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About us

mathcentre now

mathcentre continues to host mathematics support resources and materials, free of charge for use by students, lecturers and anyone looking for post-16 maths help. The mathcentre site is now run by the sigma Network.

mathcentre gives you the opportunity to study important areas of pre-university mathematics, which you may have studied before or may be new to you - the maths you know you will need for your course.

Resources are licensed under Creative Commons Licence Creative Commons License

mathcentre past

mathcentre was set up to deliver mathematics support materials, free of charge, to students, lecturers and everyone looking for post-16 maths help. mathcentre was developed by a group from the Universities of Loughborough, Leeds and Coventry, the Maths Stats and OR Network and the Educational Broadcasting Services Trust in 2003. Important components of the site were developed through the sister project mathtutor which was funded by the HEFCE and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation.  mathcentre was upgraded in 2010 with funding from JISC.  As part of this upgrade, mathcentre resources were deposited in the JorumOpen and FETLAR repositories. mathcentre was added to further as part of HESTEM and sigma Network projects.

The current mathcentre team


Emma Cliffe

Emma Cliffe University of Bath

E.H.Cliffe@bath.ac.uk

Emma Cliffe is the current Vice-chair of the sigma Network Steering Group and a member of the website working group. She is the Mathematics Resources Centre Development Officer at the University of Bath.

Emma is currently the main contact for adding or removing content on mathcentre.

Michael Grove

Michael Grove STEM Education Centre, University of Birmingham

m.j.grove@bham.ac.uk

Michael Grove is currently Director of the STEM Education Centre at the University of Birmingham having previously developed and directed the HEFCE funded three-year National HE STEM Programme. He was  a member of the team that  developed the proposal for the More Maths Grads initiative and oversaw its delivery, and was Assistant Director of the Higher Education Academy Maths, Stats & OR Network. He teaches mathematics at university level, primarily to foundation and first year students, and is also academic lead for the University's mathematics support centre.

Professor Tony Croft

Professor Tony Croft Loughborough University

tony@mathcentre.ac.uk
+44 (0)1509 223185

Tony has taught mathematics to students in further and higher education for over thirty years. He is currently one of the Directors of sigma - the Network for Excellence in university-wide mathematics and statistics support and is Professor of Mathematics Education in the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University. 

In 2013 sigma was awarded £817,000 from HEFCE to further develop the mathematics support community. Tony continues to work to ensure that all students entering higher education who need additional help with mathematics, have access to quality resources. A recent contribution has been the development of a free on-line course Getting a grip on mathematical symbolism which he co-developed with Janette Matthews and which is available on the FutureLearn platform.

He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2008.

Professor Duncan Lawson

Professor Duncan Lawson Newman University Birmingham

duncan@mathcentre.ac.uk

Professor Duncan Lawson is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Formative Education at Newman University, Birmingham, a post he took up in March 2013.  Prior to that he was Professor of STEM Education at Coventry University and Assistant Chief Executive at the Higher Education Academy.  Duncan has been involved with maths support since the early 1990s when Coventry Polytechnic set up the BP Mathematics Centre with funding from the BP Engineering Education Fund.

For around 20 years, Duncan was Director of the Mathematics Support Centre at Coventry University and was instrumental in the establishment of sigma, initially a collaboration between Loughborough and Coventry Universities which was designated by HEFCE as a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in 2005.   Since then he has actively promoted the development of maths and stats support across the sector through the work of sigma as a CETL (2005-2010), within the National HE STEM Programme (2009-2012) and most recently with a HEFCE funded programme of activity to consolidate the national mathematics support community of practice (2013-2016).

During his career, Duncan has been involved in a range of organisations with an interest in mathematics in higher education including being Chair of HoDoMS (Heads of Department of Mathematical Sciences), Chair of the Joint Mathematical Council and Director of the Maths, Stats and OR Subject Centre of the Higher Education Academy.  In 2005, Duncan was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship.  He is currently a member of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Applications Higher Education Committee (HEdSA) and editor of the international journal Teaching Mathematics and Its Applications.

