{"id":5722,"date":"2022-07-28T19:32:41","date_gmt":"2022-07-28T23:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/?p=5722"},"modified":"2025-02-12T11:27:02","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T16:27:02","slug":"dawson-kara","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/dawson-kara\/","title":{"rendered":"Kara Dawson"},"content":{"rendered":"

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She started her career teaching 5th, 6th and 7th grade in Virginia Beach, coaching volleyball and swimming and running numerous after school clubs. She became interested in Educational Technology after attending a professional development workshop on authoring software in 1990. She experimented with using technology in her own classroom and taught technology workshops for the district until she decided to attend doctoral school full-time at the University of Virginia (UVa). She completed her doctoral degree in Instructional Technology in 1997 while serving as a Technical Writer for the university's computing center and an internship supervisor. She worked in a post-doctoral position directing the Center for Technology and Teacher Education at UVa until 1999.\r\n\r\nIn 1999, she began working at the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor. She served as the Program Coordinator for the Educational Technology program for over 15 years and co-developed 5 programs (online M.Ed., Ed.S. and Ed.D. programs and face-to-face MAE and Ph.D. programs) and multiple certificate programs. She supervised the educational technology courses for the elementary teacher education program from 1999 \u2013 2018. She currently supervises an educational technology course for secondary teacher education and recently began serving in the role of Associate Director for Graduate Studies in the department.\r\nDr. Dawson\u2019s scholarship focuses on the ways educational technologies influence teaching and learning within the contexts of K-12 education and post-secondary environments with a particular emphasis on designing and studying multimedia environments that consider individual differences. She also uses visually-rich technologies to design and study learning experiences for young children related to cybersecurity education and digital literacy. \r\n\r\nShe has published articles in journals such as the <I> Journal of Educational Computing Research, Internet in Higher Education, Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, British Journal of Educational Technology, American Journal of Distance Education and the Journal of Distance Education <\/I>. She has also secured over 6 million dollars in external funding her work. She has also served as the Chair of one of AERA's largest special interest groups, SIG TACTL (Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching and Learning) and is Co-Editor-in-Chief for the <I>Journal of Research on Technology in Education<\/I>. \r\n\r\nFrom 1999 to 2024, Dr. Dawson has mentored over 240 M.Ed. and Ed.S. students and 70 doctoral students to degree completion. She has co-authored over 50 refereed articles with students and her students have won best paper awards at major conferences such as AECT and AERA and also won young scholar awards. Her former students are employed in a range of post-secondary institutions in the United States and abroad, K-12 positions (e.g., district-wide director of technology, Assistant Superintendent, curriculum coordinator), non-academic positions in a variety of settings (e.g., companies, not-for-profits, start-ups), and leadership roles (e.g., researcher director, Chief Executive Officer of professional associations). She has written about the mentoring strategies she uses with her students and received UF\u2019s Doctoral Dissertation Advisor\/Mentoring Award in 2012-2013. She was also inducted into UF\u2019s Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars in 2022.","video":"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/275908494\/afcff56f0e","school":["school-4"],"affiliations":["dept-6"],"primary_interests":null,"research_interests":["resint-M-071","resint-M-158","resint-M-225","resint-G-226"],"education":[{"edu_or_cert":"Ph.D. - University of Virginia, 1997, Instructional Technology"},{"edu_or_cert":"M.Ed. - University of Pennsylvania, 1992, Elementary Education"},{"edu_or_cert":"B.S. - University of Pennsylvania, 1991, Elementary Education"}],"pro_apps":[{"app":"Associate Director for Graduate Studies 2024 \u2013 present"},{"app":"Professor, Educational Technology, 2013-present"},{"app":"Associate Professor, Educational Technology, 2005-2013"},{"app":"Assistant Professor, Educational Technology, 1999-2005"},{"app":"Post-doctoral position, Curry Center for Technology and Teacher Education, University of Virginia, 1997-1999"},{"app":"University Computing Center, University of Virginia, 1995-1997"}],"activities_and_honors":[{"activity":"2022-2023 UF Academy of Distinguished Teaching Scholars Inductee"},{"activity":"2021-2024 UF Term Professorship"},{"activity":"2021-2022 NSF STEM For All Video Showcase Award for CryptoComics: Cryptology & Cybersecurity for Kids"},{"activity":"2018-2019 Irving and Rose Fien Professorship"},{"activity":"2013-2016 University of Florida Research Professorship"},{"activity":"2013-2014 University of Florida Graduate Mentoring and Advising Award"},{"activity":"2012 Chair, AERA SIG-TACTL (Technology as an Agent of Change in Teaching and Learning)"},{"activity":"2011 College of Education Scholarship of Engagement Award"},{"activity":"2009 University of Florida Faculty Enhancement Opportunity"},{"activity":"2008 B.O. Professorship Award for Associate Professors"},{"activity":"2008 Outstanding Paper Award - Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education"}],"grants":[{"grant_title":"Collaborative Research: GeoGaze: Gaze-Driven Adaptive Multimedia to Augment Geoscience Learning for Neurodiverse Learners","role":"Co-PI","funding_agency":"","project_period":"","award_amount":"$774,654.00","project_information":"https:\/\/www.nsf.gov\/awardsearch\/showAward?AWD_ID=2040185&HistoricalAwards=false"},{"grant_title":"Cultivating Elementary Students' Interest in Cryptography and Cybersecurity Education and Careers","role":"Co-PI","funding_agency":"","project_period":"","award_amount":"$956,733.00","project_information":"https:\/\/www.nsf.gov\/awardsearch\/showAward?AWD_ID=1849768&HistoricalAwards=false"}],"publications":{"uncategorized":[{"publication":" <b>Zhu, J.<\/b>, & Dawson, K. (2023). Lurkers versus posters: Perceptions of learning in informal social media\u2010based communities. British Journal of Educational Technology, 54(4), 924-942."},{"publication":"Dawson, K.,Antonenko, P.,<b> Xu, Z., Wusylko, C.<\/b> & Koh, D. (2022). Promoting interdisciplinary integration of cybersecurity knowledge, skills and career awareness in preservice teacher education. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 30(2), 1-13."},{"publication":"Kohnen, A., Dawson, K., & <b>Mertens, G.<\/b> (2022). Three continua of online credibility strategies used by eighth graders. TechTrends, 66, 643-653."},{"publication":"<b>Presley-O\u2019Brien, D.<\/b>, Dawson, K., & Schmidt, M. (2022). Room and Zoom\u00ae: Perceptions from a K-5 HyFlex model. Journal of Online Learning Research, 8(2), 131-162. "},{"publication":"<b>Weisberg, L.<\/b>, Dawson, K., & Dana, N. F. (2022). Engaging preservice teachers in the design of digital breakout games in an educational technology course. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 38(2), 71-88."},{"publication":"Dawson, K., <b>Zhu, J.<\/b>, Ritzhaupt, A. D., Antonenko, P., <b>Saunders, K., Wang, J.<\/b>, & Lombardino, L. (2021). The influence of the multimedia and modality principles on the learning outcomes, satisfaction, and mental effort of college students with and without dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 71(1), 188-210."}],"categorized":null},"links":[{"link":{"title":"University of Florida Educational Technology program","url":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/educational-technology\/","target":"_blank"}}],"social_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5722"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8516,"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5722\/revisions\/8516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/education.ufl.edu\/faculty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}