Dr. Carrie Klein is a Senior Fellow and higher education lead on the Future of Privacy Forum’s Youth and Education team. Her work and experience bridge higher education, big data, and law. Prior to FPF, Carrie worked on a National Science Foundation grant at George Mason University (Mason) focused on the use of big data in higher education and on privacy policy analysis. She also has experience as a strategic planning project manager in Mason’s office of the president and was the lead for the Federal Trade Commission’s honors paralegal program, where she worked on antitrust cases. This blend of work and experience informs her approach to privacy work and her research agenda.
The overarching aim of Dr. Klein’s scholarly research is to study interactions between higher education organizations and individuals, with the goal of creating more equitable outcomes for higher education stakeholders – especially students. She is particularly interested in understanding the influences of analytics and surveillance technologies and associated policies on higher education organizational and individual decision making, outcomes, privacy, and equity. Her current research is focused on the use of analytics data to inform student and institutional success efforts in higher education and associated implications for individual equity and privacy and organizational structures and priorities.
Dr. Klein has presented nationally and internationally and authored scholarly articles, book chapters, and other pieces on higher education’s use of data, higher education privacy policies, and equity in higher education in The Journal of Higher Education, The Review of Higher Education, and Innovative Higher Education, among others. She has collaborated with scholars across disciplines and institutions, including Dr. Jaime Lester (Higher Education), Dr. Huzefa Rangwala (Computer Science), and Dr. Aditya Johri (Engineering) at Mason, on a National Science Foundation (NSF) on a big data grant focused on learning analytics use by faculty, advisors, and students; Dr. Michael Brown (Higher Education) at Iowa State University, on ethical learning analytics policies and practices, and Dr. Hironao Okahana (Policy) at the Council of Graduate Schools, on STEM pipeline and access issues for historically underrepresented students. She has also been a research team member on another funded NSF grant focused on active learning communities of transformation in STEM fields, a Google grant on flipped classroom use first-year engineering courses, and an NSF Adaptation proposal to improve gender, race, and ethnicity representation and equity among faculty at Mason.
Dr. Klein earned a Ph.D. in Education with an emphasis on higher education administration and research methods from George Mason University, an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from George Mason University, with a concentration in higher education administration, and a dual B.A. in Anthropology and Classics from The University of Arizona. She is an affiliate faculty member at Mason, teaching courses on organization and administration of higher education and student services and is an active member of the Association for the Study of Higher Education and the American Educational Research Association.
Recent Select Publications:
Refereed Journal Articles:
Brown, M.G., & Klein, C. (2020). Whose data? Which rights? Whose power? A policy discourse analysis of student privacy policy documents. Manuscript under revision, The Journal of Higher Education. DOI: 10.1080/00221546.2020.1770045
Klein, C., & Lester, J. (Fall 2019). Learning analytics in community colleges: Guidance for leaders. Journal of Applied Research in the Community College, 26(2), 85-96.
Klein, C., Lester, J., Rangwala, H., & Johri, A. (2019). Student sensemaking of learning analytics dashboard interventions in Higher Education. Journal of Educational Technology Systems, 48(1), 130-154, doi.org/10.1177/0047239519859854
Klein, C., Lester, J., Rangwala, H., & Johri, A. (2019). Technological barriers and incentives to learning analytics adoption in higher education: Insights from users. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 31, 604-625, doi.org/10.1007/s12528-019-09210-5
Klein, C., Lester, J., Rangwala, H., & Johri, A. (2019). Learning analytics tools in higher education: Adoption at the intersection of institutional commitment and individual action. The Review of Higher Education, 42(2), 565-593, doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2019.0007
Okahana, H., Klein, C., & Sowell, R. (2018). STEM Doctoral Completion of Under-Represented Minority Students: Challenges and Opportunities for Improving Participation in the Doctoral Workforce. Innovative Higher Education, 43, 237, doi.org/10.1007/s10755-018-9425-3
Klein, C. (2016). Negotiating cultural boundaries through collaboration: The roles of motivation, advocacy and process. Innovative Higher Education, 42, 253, doi.org/10.1007/s10755-016-9382-7
Edited Books and Monographs:
Lester, J., Klein, C., Rangwala, H., & Johri, A. (Eds.). (2018). Learning analytics in higher education: Current innovations, future potential, and practical applications. New York, NY: Routledge.
Lester, J., Klein, C., Rangwala, H., & Johri, A. (2017). Learning analytics in higher education. ASHE Higher Education Report Series, 43(5), 9-133.
Book Chapters:
Klein, C., Lester, J., Rangwala, H., & Johri, A. (in press). Learning analytics for learning assessment: Complexities in efficacy, implementation, and broad use. In K. Webber, & H. Zheng (Eds.), Analytics and data-informed decision making in higher education: Concepts and real-world applications. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Klein, C., & Okahana, H. (2020). Doctoral student degree attainment: How student realities, networks, and perceptions impact timely degree completion. In Tyler, A., Hancock, S., Lewis, C. (Eds.), Seeing The Hidden Minority: Increasing the talent pool through identity, socialization, and mentoring constructs. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Other Writing:
Klein, C., & Brown, M.G. (2019, April). Ethics at the core. Business Officer Magazine. Washington, DC: National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).