The legacy mathcentre team


Nick Blenkin

Nick Blenkin SIGMA CETL

Nick Blenkin was sigma’s industrial placement student at Coventry for 2009/10. He has successfully completed the first two years of an undergraduate Mathematics and Computing degree at Coventry University. Nick was involved with the testing of the mathcentre website and the production of several tutorial videos.

Shaun Canon

Shaun Canon EBS Trust

Shaun managed the upgrade of mathtutor in 2009/10 and co-managed the original production. He was responsible for the wider distribution of the resources outside the UK.

Peter Coltman

Peter Coltman University of Leeds

Peter Coltman has worked all his life in educational television, both in Britain and abroad, and mostly in higher education. He has won the Educational Television Association's premier award four times. In retirement, he now works with the Citizens Advice Bureau and is a trustee for the York Travellers Trust, Solace and The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

 

Moira Petrie

Moira Petrie sigma, Loughborough University

M.G.Petrie@lboro.ac.uk

Moira Petrie is currently the Project Manager for the HEFCE funded sigma Network programme. She worked previously at the Faculty of Engineering and Computing at Coventry University, where, as Senior Lecturer (STEM Student Support), she was responsible for the development of peer assisted learning and mentoring initiatives.

She has been involved with the mathematics support community since 2007 when she joined sigma as Assistant Director.  sigma was the Centre for Excellence in the Provision of University-wide Mathematics and Statistics Support - funded by HEFCE and run collaboratively by Loughborough and Coventry Universities. sigma built on the extensive experience in the support of thousands of students from across these universities for whom mathematical and statistical methods are required components of their undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. All materials developed are made available through the mathcentre site.

Moira has several years experience of working in industry, in a number of sectors, including e-learning, IT training and electronic media production.

Professor Tony Croft

Professor Tony Croft Loughborough University

Tony has taught mathematics to students in further and higher education for over thirty years. He is currently one of the Directors of sigma - the Network for Excellence in university-wide mathematics and statistics support and is Professor of Mathematics Education in the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University. 

In 2013 sigma was awarded £817,000 from HEFCE to further develop the mathematics support community. Tony continues to work to ensure that all students entering higher education who need additional help with mathematics, have access to quality resources. A recent contribution has been the development of a free on-line course Getting a grip on mathematical symbolism which he co-developed with Janette Matthews and which is available on the FutureLearn platform.

He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2008.

Dr Janette Matthews

Dr Janette Matthews Loughborough University

J.Matthews@lboro.ac.uk

Janette Matthews was the Project Officer in the Mathematics Education Centre at Loughborough University for sigma, mathcentre and statstutor. Janette is responsible for the statstutor website and the contribution of resources to the statstutor Communities project. She played a major role in the upgrade of mathcentre in 2009 and the deposit of resources to OpenJorum and FETLAR.  She is now Lecturer in Textiles at Loughborough University.

Janette is part of the team which developed two of Loughborough University's three FutureLearn MOOCs, Getting a grip on mathematical symbolism authored by Tony Croft and Numeracy Skills for Employability and the Workplace which she authored.

She was previously a Support Tutor in the Eureka Centre for Mathematical Confidence working with students with Specific Learning Differences and provided workshops for students preparing for Employers' Numeracy Tests

Janice Gardner

Janice Gardner EBS Trust

Janice Gardner helped to develop, promote and publicise mathcentre and its sister project mathtutor. She was formerly EBS Trust Company Secretary and managed projects using new media for distance learning. She continues to maintain a keen interest in developments.

 

Michael Grove

Michael Grove Higher Education Academy

Michael Grove is Director of the National HE STEM Programme which seeks to increase participation within the STEM disciplines at university level, and enhance the delivery of STEM programmes of study, particularly in relation to encouraging participation amongst those currently within the workforce.  Prior to this, Michael was Assistant Director of the Higher Education Academy Maths,Stats & OR Network, and has previously worked as a lecturer of Mathematics & Physics in the FE sector.

Samantha Davis

Samantha Davis Loughborough University

s.davis@lboro.ac.uk

Samantha's role as Learning Support Specialist for the School of Science at Loughborough University encompassess support of various technology enhanced projects in the School which includes the Maths Education Centre.

