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Anita Crescenzi

 

By

Anita Crescenzi

Assistant Professor

Anita Crescenzi

Pronouns

She/Her/Hers

Email

amcc@email.unc.edu

Office

ITS Manning 4406, Manning Hall 306

Anita Crescenzi

Expertise

information-seeking and information retrieval, human-computer interaction, decision-making, research methods

Education

BS (Secondary Education), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
MS (Information Science), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
PhD (Information and Library Science), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Biography

Anita Crescenzi, MSIS, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the UNC School of Data Science and Society (SDSS) with a secondary appointment at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS).

In her research, she seeks to understand how people use information access systems (e.g., search engines, gen AI systems) in support of their broader goals and to evaluate novel information access systems and interaction features to better support learning, problem-solving, and decision-making. I am also interested in methodological and measurement issues, with a particular interest in developing better measures of search and learning that take place during search.

Her research interests include:

  • information-seeking in support of decision-making,
  • FAIR data practices, especially around data search and data reuse,
  • designing and evaluating information access systems provide better support for learning, problem-solving, and decision-making,
  • adaptation in information-seeking and use due to situational factors (e.g., time pressure, task complexity, information access system features), and
  • metacognition and metacognitive regulation in information-seeking and use.

Prior to her PhD, she worked in usability evaluation, user experience design, and applications development. She was a User Experience Analyst in the Usability Practice at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, and she was a User Experience Librarian at the UNC Health Sciences Library.

Courses

DATA 150 Communication for Data Scientists
INLS 719 Usability Testing and Evaluation
INLS 582 Research Methods Overview

Publications

*Li, Y., *Crescenzi, A., Ward, A., & Capra, R. (2023). Thinking inside the box: An evaluation of a novel search-assisting tool for supporting (meta)cognition during exploratory search. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. 74(9). 1049-1066. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24801

* equal contributors to study

Fuller, K., Crescenzi, A., & Reitter, N.P. (2023). Preceptor perceptions of a redesigned entrustable professional activities (EPA) assessment tool in pharmacy practice experiences. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning. 15(7), 666-672. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cptl.2023.06.018.

McLaughlin, J. E., Tropsha, A., Nicolazzo, J. A., Crescenzi, A., Brouwer, K. L. R. (2022). Moving Towards FAIR Data Practices in Pharmacy Education. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. 86(3). 163-166. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe8670.

Crescenzi, A., Ward, A., Li, Y., & Capra, R. (2021). Supporting metacognition during exploratory search with the OrgBox. Proceedings of the 44th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR ’21), 1197- 1207. https://doi.org/10.1145/3404835.3462955.

Crescenzi, A., Capra, R., Choi, B., & Li, Y. (2021). Adaptation in information search and decision-making under time constraints. Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’21). 95-105. https://doi.org/10.1145/3406522.3446030.

Arguello, J. & Crescenzi, A. (2019). Using Principal Component Analysis to better understand behavioral measures and their effects. Proceedings of the 2019 ACM SIGIR International Conference on the Theory of Information Retrieval (ICTIR ’19). 177-184. https://doi.org/10.1145/3341981.3344222.

Crescenzi, A., Li, Y., Capra, R., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Towards better support for exploratory search through an investigation of notes-to-self and notes-to-share. Proceedings of the 42nd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR ’19). 1093-1096. https://doi.org/10.1145/3331184.3331309.

Crescenzi, A., Capra, R., & Arguello, J. (2017). Time limits, information search, and the use of search assistance. Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’17). 349-352. https://doi.org/10.1145/3020165.3022150.

Crescenzi, A., Kelly, D., & Azzopardi, L. (2016). Impacts of time constraints and system delays on user experience. Proceedings of the 2016 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’16). 141-151. https://doi.org/10.1145/2854946.2854976.