What are some of the current ideas influencing teaching and learning in higher education? Where is it at? What are the 'hot topics' for discussion? Books, journals and conferences proliferate. What are they telling us?

This edition provides a sweep of some recent publications and fora for discussion of issues of teaching and learning. Most sources cited can be accessed through the Centre for Staff Development.

What's Inside ITL

• A Quick Flick Through Journals
• Quality Learning
• The University of Learning
• The Teacher Within
• Excellence in Teaching
• Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace
• Conference Themes - What do they tell us?

I think, however, that there isn't any solution to this problem of education other than to realize that the best teaching can be done only when there is a direct individual relationship between a student and a good teacher - a situation in which the student discusses the ideas, thinks about the things, and talks about the things. It's impossible to learn very much by simply sitting in a lecture, or even by simply doing problems that are assigned. - Richard Feynman

The Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) invites reader response. Responses advancing the scholarly debate of issues raised will be published in the Web version of that issue.