Jason studies how teams distribute cognitive work to achieve common goals. His dissertation at the University of California Irvine investigated team communication in high stress moments of competitive video game play to understand how teams build trust, manage awareness, make decisions, and develop those capacities under pressure – in both esports and higher consequence domains. He has a lot of fun talking about connections between teams of competitive gamers, air traffic controllers, doctors and nurses, and motorsport pit crews. In addition to his work identifying effective team communication strategies, Jason has conducted research into the social benefits and hurdles inherent in communicating and competing online, including learning outcomes for students in school-affiliated esports programs and work on extremism in online gaming communities.
Before coming to iSAT, Jason was a student researcher at Bob Slevc’s Language and Music Cognition Lab, Sarah Carney’s Representations of Crime and Conflict Lab, and finally Constance Steinkuehler’s Games+Learning+Society Center, where he earned his PhD in Informatics. iSAT is excited to welcome Jason to the team!