Dr Karen Kear

Senior Lecturer

Karen Kear is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing and Communications, within the STEM Faculty at The Open University (UK).

Karen specialises in the social and communication aspects of computing and communications. Her primary research area is e-learning, with a particular focus on online communication. She has researched the use of social technologies such as forums, wikis and synchronous conferencing in educational contexts. She is the author of 'Online and Social Networking Communities: a best practice guide for educators', published by Routledge.

Karen leads the Technology and Education Research Group (TERG) and jointly leads the STEM Education Research Group.