Rena Palloff, PhD and Keith Pratt, PhD are the managing partners of Crossroads Consulting Group. Rena and Keith are faculty in the ELC program at Fielding and Keith is also the Associate Dean of Distance Learning and Instructional Technology at Northwest Arkansas Community College. This popular and talented team’s extensive work forms the foundation of Fielding’s Teaching in the Virtual Classroom program. Since 1994, Drs. Paloff and Pratt have been presenting this work at conferences across the United States and internationally, including the Distance Teaching and Learning Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, EDUCAUSE, and the League for Innovation. They also consult to academic institutions regarding the development of effective distance learning programs.

Drs. Paloff and Pratt co-authored Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective Strategies for the Online Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 1999), which won the 1999 Frandson Award. They have also published Lessons from the Cyberspace Classroom (Jossey-Bass 2001), The Virtual Student (Jossey-Bass, 2003), and Collaborating Online: Learning Together in Community (Jossey-Bass, 2005). The books, written for faculty, trainers, faculty developers, and administrators of distance learning programs, are comprehensive guides to the development of an online environment that promotes successful learning outcomes while fostering a sense of community among learners.

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