Athens, Ga. – Thomas C. Reeves, professor emeritus of learning, design and technology in the University of Georgia College of Education, will be honored for his work spanning a quarter of a century at an international conference at UGA March 26-27.
More than 100 faculty and students from universities around the world are expected to attend the conference whose theme is, Educational Design Research: Local Change and Global Impact, at UGA’s Paul D. Coverdell Center.
Reeves, who retired last year after a 27-year career at UGA, is internationally recognized for his strong advocacy of alternative approaches to educational technology research, including educational design research.
Reeves will be one of three keynote speakers at the conference along with Jan Herrington, a professor in education at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia; and Susan McKenney, an assistant professor in the department of curriculum innovation and educational design at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
Reeves has given numerous keynotes including at the 10th Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education in Beijing in June 2006 and at the ED-MEDIA conference in Hawaii in 2009.In 1995, he was selected as one of the “Top 100” people in multimedia by Multimedia Producer magazine, and in 2003, he was named the first Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education.
He has been a frequent invited speaker across the United States and around the world. He is a former Fulbright Lecturer and a former editor of the Journal of Interactive Learning Research.
Since 1993, he has collaborated on a long-term design research project with two Australian colleagues Herrington and Ron Oliver, a professor and vice chancellor at Edith Cowan University. Their work is summarized in a new book titled, A Guide to Authentic E-Learning, London and New York: Routledge (2010).He was also a co-founder of UGA’s Learning and Performance Support Laboratory.
Herrington studies effective web-based learning environments for higher education and the use of authentic contexts and problem-based scenarios as a central focus for web-based delivery of unit. She has published over 130 refereed journal articles, conference papers and chapters, and several books including a co-edited book (with Anthony Herrington) titled, Authentic Learning in Higher Education. She has won many awards for her research, including the Association for Educational Communication and Technology’s Young Researcher of the Year Award.
McKenney’s research explores how the computer can play a supportive role in curriculum development within the context of secondary level science and mathematics education in sub-Saharan Africa, India and Europe. She explores and supports the interplay between curriculum development and teacher professional development. She is currently co-authoring a book about how to conduct design-based research with Reeves and Herrington to be published by Routledge.
On Friday afternoon, March 26, the keynote speakers will conduct a workshop designed to introduce the basics of educational design research to graduate students and others who are new to the concept and methods of this innovative approach to educational research. The workshop will be followed by a welcome reception and poster session.
The all-day conference on Saturday, March 27, will include the three keynote addresses, several paper presentations and a special panel session.
The conference will conclude Saturday with a retirement dinner for Reeves at Trumps Catering in Athens. The costs of the conference and the dinner are separate. The conference is supported by the UGA College of Education, the department of educational psychology and instructional technology, the Learning, Design, and Technology program, and the Learning and Performance Support Laboratory among others.
Janette Hill, a professor in the college’s department of lifelong education, administration and policy, and Ike Choi, an associate professor in the department of educational psychology and instructional technology are conference co-chairs. Other educational psychology and instructional technology faculty members and graduate students have helped in planning the conference.
For more information on the conference, see http://projects.coe.uga.edu/edrconference/index.html.