My name is Doug Cohen and I am an adjunct instructor at the SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly).
My current role is the Director of Educational Computing at Weill Cornell Medicine located in the Upper East Side of New York City. This position allows me to work hand-in-hand with students and leadership across the Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, and Medical Education department. My responsibilities include serving as the primary IT liaison for students, faculty, and academic staff to ensure they have an avenue to provide direct feedback on the information technology services offered at the institution. As the Director of Educational Computing, I am also responsible for the IT controls, business continuity, and disaster recovery of our cloud-based online learning environment and our externally-hosted ERP system.
Prior to my position at Weill Cornell Medicine, I was professionally employed by the State University of New York (SUNY) since 1999; both at a campus (University at Albany) and at SUNY System Administration. My most recent role was the Associate Director of Academic Technology Services for Open SUNY. You may be familiar with some of my duties and responsibilities in this capacity as I oversaw the Open SUNY Help Desk and the implementation of our Learning Management System (Blackboard Learn) environment. In addition, I oversaw the Open SUNY Web and Application Development Services and have been developing websites for more than 15 years.
I am originally from the New York City area and have lived in the Capital Region for nearly 20 years. I earned a bachelors degree in Philosophy from the University at Albany and a masters degree in Information Design and Technology from the former SUNY Institute of Technology (now SUNY Poly). I live in Clifton Park, NY with my wife, daughter, two cats, and dog.
Explores the world of interactive digital text in which individuals have the capability to navigate, collaborate and communicate through links and multimedia elements. Students will work within a wiki authoring platform to design and develop a hypertext document, enabling them to study hypertextual writing, and to develop hypertextual modes of thinking. Emphasizes the design of non-fiction hypertext.
Explores the contemporary practice of writing in digital environments, with an emphasis on hypertext and hypertextuality. Reviews the history of writing, and the notion of interactivity. Techniques for writing digital texts with navigational and semantic elements are presented and practiced. Students design and write wikis featuring words, images, video and audio, and use a variant of Markdown to structure elements and render documents and texts consistent with contemporary standards of design and presentation.
Provides students with theoretical frameworks and background needed to analyze the relationship between computer environments and the people who use them. The factors that relate to the design and use of instructional media will be considered. Factors as diverse as ergonomics, software screen design, readability, usability, web testing, and user-centered and contextual analysis will be considered to optimize the effectiveness of information design and instructional media. Students will develop and build an interface designed to carry out a sequence of well-defined tasks based on user/system requirements and project methodology guidelines and research information.
Examines the theoretical framework of change theory and research in various fields and issues facing individuals or institutions engaged in change. Students will discuss the elements of the change process, the roles of participants in the process and implications for change agents or agencies. Students will apply knowledge of diffusion and diffusion research to a planned, ongoing or past diffusion effort, preparing recommendations or post-mortem analysis of the process. Desirability and unintended consequences of innovations will also be discussed.
Takes an in-depth look at emerging technologies including but not limited to multimedia, distance learning, networking and the Internet. Reviews technical, social, economic and political factors associated with new and emerging information technologies. Examines trends in the development and diffusion of emerging information technologies. Explores, through practical application, use of emerging information technologies in educational settings.
Addresses issues that information technology professionals face in selecting technology (both hardware and software) to meet desired goals. Topics include technology classification, evaluation criteria and software and hardware considerations, including the Internet and intranets. Will examine how information is shaped and modified by the technologies that are selected.
Considers advanced aspects of web system design and development. Issues covered include server-site application development, client-side application development, and web graphics. The user-machine interaction will be considered with a focus on user interface design principles, guidelines and standards. The advantages and disadvantages of various graphical user interfaces and object-oriented user interfaces will be discussed.
This course builds on the design, layout, and development principles learned in previous courses by teaching students to approach web site design and structure in a new way. Where previous courses focus on designing the front end of a static web site, COM 460 focuses on developing the back end of a dynamic web site. Students will produce an interactive commercial web site, incorporating specific data structures, web elements, and web technologies, while employing the design principles learned in previous courses.
Explores various processes associated with development of Web sites, including planning, analysis, design, implementation and promotion. Introduces students to basic Web design skills and tools in the context of design principles.
Students will learn about the fundamentals of instructional design, its variations and impact on learning outcomes. Several contemporary ID models will be examined. Students will ultimately adopt a personal approach to instructional design.