Engaging Lilly Conferences with Todd Zakrajsek

Welcome to Episode 33 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Engaging Lilly Conferences with Todd Zakrajsek!  This episode was recorded at the Teaching for Active and Engaged Learning Lilly Conference in San Diego, California, February 27-29, 2020. This conference is just one of the engaging Lilly Conferences organized by the International Teaching and Learning Cooperative and the fabulous ITLC team. This podcast also kicks off a series of four podcasts from the conference that focuses on UDL conversations that were discussed by participants or speakers that I had a chance to interview while the ThinkUDL team was there. We start out this series with the President and Conference Director of the ITLC, Todd Zakrajsek. Todd has been organizing Lilly conferences for years all over the country and the world and he has incorporated so many helpful and engaging tools that showcase the effectiveness of Universal Design for Learning principles in the conference format that I wanted to talk to him and tell our listeners about how different the Lilly conferences are from the traditional academic conferences. He and his team have made so many innovations and improvements to the typical conference of yore. From engaging conference books to concrete learning objectives for each session, and even designated metacognitive exercises throughout the conference, Todd and the ITLC team have set the bar high for conference engagement and innovation! Additionally, I personally have learned so much in my participation in Lilly conferences over the years and have made lasting connections with other colleagues around the country and I wanted to share all of the good things that happen at Lilly Conferences with our listeners. I think you will find our conversation full of insights about how to make a conference both adaptive to and empowering for conference participants and see how thoughtful and UDL-oriented the ITLC team is in organizing and presenting every one of the Lilly Conferences around the world.