Welcome to Episode 34 of the ThinkUDL podcast: Student Choice Menus with Eric Boyer.  Eric Boyer is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations in the College of Education and Counseling at St. Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington. I got the chance to sit down with Eric at the Teaching for Active and Engaged Learning Lilly Conference in San Diego, California, February 27-29, 2020. Our conversation hits the high points of multiple intelligences, choice theory, self-determination theory, and reflective journaling. Eric’s background teaching high school and then teaching in the Education department at St. Martin’s University brings theory to practice in providing a menu of choices and motivational engagement to his classes. All of the things that Eric and I talk about are also available on our ThinkUDL.org resource page so if you want to look further into anything we discuss in today’s episode, you can follow up there. This conversation is filled with creative ideas and UDL applications and great ideas for teaching that could be applied to many different subject areas and circumstances. Join us for a lively conversation focussing on student choice and teaching innovation!

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.

Welcome to Episode 32 of the ThinkUDL podcast: UDL and Culturally Responsive Teaching with Adam Nemeroff. Adam is a Learning Designer at Dartmouth College and has created a very innovative way to share his ideas about Culturally Responsive Teaching and inclusive design by using a Trello Board. This episode will investigate the ways culturally responsive teaching and Universal Design for Learning are related to and also inform each other, and Adam has organized this information using what he calls a “vision board” which he created using the Trello tool. If you are unfamiliar with Trello, we have provided links in today’s resources to investigate this tool further, and you will also find Adam’s Trello board there. We think you’ll find this discussion enlightening and full of ideas for how Universal Design for Learning principles and Culturally Responsive Teaching mutually uphold one another.

Today Lillian talks with Laurel Grigg Mason. Laurel came to the campus at East Carolina University for a CollegeSTAR Student Support Summit where Lillian had the chance to talk to her about what she is doing to support a variety of students with learning differences. Laurel is the Director of Bartlett Labs at the SALT (Strategic Alternative Learning Techniques) Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.