Dr Karen Bowen

Professional biography

In the Access and Widening Participation space, I have been production and presentation module team chair of Y032, People work and Society, the 30 credit Access module for Psychology, Social Science, Health, Education, Business and Law. I was also the production chair for Y034, the module that replaced Y034 as an Access module for Psychology, Social Science and Wellbeing. I retain involvement with Y034 as Module team chair and am active in the Access space at the Open University. 

I am deputy Module team chair of E309, Comparative and international studies in primary education, and am on the module team for E209 in production.  

I established Student Hub Live in 2014 and was academic lead for this online platform for academic community for over 8 years. This formed the case study for my doctorate: The Student Hub Live: The Open University's Solution to Facilitating the Development of an Academic Community in Distance Learning.

I supervise students on the EdD programme and am an Associate Lecturer on DD210 (Living Psychology). 

Key interests:

Student engagement, community and sense of belonging, large scale online interactive teaching, Access (foundation), and widening participation.

Research interests

• Community and sense of belonging
• Student engagement in distance and online learning
• Online communities to support progression and retention
• Access and Widening participation