HELM - Helping Engineers Learn Mathematics

HELM - Helping Engineers Learn Mathematics - is a major curriculum development project undertaken by a consortium of five English universities - Loughborough, Hull, Reading, Sunderland and Manchester - led by Loughborough, and funded by a HEFCE £250,000 FDTL4 grant for the period October 2002 - September 2005. Colleagues from many other institutions have contributed and we now have over have 40 registered participants spanning 34 different higher and further education establishments, whose contributions through student and staff focus groups, workshops, and evaluation exercises have proved invaluable.

HELM is sponsored by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) through phase 4 of the Fund for the Development for Teaching and Learning (FDTL4).

enhance the mathematical education of engineering undergraduates by the provision of a range of flexible learning resources.
drive student learning via a computer based assessment regime.

50 workbooks of approximately 50 pages each.

Mathematics for engineering simply explained.
Worked examples.
Case studies.

Illustrative web-delivered Computer Aided Learning (CAL) courseware on many of the first 20 Workbooks supporting and enhancing their content.
Computer Aided Assessment (CAA) supporting most workbooks.

HELM has developed two modes of Computer Aided Assessment (CAA), which can be used for both formative and summative assessment:

an integrated web-delivered version.
an alternative stand-alone CD-based version.

HELM resources were disseminated to all participants at the Higher Education Academy's Helping Everyone Learn Mathematics conference 14-15 September 2005 at Loughborough University. Loughborough's Mathematics Education Centre, which has recently been awarded Centre of Excellence in Teaching & Learning status, has now taken responsibility for distribution of the resources to enable effective continuation and they will be available to all HEIs and FEIs (freely to those in England and Northern Ireland) who would like to use the materials. To find out more, contact the project.

HELM was awarded transferability funding for the period October 2005 - September 2006 to encourage the effective transfer across institutions of the HELM learning resources and assessment philosophy. The principal aim was to convert some HEIs who have been involved with trialling, and some newly identified potential HEI users, into long-term users of the HELM materials and approach.

HELM disseminated the transferability phase outcomes to all participants at the Higher Education Academy's CETL - MSOR Conference 11-12 September 2006 at Loughborough University.