Samantha has a responsibility for the mathscentre and statstutor websites and the contribution of resources to the communities project for both mathscentre and statstutor.

Audrey Jones

Audrey Jones Pink Mayhem

Audrey Jones is a designer and developer for Pink Mayhem and has been responsible for the design and development of the upgrade to mathcentre in 2009.

She has over twelve years experience of providing web and elearning services to both educational institutions and the private sector.

Professor Duncan Lawson

Professor Duncan Lawson Coventry University

Professor Duncan Lawson is Pro-Vice-Chancellor Formative Education at Newman University, Birmingham, a post he took up in March 2013.  Prior to that he was Professor of STEM Education at Coventry University and Assistant Chief Executive at the Higher Education Academy.  Duncan has been involved with maths support since the early 1990s when Coventry Polytechnic set up the BP Mathematics Centre with funding from the BP Engineering Education Fund.

Paul Newman

Paul Newman Loughborough University

Paul Newman joined Loughborough University in 2003, to design and develop the original mathcentre website and resource database. 

He now works for the Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (engCETL), where he develops e-learning tools and applications.

 

Dr Aruna Palipana

Dr Aruna Palipana University of the West of England

Aruna.Palipana@uwe.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer - Enginee

Aruna Palipana was the Learning Technology Manager at Loughborough University's Mathematics Education Centre since its establishment in 2002 until 2014. Aruna's e-learning experience includes development and evaluation of educational software, web based distance learning and computer aided assessments.  He was involved in e-learning projects such as HELM, EASEIT-Eng, BestMaths, ExPOUND and FETLAR. With a first degree and a PhD both in Mechanical Engineering and five years of experience as a university Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, Aruna has a good understanding of the mathematical needs of the engineering undergraduate. 

Tom Roper

Tom Roper University of Leeds

Tom Roper is Head of the School of Education at the University at Leeds and previous Head of Initial Teacher Training. He spent 17 years teaching mathematics in schools and colleges before moving into mathematics teacher training. As well as training teachers of mathematics, he teaches mathematics to first year undergraduate physicists. 

Dr David Saunders

Dr David Saunders Symplekta

david.saunders@osu.cz

David Saunders has extensive experience of distance education. For many years he was a BBC producer with the Open University, and has also taught maths at Worcester College, Oxford. For the past ten years he has combined mathematical research with activities as an educational software developer; he now plans to concentrate on research.

Professor Mike Savage

Professor Mike Savage University of Leeds

Mike's academic career spans 40+ years teaching mathematics and theoretical mechanics whilst researching in fluid dynamics. His contributions to work at the school/university transition include:

1. Mechanics in Action Project (Co-Director) 1990-96.

2. Measuring the Mathematics Problem (Co-Author), Engineering Council, London 2000.

3. Newton's Mechanics: Who Needs It? (Co-author) @Findings and Recommendations of a two day seminar, Cambridge, 2008.

Current interests concern the provision of effective mathematics and mechanics support for students entering physical science and engineering courses in higher education.

 

Dr. Jim Stevenson

Dr. Jim Stevenson EBS Trust

We remember with thanks and great fondness the contribution of Dr Jim Stevenson who died February 2007. As Chief Executive of the Educational Broadcasting Services Trust and former BBC Open University Head of Programmes and Education Secretary, his understanding of distance learning through television and new media inspired and guided development of the mathtutor resource.

Dr. Sarah Williamson

Dr. Sarah Williamson SIGMA CETL

Sarah Williamson is the eLearning Change Champion for Cardiff University. From August 2005 to May 2007 Sarah was the Assistant Director of sigma - a Centre for Excellence in the Provision of University-wide Mathematics and Statistics Support - funded by HEFCE and run collaboratively by Loughborough and Coventry Universities.

Sarah has a PhD in Chemical Engineering and has previous experience of working in industry, teaching undergraduate engineering students, directing the LTSN MathsTEAM project and working for the Higher Education Academy - Engineering Subject Centre.