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Book co-authored by UGA education professor emeritus receives AECT award

Athens, Ga. – A book co-authored by University of Georgia College of Education professor emeritus Thomas C. Reeves has won the 2010 Association for Educational Communications and Technology Design and Development Outstanding Book Award.

The book titled, A Guide to Authentic E-Learning (Routledge),was co-written with two Australian colleagues, Jan Herrington from Murdoch University and Ron Oliver from Edith Cowan University, who have collaborated with Reeves since 1993. Much of the book was conceived when Herrington was a Fulbright Scholar in the UGA College of Education’s department of educational psychology and instructional technology a few years ago.

The award is not given every year, only when there is a consensus among reviewers that there is a work published that is deemed deserving. This year there were five books reviewed for the award and A Guide to Authentic E-Learning emerged as the favorite from a panel of reviewers.

Reeves has developed and evaluated numerous interactive learning programs for education and training. In addition to presentations and workshops in the U.S., he has been an invited speaker inother countries, including Australia, Austria,Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Dubai,England, Finland, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, and Turkey. He is a former Fulbright Lecturer, and a former editor of the Journal of Interactive Learning Research. His research interests include: evaluation of instructional technology, mental models and interactive multimedia, authentic learning environments and instructional technology in developing countries. Reeves is co-founder of UGA’s Learning and Performance Support Lab, which is based in the College of Education.

Reeves gave the opening keynote speech at the 10th Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education in Beijing in June 2006 and he co-chaired E-Learn 2006 in Hawaii in October 2006. In 2003, he became the first Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education Fellow. He was named professor emeritus in 2010 after 28 years as a UGA faculty member.

The award will be presented at the annual AECT conference in Anaheim, Calif., later this month.