Purpose -The paper aims to discuss the expectations and needs of Generation Y students for higher education specifically targeting issues relating to libraries and library management. Design/methodology/approach -The paper provides a brief overview of Generation Y personality traits and characteristics. This is followed by a discussion of organizational culture, explaining how to effectively adapt to meet the expectations of the Generation Y students. Two academic libraries' programs designed to meet the needs of the new learners are discussed. Findings -The paper recognizes the need to address the challenges of the new learners from all levels of library management and provides strategies and programs to enable positive change within the library culture. Originality/value -The paper highlights generational differences of current higher educational students and library staff and provides practical solutions to enable positive change within library organizational culture.

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It is widely recognized that teamwork and communication skills are important outcomes in undergraduate engineering curricula. At our institution, the program goals in the mathematics department, which apply to our pre-engineering majors, also reflect the necessity of these skills. Student course exit surveys analyzed by the department indicated that communication skills, both written and oral, were not integrated into the introductory courses. In an effort to achieve our program goals, we have implemented team-based as well as individual activities that foster communication skills in our introductory calculus courses. In addition, these activities encourage the students to become active learners and to assume greater responsibility for their learning of mathematics. We have created both in-class and out-of-class activities to encourage the development of mathematical speaking and writing. Examples of team activities include group problem solving and assessment, assigning groups by related content so that determining the members of the group is itself a team activity, and team take-home exams with oral presentations. These activities promote students' ability to contribute meaningfully to the functionality of a team. Further, team-based activities serve to deepen mathematical understanding. Individual activities such as differentiation/integration bees, one-minute papers, journals and essays are also utilized in class. The journal and essay topics cultivate student understanding of major content concepts and alert the instructors when student understanding is lacking. In this paper, we describe in detail the team-based and individual activities used. We will discuss class time-management, student attitudes, motivation challenges, and initial observations of student responses to these activities. We will also include preliminary assessment and reporting of the improvement in students' mathematical communication skills and teamwork. Finally, we will outline our plans for further investigation of questions raised as a result of teaching with innovative activities designed to encourage teamwork and communication skills while allowing students to take a more active role in the learning of calculus.

A solid grounding in linear algebra is essential in many fields of engineering. As a result, at our institution, linear algebra is a required course for our pre-engineering majors and is taught at the sophomore level. The students enrolled in this course have not usually had a proof methods course; however, the course focuses not only on computation but also on reasoning and theory. The content in this course presents a specific challenge in that it is difficult to cover the required material in one semester while at the same time devoting a sufficient amount of class time for homework questions and in-depth problem solving. In addition, it is difficult to develop test questions that can be completed within one class period while adequately assessing the students' skills in problem solving. Further, homework collection and grading can become burdensome very quickly. Collectively, these challenges can reduce the course's effectiveness in teaching students to properly apply linear algebra in solving real-world problems and can make it difficult for the instructor to evaluate student progress and provide timely feedback.In this paper, we describe some of the challenges particular to teaching linear algebra as well as specific methods and techniques that we have used to help meet these challenges. We will describe some of the pedagogical innovations that we have employed in teaching linear algebra. These innovations include writing assignments in the form of student journals and class activities geared toward team-formation and enhancing student participation and learning. We will also discuss techniques, including using rubrics and brief writing assignments, used to evaluate students' understanding of linear algebra concepts. We will conclude with a discussion of the benefits, drawbacks and effectiveness of each of these methods in meeting the challenges associated with teaching linear algebra.