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Staff and Committees

Brock S. Allen, Co-Director, SDSU Center for Teaching & Learning and Emeritus Professor

 

Office: Administration Building, Room 201
Phone: (619) 594-5439
Email: Brock.Allen@SDSU.edu

Brock S. Allen joined the SDSU faculty in 1982, pioneered early instructional uses of multimedia computing, and co-founded the SDSU Language Acquisition Resource Center. He has served in the College of Education as Interim Associate Dean for Faculty Systems Development and as Chair of the University Committee on Patents and Copyrights.  As a member of the Senate Committee on Academic Policy and Planning, he chairs the Subcommittee on Curriculum Policies and Processes.  Allen has taught 20 different courses at SDSU including EDTEC 544, Instructional Design, EDTEC 640, The Psychology of Technology-Based Learning, and ED 833, Cognition and Interactive Learning.

Brock is past President of the Division of Instructional Development of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology and has served as an editorial consultant to a variety of journals including Educational Technology Research and Development and Computers and Human Behavior. He has published over 40 articles or book chapters on technology-based learning environments, interactive media, instructional design, and related topics and has received numerous awards for his teaching and research.  Brock's students have won national competitions for excellence in multimedia design. In 1964, Brock and his father, a psychoanalyst, wrote a science fiction story about technology and bevioral control, "Cross Porpoises" which they re-wrote in 1989 for publication in Educational Technology.  This version was developed as a screen play and was a top contender for production by both Disney and Paramount studios.

Brock holds degrees in biology and science education from the University of California at Berkeley and a PhD in education and communications from the University of Southern California. With Robert C. Stebbins, renowned naturalist, artist, and conservationist, he invented and patented The Evolution Game, a simulation-game used in high schools and colleges in the US, Europe, and Australia. Brock has three grown children, including a pediatrician and an educational psychologist, and lives in a cottage in Kensington with his wife, Emeritus Professor Barbara Allen, and their poodle Daphne. His hobbies include cycling, ancient history, and working at SDSU.

Curriculum Vita (PDF)

Recent Publications (PDF)

Allen, B.S., & Otto, R.G., & Hoffman, B. (2004). Media as lived environments: the ecological psychology of educational technology. In D.H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology, 2nd Ed. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (ISBN: 0-8058-4145-8).

Allen, B.S., Otto, R.G, & Hoffman, B. (2000). Case-based learning: Contexts and communities of practice. In Sigmund Tobias & J.D. Fletcher (Eds.), Training and retraining: a handbook for business, industry, government, and the military (a project of the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association). New York: Macmillan/Gale Group (ISBN 0-02-897415-8).