Seminars & Tours

“Delivering a World-Class Customer Experience: Lessons from the Mouse” 
Presented by Danny Snow.

In a world overflowing with options, standing out requires more than just good products or services. It demands an exceptional customer experience that builds loyalty and drives results. 
Customers today value what sets you apart; what you can deliver that others won't or can't. Creating that unique value is how you win hearts and retain business. Drawing from his Disney heritage and extensive experience in the family business, Danny Snow offers a fresh perspective on delivering service excellence.
This program equips leaders and teams with actionable strategies to elevate every interaction, turning ordinary customer moments into extraordinary loyalty-building experiences.

Participants will learn:

• Insights into shifting employees from a task-oriented mindset to an experience-focused approach.
• Tools to ensure your "backstage" operations enhance and never disrupt your "onstage" customer experience.
• Practical techniques to consistently exceed customer expectations and leave lasting impressions.
• A customer-centric process for designing systems and workflows that anticipate and meet customer needs.

"Lower Access Barriers from the Back End to the End User" 
Presented by Thomas J. Tobin

Many people know the universal design for learning (UDL) framework as a way to reduce access barriers for college and university students in the classroom. UDL can also help us to improve organizing and strategic planning skills to reduce rework, barriers, and confusion in the workplace.
With more professionals from different backgrounds joining the higher-education IT workforce, there is a growing need to work efficiently and effectively to support campus initiatives. The UDL framework provides an evidence-based set of approaches, informed by the neuroscience of how humans learn and interact, to make our IT work more agile, responsive, and predictive.
I identified over 300 information-technology job titles at two large Research-1 universities and interviewed a representative sample from more than 15 conceptual clusters to identify the job duties in which IT professionals and instructors need to engage peers, share information, and practice with new ideas and concepts—the very elements that UDL helps to make smoother and more efficient.
Come to this session and learn how to apply the principles of the UDL framework to the IT and instructor workforce in order to reduce errors, speed professional learning, and increase productivity, teamwork, and student satisfaction. By attending this session, you will:

1. encounter two cases for assessing access gaps among IT units and roles;
2. improve efficiency by building connections, collaboration, and communication among IT professionals and instructors; and
3. apply the UDL framework within your administrative context to lower workflow barriers.

“Building AI Literacy with Intention, Ethics, and Humanity” 
Presented by Dr. Rachelle Dené Poth

When AI first entered our classrooms, educators worried about cheating, plagiarism, and whether it belonged in schools at all. Now, that conversation has shifted. AI is becoming part of everyday learning, and educators are asking more intentional questions: How does AI support learning goals? When does it enhance thinking, and when does it replace it? How do we keep students and ourselves safe?

This session explores how AI in education has moved from fear and avoidance to purposeful, responsible integration. Participants will discuss key considerations, including data privacy, ethical use, age-appropriate access, transparency over surveillance, and the importance of building skills rather than replacing learning opportunities. The session also highlights why AI literacy must include human skills such as judgment, empathy, reflection, and discernment, as well as focusing on digital citizenship and digital wellness.

"Learning and working with AI: Thinking still required"
Presented by Joan Monahan Watson, Ph.D.

Using AI as an assistant to make cognition explicit and strengthen critical thinking

As generative AI becomes increasingly present in classrooms and workplaces, educators and professionals often feel caught between reactive policies and tool-focused adoption. This session invites a different conversation, one centered on how AI can be used strategically to support learning rather than replace thinking.

Drawing on ideas from Learning with AI: The K–12 Teacher’s Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, this session explores using AI as an assistant who is capable of bringing the learning process into the open. When AI is used to generate drafts, offer explanations, or assert alternative arguments, learners have opportunities to examine, question, and revise their own thinking in individualized contexts. This makes it easier for learners to reflect on how they reason, recognize gaps in their understanding, and develop stronger judgment and more complete ways of knowing over time.

Through guided reflection and discussion, participants from K–12 education, higher education, and professional settings will explore practical, human-centered approaches to using AI in ways that preserve human agency, accountability, and ethical responsibility. The session emphasizes that AI strengthens learning not by doing the thinking for us, but by making human thinking examinable, revisable, and accountable.

Bridging the Gap with Personalized AI & STEM Capable Note Taking
Presented by Jennifer Sponer, Jamworks

Jamworks uses AI in a responsible way to improve access to learning and provide personalized note taking support that is fully capable of handling even the most complex STEM classes!

Because every student learns differently, Jamworks provides a variety of different ways to support note taking and learning. We will outline how the platform can be configured to provide just the right level of support to individual students.
From personalized suggestions to improve students’ own typed or handwritten notes, to full professional grade provided notes and audio chapters, Jamworks is a flexible learning platform built with accessibility and personalization in mind.

Jamworks supports disabled students to record lectures, attach slides, take notes and mark highlights. It works online and offline, fully supports STEM and provides personalized note improvement suggestions — students even get their very own personal tutor to explain difficult concepts and create interactive quizzes.