Rachel Karchmer-Klein

Welcome to my website! I am an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of Delaware where I teach courses in literacy and educational technology at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels. I am a former elementary classroom teacher and reading specialist and earned my Ph.D. in Reading Education at Syracuse University.

My research investigates relationships among literacy skills, digital tools, and teacher preparation, with particular emphasis on technology-infused instructional design. My overall goal is to improve preservice and practicing teachers’ knowledge of how to leverage technological affordances to support students’ literacy learning. I initially focused on K-12 instructional practices; however, my work has expanded to include research on university faculty’s use of technology in online course design. My research has been published in literacy and educational technology journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, Journal of Research in Reading, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, and The Reading Teacher. My single-authored book, Improving Online Teacher Education: Digital Tools and Evidence-Based Practices (Karchmer-Klein, 2020) is available from Teachers College Press. My co-authored new book, Next-Level Digital Tools and Teaching: Solving Six Major Instructional Challenges, K-12 (Karchmer-Klein, Boulden & McDonald, 2022), will be published March 14, 2022!

Theoretically, my work is guided by broad notions of literacy. Specifically, my beliefs are informed by research that recognizes digital texts are inherently multimodal, requiring consumers and producers to think deeply about navigational behaviors, the interactivity and collaboration technology affords, and what meaning, if any, each mode represents in a cohesive text. In order to leverage digital tools for teaching or learning, one must be knowledgeable of their capabilities.

I taught my first online course in 2003 and continue to design hybrid and fully online courses. I serve as the coordinator of the fully online M.Ed. in Teacher Leadership program in the UD School of Education.