Campus News

UGA education professor emeritus Tom Reeves first American named ASCILITE Fellow

Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia Professor Emeritus Thomas C. Reeves was named the 2011 Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education Fellow during the group’s annual conference in Sydney.

Reeves, a College of Education faculty member in learning, design and technology for 28 years before retiring at the end of 2010, was the first American selected as an ASCILITE Fellow. He was chosen in recognition of his contributions to the field in professional mentoring and research.

In addition, a paper Reeves co-wrote titled, “Publishing and Perishing: The Critical Importance of Educational Design Research,” was named one of the five Outstanding Papers for 2010 by the ASCILITE.Co-authors of the paper were Susan McKenney of the University of Twente in the Netherlands and Jan Herrington of Murdoch University in Australia.

Reeves also gave an invited address titled, “Open Learning Requires Open Minds: The Challenges of Online and Blended Learning Environments for ‘Generation Me’ Students and their Instructors,” and a workshop titled, “Evaluating E-Learning,” at the conference.

A book Reeves co-authored won the 2010 Association for Educational Communications and Technology Design and Development Outstanding Book Award.

A Guide to Authentic E-Learning (Routledge),was co-written with two Australian colleagues, Jan Herrington of Murdoch University and Ron Oliver of 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.

Reeves has developed and evaluated numerous interactive learning programs for education and training. In addition to presentations and workshops in the United States, he has been an invited speaker around the world 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. He was a co-founder of UGA’s Learning and Performance Support Lab, based in the College of Education.

Reeves gave the opening keynote 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.