FEATURED AUTHOR SESSION:
Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community Online
with Rena Palloff, Ph.D. and Keith Pratt, Ph.D.
Description: In this interactive session, OTL Conference co-chairs and authors Palloff and Pratt offer practical guidance for faculty seeking to help their students work together in creative ways, move out of the box of traditional papers and projects, and deepen the learning experience through their work with one another. The facilitators draw on their extensive knowledge and experience to show ways in which collaboration brings students together to support the learning of each member of the group while promoting creativity and critical thinking.
About the Facilitators:
Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt are the managing partners of Crossroads Consulting Group. Rena and Keith are also program directors and faculty in the Teaching in the Virtual Classroom program at Fielding Graduate University. In addition, Dr. Palloff teaches in the Organizational Management and Development Program at Fielding, the School of Human Services at Capella University, is a mentor at Northcentral University in the School of Psychology, and facilitates professional development courses for John F. Kennedy University and the National Association of Social Workers. In addition to his work with Fielding, Dr. Pratt is the lead faculty mentor for professional development at Northcentral University and teaches at Wayland Baptist University and Baker University. They are the authors of the 1999 Frandson Award winning book Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 1999), Lessons from the Cyberspace Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 2001), The Virtual Student (Jossey-Bass, 2003), Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community (Jossey-Bass, 2005), and Assessing the Online Learner (Jossey-Bass, 2008). The second edition of Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace, now titled, Building Online Learning Communities was released in July 2007. The books are comprehensive guides to the development of an online environment that helps promote successful learning outcomes while fostering collaboration and building a sense of community among the learners. Drs. Palloff and Pratt have been presenting this work across the United States and internationally since 1994 as well as consulting to academic institutions regarding the development of effective distance learning programs.
