Dr. Karen Schrier

Professor/Director of Games and Emerging Media

Bio

Dr. Karen "Kat" Schrier (she/they) is a Professor and Founding Director of the Games & Emerging Media program at Marist University. She is a world-renowned expert and researcher in games, ethics, empathy, and learning, and is the director of the Play Innovation Lab. She is co-PI on a Templeton grant on virtual reality games and empathy with colleagues at the Lagos Business School in Nigeria. She also has over 20 years of hands-on experience in game design and media production, such as at Scholastic, Nickelodeon, BrainPOP, and the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Schrier has written or edited over 100 publications, including  (Oxford University Press) and . She is the editor of the book series , published by ETC Press (Carnegie Mellon), co-author of a UNESCO whitepaper on empathy and games, and co-editor of two books on games and ethics. Her work has been covered by Forbes, New Scientist, Wired, Edutopia, Times Higher Education, and SiriusXM. Dr. Schrier served as a  and is currently an advisor for the Daytime Emmy-nominated  and the ethics game, Quandary. She holds a doctorate from Columbia University, master鈥檚 degree from MIT, and a bachelor鈥檚 degree from Amherst College.


Education

BA, Psychology, Amherst College
MS, Comparative Media Studies, MIT
EdD, Communication, Media & Learning Technologies Design, Teachers College/Columbia


Research Interests/Areas of Focus

Game design and interaction design, Games and learning, Empathy, compassion, and bias reduction, Using games to teach ethics and civics, Citizen science games, Crowdsourcing games


Selected Publications

Selected Books

Schrier, K. (2021) We the Gamers: How Games Teach Ethics and Civics. Oxford University Press.

Schrier, K. (Ed.) (2019). Learning, education & games vol. 3: 100 games to use in the classroom and beyond. Pittsburgh, PA: ETC Press (Carnegie Mellon).

Selected Articles


Creative Work

Awesome Upstander, an antibullying iphone and ipad game, 2012
Mission US, a history game to teach social studies and citizenship skills, 2008-2009


Selected Presentations

Schrier, K. (2018). Inclusive game design. Featured speaker. Meaningful Play, East Lansing, Michigan.

Schrier, K., Farber, M., Darvasi, P., Dunlap, K. & Boltz, E. (2018) Achievement unlocked? Exploring the complexities of empathy in games. Meaningful Play, East Lansing, Michigan.

Schrier, K., Farber, M., Braunfeld, D., Westenskow, J. Vallon, R. (2018) Games and Empathy panel. Games for Change, New York, NY.

Schrier, K. & Farber, M. (2018). Open Questions for Empathy and Games. Connected Learning Conference. Boston, MA.

Schrier, K. (2018). Generating Empathy and Compassion through Games. Serious Play Conference. Buffalo, NY.

Schrier, K. (2018). Fake news, real learning: Using news games to teach civic & information  literacy in higher education, CUNY Games Conference 4.0. New York, NY.

Schrier, K. (2017). Confronting Games and Ethics: Challenging Students to Be Critical Designers. Game Developers Conference. San Francisco, CA.

Schrier, K., Weise, M., Sutherland, A., & Boyacioglu, B. (2017). Panel discussion at MIT, Cambridge, MA.                                                                       

Schrier, K. (2017). Civic Engagement and Design: Connecting Students with the Local Community Emerging Learning Design (ELD). Montclair, NJ.

Schrier, K., Lee, M., & Simkins, D. (2017). Using Games to Support Inclusive Classrooms 鈥 A Panel Discussion. Emerging Learning Design (ELD). Montclair, NJ.

Schrier, K., An, Y-J., Miller, J., Siyahhan, S., & Dalsen, J. (2017). Highlights from the latest game-based learning research, Games for Change, New York, NY.

Schrier, K. (2017). Design principles for knowledge games. Serious Play Conference, Washington, DC.

Schrier, K. (2017). The Ethics of citizen science gaming: Perspectives from STS. Meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S). Boston, Massachusetts.

Schrier, K. (2017). 鈥淭racing the Boundaries of Games as Research,鈥 Foundations of Digital Games 鈥17 conference workshop participant.

Ruberg, B., Schrier, K, Totten, C., Viana Neto, M., & Westecott, E. (2017). Games education soapbox. Game Developers Conference. San Francisco, CA.


Awards and Honors

ADL Belfer Fellow, Center for Technology & Society, 2018-2019
蜜月直播 Faculty Research Award鈥 winner for top scholarship, 2017


Media Links

Image of Kat Schrier.

Contact Information

Academic School

School of Communication and the Arts

Office

Lowell Thomas 148

Email

Karen.Schrier@marist.edu

Phone

845-575-3000

Website/Resume