James E. Folkestad

Teamwork for Innovation: A Content Analysis of the Highly Read and Highly Cited Literature on Innovation

Globalization is an ongoing process that is bearing witness to unprecedented change. The industrial age rewarded organizations that cloistered scarce information, creating closed secretive organizations. Digitization of information is creating an entirely new era based on information abundance. This information abundance allows workers around the world to connect to digitized resources and compete globally for work. A premium is now being paid to organizations that create innovative solutions from within this information-abundant ecosystem. This study identifies highly read books and highly cited research articles on innovation and conducts a cross-case inductive analysis on the key terms related to teamwork.The dominant emergent theme that an innovative culture is essential provides important insight for human resource development professionals as they build teams in an effort to compete globally for innovative work.

Measuring Game Engagement: Multiple Methods and Construct Complexity

Background. Engagement has been identified as a crucial component of learning in games research. However, the conceptualization and operationalization of engagement vary widely in the literature. Many valuable approaches illuminate ways in which presence, flow, arousal, participation, and other concepts constitute or contribute to engagement. However, few studies examine multiple conceptualizations of engagement in the same project. Method. This article discusses the results of two experiments that measure engagement in five different ways: survey self-report, content analyses of player videos, electro-dermal activity, mouse movements, and game click logs. We examine the relationships among these measures and assess how they are affected by the technical characteristics of a 30-minute, custom-built, educational game: use of a customized character, level of narrative complexity, and level of art complexity. Results. We found that the five measures of engagement correlated in limited ways, and that they revealed substantially different relationships with game characteristics. We conclude that engagement as a construct is more complex than is captured in any of these measures individually and that using multiple methods to assess engagement can illuminate aspects of engagement not detectable by a single method of measurement.

Integrated rapid prototyping and rapid tooling (IRPRT)

The strategic integration of rapid prototyping and rapid tooling is being used for getting product to the market quickly by resolving a long‐standing conflict between design and manufacturing. Currently rapid tooling can be produced at such reduced cost and time that the tool is considered to be disposable. The ability to produce inexpensive tooling allows the life cycle to be fundamentally changed, incorporating the concept and tooling review into one development phase and allowing both design and manufacturing requirements to be identified. This approach has allowed management to release product based on competitive market strategy rather than an estimated deadline.

Examining Collaborative Learning Modalities (CLM): Critical Multicultural Education Online?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a very difficult, yet all important and ongoing research question – how do we best use online collaborative learning modalities (CLM) to supplement conversations in multicultural education courses?Design/methodology/approach – This qualitative study examined emergent themes in asynchronous threaded discussions created by 23 students within a Masters level multicultural education course at a large land‐grant university in the USA.Findings – Engagement in threaded discussions fostered student understanding of a systems perspective of social realities. Power, privilege, and oppression related to race, gender, and economics in the USA were explored through student use of real world, concrete examples – something that does not always occur in face‐to‐face classroom encounters constrained by time and the pacing of curriculum.Research limitations/implications – Researchers would like to see more empirical research in using technologically mediated, CLM to ...

Serious Efforts at Bias Reduction: The Effects of Digital Games and Avatar Customization on Three Cognitive Biases

As research on serious games continues to grow, we investigate the efficacy of digital games to train enhanced decision making through understanding cognitive biases. This study investigates the ability of a 30-minute digital game as compared with a 30-minute video to teach people how to recognize and mitigate three cognitive biases: fundamental attribution error, confirmation bias, and bias blind spot. We investigate the effects of character customization on learning outcomes as compared with an assigned character. We use interviews to understand the qualitative differences between the conditions. Experimental results suggest that the game was more effective at teaching and mitigating cognitive biases than was the training video. Although interviews suggest players liked avatar customization, results of the experiment indicate that avatar customization had no significant effect on learning outcomes. This research provides information future designers can use to choose the best medium and affordances for the most effective learning outcomes on cognitive processes.

