support undergraduate instruction, which has been features in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

My expertise is a peculiar one for an I/O psychologist.  I trained for my Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota under the brilliant Paul Sackett, but I also have a long history and strong background in computer science.  I’m a psychologist who knows how to write computer programs.  That puts you in the minority.