Held in Traverse City, the Lilly Conference was attended by GVSU eLearning and Emerging Technologies team members Justin Melick and Matt Roberts. Each year the conference focus’s on sharing evidence based best practices to improve teaching and learning.
Topics at this years events ranged from practices to improve online discussion boards, creating interactive online science labs, engaging disabled students through the use of technology and community based learning.
IDeL Instructional Designer Matt Roberts gave two presentations during the conference. On Thursday he co-presented a session titled “Travels in Class: Insights and Tips for Teaching in Unfamiliar Territory”, during which he discussed strategies he used while teaching an American Government course online.
On Friday Matt presented “Ghosts of the Digital Native: Considerations Ethical, Practical, and Instructional.” Beginning with the research that shows younger generations aren’t any more technologically advanced than their predecessors, the session featured an open discussion about how higher education should best respond to and support today’s learners.
In addition to Matt’s presentation Digital Media Developer, Justin Melick presented with Julia VanderMolen, Professor of Allied Health Sciences on her use of the lightboard in medical terminology classes. During their presentation Justin and Julia discussed the issues that the lightboard is designed solve and how it can be used to create content that is more engaging than traditional instructional media.
Also presenting at the conference was Szymon Machajewski, affiliate instructor in the School of Computing and Information Systems. Szymon presented on the topic of gamification, where gameful design can promote the building of empathy between participants, which is a start of grassroots support for inclusive culture in the classroom, online, and campus wide. His session was entitled: “Gamification and Play :: Experience Design for Learning ~ play becomes a strategy for embracing change“.
More resources and presentation slides from the Lilly Conference sessions are available, along with a full list of sessions including 16 conference presentations by GVSU faculty and staff.
eLearning Technologies @GVSU 