UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence is offering grants to presenters and attendees of the ITLC Lilly Online Conference, scheduled for April 5, 12, 19 and 26, 2023.
Those interested in presenting or attending are asked to fill out this survey from the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. The call for proposals is open now. The early decision proposal window closes Jan. 5, and all proposals must be submitted by Feb. 1.
The ITLC Lilly Online Conference provides a venue for faculty, staff and administrators to learn about nearly every discipline within higher education. Spread across four Wednesdays, the conference offers a variety of 20- and 40-minute asynchronous sessions, as well as synchronous discussions, digital poster gallery and a traditional plenary address covering contemporary issues in higher education.
Faculty encouraged to present at upcoming conference
Eileen Grodziak, instructional designer at Penn State Lehigh Valley, is a Lilly Conferences veteran, with five co-presentations at Lilly International and Lilly Online.
“Presenting at conferences, such as Lilly, allows me to be an active voice in the academic conversation on teaching and learning,” Grodziak said. “When I invite faculty, and fellow instructional designers to join me, they also take an active role in the conversation. Now, I don’t think twice about submitting a proposal to share an initiative, a teaching strategy, a research project or other.”
After two conferences as an attendee, Grodziak collaborated with Karen Kackley-Dutt, associate teaching professor of biology at Penn State Lehigh Valley, for her first presentation in 2015: “Free up your teaching with free resources.” She would go on to collaborate in two presentations in 2020, one in 2021 and another in 2022.
“Because I collaborated with others, the preparation was also collaborative, which I enjoyed,” Grodziak said.
Grodziak also presented on her own teaching, a session she said was more challenging than the co-presentations.
“At the same time, the experience was empowering,” she said. “Through it, I found my own unique voice in this broad, and sometimes intimidating, academic world.”
Beth Edwards is an assistant teaching professor of biobehavioral health and the director of the online BBH Bachelor of Science program. She presented at Lilly Online in 2020, with a talk titled “Video Assessment to Promote Efficacy and Integrity in Asynchronous Courses,” collaborating with Laura Cruz, associate research professor with the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, and Rachael Droege, undergraduate research assistant who graduated in 2021 with a degree in biobehavioral health.
“Preparing the presentation was very straightforward and even fun,” Edwards said. “The Lilly conference organizers were wonderful. Not only were they well-organized and responsive, but their passion for teaching was also evident in every interaction we had.”
As an attendee, she said the conference was inspiring and invigorating.
“I came away from the conference with ideas that I was able to incorporate into my teaching right away,” she said. “The online format of the conference provided me with the flexibility to learn from the many talented and insightful presenters while also remaining fully available to my students during a busy time of the semester.”
Questions can be directed to [email protected].
The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence is part of Penn State Undergraduate Education.
