Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA when he retired in 2005 was the Senior Professor of Georgia Southern University that year. He invented a Classroom De-Gamer? in 1978 after joining Georgia Southern in 1970 as an associate professor of management. He would spin the spinner of the De-Gamer in his classes to randomly select a student at the beginning of each class session to lead a discussion of the case assigned for that day, a case taken from a real business prepared by professional casewriters at Georgia Southern, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Alabama. Grades were based eighty percent on class participation; the rest of the final grade was based on two case write-ups. He learned how the case method works teaching with Bernard Bienvenu, DBA and Rexford Hauser, DBA (Harvard Business School doctorates) at what is now known as the University of Louisiana-Lafayette in 1969-70. He has published refereed journal articles and books explaining how his democratic Game-free Adult-Adult I'm OK-Your OK case method system works, by banishing Persecutors, Rescuers, and Victims playing psychological Games from the teaching and learning process, first documented in an article titled "The Classroom De-Gamer" he published in 1978 in the Transactional Analysis Journal. He studied TA with Martin Groder, MD; Graham Barnes, PhD; Vann Joines, PhD; and many others at the Southeast Institute at Chapel Hill, North Carolina (1975-1978). He has degrees in economics, organizational behavior, and management science from Texas Tech University (1962-1969), and an organizational and educational certification in transactional analysis from the International Transactional Analysis Association (1978). After retiring at Georgia Southern in 2005 he and his wife Debbye founded Effective Learning Company, Stapleton Learning Company, and Effective Learning Publications in downtown Statesboro, Georgia. Debbye has been voted the best math tutor in Statesboro and still tutors several hours per week. Richard wri