Analytics-Driven Design: Impact and Implications of Team Member Psychological Perspectives on a Serious Games (SGs) Design Framework

The number of educational or serious games (SGs) available to educators has increased in recent years as the cost of game development has been reduced. A benefit of SGs is that they employ not only lesson content but also knowledge contexts where learners can connect information to its context of use with active participation and engagement. This, in turn, improves learners’ ability to recall, integrate, and apply what they learn. Much of the research on game analytics has examined learner in-game trails to build predictive models that identify negative learner actions (e.g., systematic guessing after the fact). However, analytics can also be used in the game design and development phases. Drawing on evidence-centered design (ECD), the chapter outlines ways that analytics can drive the development of scenarios and activities in a game and thus allows SGs to function as contextual apprenticeships, providing robust assessment opportunities. We describe how ECD theory was applied in a project to develop and test a SG that trains people to reduce their reliance on cognitive biases. We describe instances during the design process where our team encountered obstacles due to differing psychological and learning/teaching orientations, a topic rarely explored in the SG or ECD literature. Furthermore, we describe the final analytics-based game design features. We propose an additional element (persona) and how we anticipate incorporating that ECD extension into future projects.

Review of Construction Lean Research Studies in Support of Lean Transformation to the Construction Operating Platform

The purpose of this study is to foster awareness among lean researchers on the current lean research platform in construction as viewed from the Toyota Production System (TPS) framework. The study draws from the International Group of Lean Construction (IGLC) research papers with the TPS philosophy and framework as embodied in “The Toyota Way” (TTW). Content analysis was chosen as the preferred methodology in conducting the analysis. The study findings revealed that IGLC research studies did not align exclusively around the TPS framework. Of 592 research studies analyzed, 241 (40%) were classified within the TPS framework, consisting of four categories, and 351 (60%) were classified outside the TPS framework, consisting of 15 lean-related proxy research categories. This study has particular implications in knowledge, practice, and teaching as it relates to lean research in construction. This study provides the reader with a brief introduction to the origins of lean construction and a comprehensive analysis of existing IGLC research studies, including a comparison to the TPS framework and expanded thematic categorization. The study fosters awareness among consumers of research in lean construction about the depth and breadth of the lean research platform in construction.

Balancing Play and Formal Training in the Design of Serious Games

This article discusses the design and development of two serious games intended to train people to reduce their reliance on cognitive biases in their decision-making in less than an hour each. In our development process, we found a tension between rich and flexible experimentation and exploration experiences and robust learning experiences that ensured the lesson content was easily understood and recalled. In line with game-based learning research, initial designs were oriented toward exploration and discovery. Analyses of interviews, playtesting, logs, and surveys revealed that many players were frustrated or confused by the interface and content of the more complex games, even when consistent differences between levels of visual detail or narrative complexity were not present. We conclude that teaching complex topics such as cognitive biases to the widest range of learners required reducing the games’ playful and exploratory elements and balancing formal training content with simpler visuals and text.

The Temporal Attentive Observation (TAO) Scale: Development of an Instrument to Assess Attentive Behavior Sequences During Serious Gameplay

The engaging nature of video games has intrigued learning professionals attempting to capture and retain learners’ attention. Designing learning interventions that not only capture the learner’s attention, but also are designed around the natural cycle of attention will be vital for learning. This paper introduces the temporal attentive observation (TAO) instrument, an instrument developed to assess attentive behavior sequences during serious gameplay. We use an established three-step process for developing observational systems that includes identifying the construct, determining validity, and demonstrating practicality criteria. We conclude that the TAO instrument reliably measures attention behaviors where participants’ faces can be recorded during an experiment. Furthermore, we suggest that TAO should be considered as a part of an attention measurement package.

Construction Management Dissertation Abstracts: A Bounded Qualitative Meta-Study

ABSTRACT A bounded qualitative meta-study framework was used to examine 61 dissertation abstracts found in the ProQuest Dissertation and Theses TM digital database from 2000 through 2014. The search terms construction management/industry and business and research were used. The overarching research question was: What can we learn from examining doctoral dissertations abstracts focusing on construction management research? The findings provide an overview of doctoral research and discussion regarding: our meta-study framework, methods and procedures, findings, and possible discussion items. The peak year for PhD awards was 2005 with 10 dissertations. Only 34% mentioned a guiding framework, and 23% used a model. Topics focused on Leadership, 33%, Management, 60%, CM Education, 5%, and Social Issues, 2%. Evidence suggests that construction education research may be relatively hidden due to the unstructured nature of the abstracts and the low number of results returned using the construction focused keywords. It is recommended that advisors and students working to complete a dissertation establish and use a structured abstract that clearly identifies among other elements the guiding framework. The use of keywords identifying Construction Management may help to increase awareness of the discipline and return more articles when construction management is used as a key search term.