Brad Cohen
Assistant Director and Coordinator of Curriculum Development
I joined the Digital Media Center in 2001 and became assistant director in early 2006. With expertise in faculty development and instructional design, I enjoy collaborating with members of the DMC team to develop services and programs that serve faculty and staff at the University of Minnesota.
As an experienced professor concerned with excellence in teaching, I understand first-hand the challenge of creating an effective learning environment and the ways in which technology might prove useful. After earning my M.A. and Ph.D. in philosophy from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I landed a tenure-track position at the University of Evansville in Southern Indiana. While there, I enjoyed my first foray into using technology in education (createing the Cultural Perspectives in Evolution site). I've learned a great deal about Web design since then, but even that relatively crude Web site had a substantial positive impact upon how I and other professors approached the topic of evolution in a general humanities course required of all students. Evolution and its broader cultural implications remains a keen interest of mine.
I am actively engaged in evaluating the impact of technology on teaching and learning in higher education, and in exploring effective models of support to help instructors use technology to enhance student learning. Some of my recent scholarship in these areas include the following.
"Faculty Development in the Age of the Net Generation," Minnesota e-Learning Summit, May, 2006, with Linda Jorn, J.D. Walker, and Kimerly Wilcox.
"A Collaborative Approach to Formative Evaluation of An Online Curriculum," International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2005, with Melissa D. Avery, C.N.M., Ph.D., and J.D. Walker, Ph.D.
"Teaching Faculty How to Design and Teach within Technology Rich Learning Environments," CIC TechForum 2005, University of Minnesota, September 2005, with Linda Jorn.
"Collaborative Evaluation of an Online Graduate Nursing Curriculum," Partners in Learning Symposium, University of Minnesota, April 2004, with Melissa D. Avery, C.N.M., Ph.D., and J.D. Walker, Ph.D.
"Philosophy, Democracy and Education in Dewey," invited lecture, spring 2004.
"An Assessment of the TA Web Certification Program: Four Years of Supporting the Use of Instructional Technology," with Bill Rozaitis and J.D. Walker, Educause Quarterly 4 (2003): 34–40.
"Build a Web Site and They Will Come—If It's Well-Designed and Usable," 12th Annual University of Minnesota Communicators Forum Conference: Carnival of Connections, May 2002, with Bill Rozaitis and Barbra Masters.
"Teaching Evolution On the Web Using Interactive and Collaborative Learning Initiatives," Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, January 2000, with Dale Edwards.
Contact Information
| E-mail: | cohenb@umn.edu |
| Telephone: | (612) 626-0282 |
| Office: | 212 Walter Library |
