University of Illinois at Springfield

Faculty Member, Educational Leadership; COLRS (Center for Online Learning, Research & Service)

Stukel Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership

College of Education and Human Services

About

Karen Swan is the Stukel Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership and a Faculty Associate in the Center for Online Learning, Research and Service at the University of Illinois Springfield.  Before coming to UIS she was the Research Director for the Center for Educational Technology Research at Kent State University.  Karen has been doing research in the learning sciences for 25 years and has published over 100 articles and book chapters and presented extensively in the area of educational technology and media.  She has edited two books and authored several multimedia applications on educational technology topics and has served as the principle investigator for several large scale projects for such organizations as the New York City Board of Education, the US Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and AT&T.  Karen serves on the steering committees for three educational technology conferences and on the editorial boards of eight journals in the learning sciences.

Karen’s current research interests center on ubiquitous computing, data literacy and online and blended learning. She has been involved with online teaching and learning for over a decade, both as an instructor and as a researcher.  She helped develop one of the first fully online masters degrees while she was at the University of Albany, is active in the online learning community, and is well known for her research on learning effectiveness and interactivity in online environments. She has authored over 27 articles and 16 book chapters on various aspects of online learning, as well as edited three special issues of technology journals on online learning topics. She is a past chair of the Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning and the Program Chair for the Online Teaching and Learning Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.  She was also the 2006 recipient of the Sloan-C award for Outstanding Achievement in Online Learning by an Individual for her work in this area, and this year was inducted into the originating class of Sloan-C Fellows.

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