This teaching circle (TC) was composed of three Natural Sciences faculty members who taught Freshman Seminars for the during the Fall of 2015. The courses being taught by these members were: ‘Biology of Food,’ ‘The Biology of Women,’ and ‘The Microbiome: Strangers Amongst Us.’ We met every other week for one hour to discuss and develop strategies to foster student engagement and active learning in the Freshman Seminars. We designed in-class, group activities that promoted student engagement with the use of electronic tablets. The students used the tablets in the following activities: taking group pictures in ‘Padlet’, accessing the library quiz after their AR tour, using ‘Socrative’ for students to post their introductions and to have them answer questions related to the topic under discussion or for a quick poll. We also used ‘Padlet’ for posting students opinions on a particular topic or assignments. For example, while teaching Mitosis and Meiosis, students were instructed to answer assigned questions after watching an animation: http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/animations/content/mitosis.html). In addition, the tablets were used in ice-breakers, accessing the internet to find information related to our class projects, accessing GatorSync to input project hours, and accessing the IDEA website to administer the end-of semester student survey. The goals of the teaching circle were to: (1) design and implement in-class, student group activities that incorporate the use of electronic tablets in the classroom, (2) provide concrete guidelines for the implementation and the assessment of the activities, and (3) share the group activities with other faculty members through the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence. Our expectation was that students would find using tablets in class to be very engaging and that the long term effects of such experiences would increase student retention and graduation rates. While it is too soon to assess the latter expectation, we found that students did enjoy using tablets in class and found them a helpful resource. We utilized our TC funds to purchase apps from iTunes to use on the tablets, and for travel to the American Society for Microbiology Texas Branch meeting and participated in the Educational sessions.