Karen Brennan

Karen Brennan is a professor of practice at HGSE, where she directs the Creative Computing Lab, and an affiliate in Computer Science. Her research is primarily concerned with the design of learning experiences in K–12 computer science. She is especially interested in constructionist learning experience design, an approach that cultivates learner agency and community through personalizing, creating, sharing, and reflecting. Her research and design activities are situated in three interconnected thematic areas: (1) investigating how K–12 teachers design learning experiences in computing education, (2) creating support structures for K–12 teachers to develop understandings of constructionist approaches to computing education in the classroom, and (3) studying the development of computational fluency in young learners. Before joining HGSE, Brennan completed her Ph.D. at the MIT Media Lab, where she was a member of the team that develops the Scratch programming environment.