School of Humanities and Sciences
Showing 11-19 of 19 Results
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Keith Bowen
Director, Learning Design Challenge, SAL Digital Learning
BioFor 20+ years, I have worked in the fields of international relief, development, and conflict resolution, building capacity in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, South Africa, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, as well as educating students in the U.S., Europe, and other countries who aspire to work in these fields.
Academics & Film
I've worked as an academic and filmmaker, creating educational documentaries on liberation movements around the world, which I've then used with university students in my classrooms. I've had several programs distributed by the Discovery Channel, which has been rewarding, but what has been especially remarkable to me is the response of my students. I've come to appreciate the power of narrative and immediacy of film to transform students' perceptions of the world and their place in it.
Learning Design
Along with an emphasis on narrative and immediacy, I've designed interactive programs that draw students into learning through exploration and discovery - with a dynamically shifting experience based on student choice and response. I've also designed learning programs featuring advanced multiplayer simulations with both live and online interaction.
Scale
I've taken this work to scale. In my work for the U.S. Government and international humanitarian organizations, I've designed courses that have been completed by tens of thousands of students and practitioners, not only at the State Department, USAID, relief agencies, and universities in the U.S., but also at comparable institutions in other countries, and even in internet cafes and refugee camps around the world. I've earned about a dozen awards for these efforts and have delivered presentations on them for the Under Secretary of State, the Senate Appropriations Committee, representatives of the the 57 countries of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the 35 countries of the Organization for American States, and others.
Virtual Exchange & "Wicked" Global Problems
I am continuing this work at Stanford. My focus now is designing media and technology programs to bring university students in the U.S. and other high-income countries into extended contact with counterpart students in fragile states and zones of conflict to address complex problems that no single country can solve on its own. As students work collaboratively to address these "wicked" problems, we measure advances in learning and shifts in attitude through qualitative and quantitative methods.
I have also launched and serve as Director for the Stanford Learning Design Challenge, which supports students across campus who seek to leverage research in the learning sciences, methodologies in human-centered design, and breakthroughs in emerging technology to change what’s possible in teaching and learning. https://edtech.stanford.edu/
This is an extraordinary time for those who design media and technology solutions for teaching and learning. Blended in smart combinations, especially with traditional in-person learning, the new tools we have are powerful:
- Visual narrative, through its expression in digital cinema
- Expanding and interconnecting networks of lifelong learners
- Complex human interaction, including multiplayer games and simulations
- Complex machine interaction, including generative AI, dynamically responsive to user needs
- Statistical data analysis, upon which to base informed, iterative human-centered design
- Worldwide electronic distribution, especially to inexpensive mobile devices
If we do this right, the world will be much better for it. -
Michael Bratman
U. G. and Abbie Birch Durfee Professor
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsPhilosophy of action, where this includes issues about individual agency over time, social and institutional organization and agency, and practical rationality.
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Joan Bresnan
Sadie Dernham Patek Professor in Humanities, Emerita
BioAvailable at https://web.stanford.edu/~bresnan/
