The votes are in and the list of potential Faculty Learning Communities went from 20 to nine. We are currently recruiting advocates for each of the remaining FLC. The advocates will lobby and recruit members for the FLC at an Expo and the top four will move forward for AY 2011-12. The Expo date and time will be announced shortly. In the meantime, visit the CT+LE website and take a look at the nine FLC still in the running. You can contact one of the advocates or CT+LE staff if you have questions before the Expo. The FLC still standing include: Active Learning Unleashed, Active Research and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Arts Across Lamar, Classroom Design for 21st Century Learners, Creating an Online Course of Substance, High School to College Transition, New Faculty, One Book/One Community, and Sustainability Across the Curriculum. Have you heard about Texas House Bill 33? Authored by state Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas and sponsored in the upper chamber by Senate Higher Education Chairwoman Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, House Bill 33 passed, was signed by Gov. Rick Perry, and will technically take effect on September 1. Basically, the bill requires universities to provide a list of the retail price, authors, publishers and copyright date of all required and recommended texts for each course and disseminate them to students at least a month before the semester starts, allowing students time to find the best deals. You might recall in an earlier post we discussed the growth of e-textbooks. It is another good way of lowering the cost of support material for our students. Have you implemented a service learning component into your course? Sherril B. Gelmon is a professor of public health at Portland State University and this year's recipient of the Thomas Ehrlich Civically Engaged Faculty Award. She says, "Sometimes you have to push your students. They say the course is a lot of work, and I say, well, this is the real world, and these are real and difficult issues that take a lot of work to solve." If you are planning to attend the group discussion on Using Clickers in your Classroom tomorrow, you might want to take a look at this Educause article. The use of open-ended student response systems, like Clickers, is a good way to actively engage your students and provides immediate formative assessment to gauge student learning in a low-stakes environment.