Syracuse iSchool to host virtual organization scholar on Nov. 19
10/22/2009

Jeremy Birnholtz, assistant professor in the Department of Communication and the Faculty of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, will be a guest lecturer at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool). The brown bag presentation will be held Thursday, Nov. 19 at 12 p.m. in the Katzer Room, 347 Hinds Hall.
Birnholtz’s lecture, “Interpersonal Attention in Virtual Organizations: Exploring the Use and Display of Awareness Information,” will address why members of virtual organizations cannot work together as effectively as those who are collocated. He will discuss the results of two experiments aimed at improving these interactions by focusing on personal attention. After the presentation Birnholtz will be meeting with Ph. D. students in the iSchool.
Birnholtz earned a Ph. D. from the School of Information at the University of Michigan in 2005. His interests include improving the usefulness and usability of collaboration technologies through a focus on human attention, and the intersections of social science theory and technology design. His research includes work in both laboratory and field methods. His current research is supported by the National Science Foundation. Birnholtz’s work has been published in the ACM CHI, CSCW and Group Proceedings, as well as in Organization Science and JASIST.
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