We are currently updating the QEP Active Learning Manuel with new ideas. If you have tried some of the teaching methods that promotes active learning from the manual, remember to send us feedback. We want to share your experiences with your colleagues as we refine the Lamar way. If you have not received a copy of the manual, please contact a member of the CT+LE staff. There is additional help for those who are looking to promote responsibility for all LU students. The annual Faculty Development Blastoff will include a number of sessions focused on active and collaborative engagement for students including presentations by current and former ACES Fellows. Save the date of August 21 and look for more information later in the summer. Jason Jones has written a number of posts on his blog about David Allen's Getting Things Done. Allen proposed the method in his book released in 2002 and the four main tenets include: Get your thoughts out of your head; Convert your to-do list into a series of action items; Organize your action items by context; and, Review your list of projects, in-box, and action lists weekly. Nels Highberg then took the concept and applied it for students in his blog post. Besides providing his students with a syllabus and schedule, he says, "I now end each class meeting by going over an Action List that I have posted on the course blog or management system (my school uses Blackboard), and each list item is formatted as a GTD action item. I start with an action verb that states what exactly should be done, the same kind of format I use on my personal action lists. I include all the things that are already on the syllabus and schedule (e.g., reading assignments), but I also include other things that students should be doing to handle the larger course projects." Lucy Taylor, Susan McGrath-Champ and Henriikka Clarkeburn's article Supporting Student Self-study: The Educational Design of Podcasts in a Collaborative Learning Context offers some solutions for supporting students during pre-class preparation and offering students communication from the teacher. Their article is about collaborative or team-based learning (TBL) which requires students to do their pre-class readings and preparation before coming to class and the researchers suggested that podcasts supporting the subject matter would provide the appropriate intervention to enhance student learning. They write, "The results of this study suggest that the combination of TBL and supportive podcasts guide students with their pre-class preparation. Most students agreed that TBL helped them learn progressively throughout the unit of study, and that it encouraged them to prepare for classes. The majority of students used the podcasts as they were intended, with some students also using the podcasts to reinforce ideas and revise." We want to recommend to two more new books that can be checked out from the MJGL. Dylan Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment argues that formative assessment is a process, rather than a tool, that should focus on improving teacher quality which in turn enhances student learning. Wiliam's says that we should focus on feedback that moves learning forward. He says that the word feedback "was first used in engineering to describe a situation in which information about the current state of a system was used to change the future state of the system, but this has been forgotten." He has a very interesting section that points out there are eight things that can happen when we give students feedback and "six of them are bad." Terry Doyle's latest book, Learner-Centered Teaching: Putting the Research on Learning into Practice, is filled with great ideas to optimize student learning. He argues that many faculty are already student-centered teachers but may not have the full conceptual understanding of the process to maximize results. Doyle urges us to share with our students that there is new research emerging everyday about how humans learn and remember. He says, "We need to help our students to begin learning in harmony with their brains."