Karen Swan
kswan@kent.edu

Karen Swan is the RCET Research Professor in the Research Center for Educational Technology at Kent State University. Dr. Swan’s research has been focused mainly in the general area of media and learning. She has published and presented both nationally and internationally in the specific areas of programming and problem solving, computer-assisted instruction, hypermedia design, technology and literacy, and asynchronous online learning. Her current research focuses on the latter, on ubiquitous computing, and on student learning in technology rich environments. Dr. Swan has also co-edited a book on social learning from broadcast television, and has authored several hypermedia programs including Set On Freedom: The American Civil Rights Experience for Glencoe and The Multimedia Sampler for IBM, as well as three online courses. She served as project director for the technology strands of three rounds of federally funded research on literacy learning as part of the National Research Center for English Learning and Achievement, and directed large scale, multi-year investigations of Integrated Learning Systems for the city of New York as principal investigator for the Computer Pilot Program and the Integrated Learning Systems Project. Dr. Swan serves on the national Ubiquitous Computing Research Advisory Board, and on the program committees for several international education and educational technology conferences. She is an Effective Practices Editor for the Sloan Consortium, and is the Special Issues Editor for the Journal of Educational Computing Research. In this vein, she co-edited a special issue on handheld and ubiquitous computing.