Engineering Group - Content Development
An update on the content development for Levelling Up: Maths for Engineering
Levelling Up: Maths for Engineering - a quick recap
As we’ve disussed in previous posts1,2, you can’t do an A-level in Engineering! The key A-level to take is Mathematics, with parts of the Physics curriculum as a useful addition.
We will support A-level maths students on our programme with tutorials that give maths concepts a practical engineering angle.
With Levelling Up: Maths for Engineering we can:
- raise awareness of engineering as a fantastic, STEM-based career
- raise the maths capabilities of those interested in engineering
- help students appreciate the relevance of maths in practical engineering situations
Content Creation
Content for the tutorial sessions is a key part of the programme. For Maths, Physics, and Chemistry, content has already been developed by the relevant learned institution. For Computer Science, the Maths syllabus has been adapted by the BCS. For Engineering, we propose to take the same approach as we did for Computer Science. Let’s use engineering maths to create the best roller coaster!
Outline Scope of Work
There are 22 existing maths sessions – our goal is to replace or update 5 of these with engineering content. Given there’s already an incredible depth of existing resources to draw on, the new engineering questions will be taken from these – i.e. we do not plan to create brand new content, we will take from elsewhere.
We hope to have our first session ready by 15th May for use as a ‘demo’ to share with universities who are interested in taking part in the programme. We want input from the interested universities as well, because we are keen to create a community among like-minded universities and have the content development as a collaborative effort.
All content will be ready by 11th September.
The Institute of Maths and its Appplications (IMA) will fund the work, supported by donations from Tony Hill and Peter Wake. We are also incredibly grateful to the universities involved for their support, in particular Warwick.
Team Formation
We have formed a steering group of experts in Engineering Mathematics who will choose which topics to adapt and identify good places to source the new questions. The amazing Shaheen Hassan of Warwick University is doing the actual hard work of adapting the materials to the style we need for our students. Shaheen has the perfect experience for this - having been at comprehensive school herself; studied engineering at university; had many years as an A-level maths teacher and head of department at comprehensive schools; some time in academic publishing, and now at WMG for 10 years including developing an e-learning platform (“Mobius”) for the engineering students.
The content development steering group are:
| Person | Job Title | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| Ros Azouzi | Executive Director | Institute of Maths and its Applications (IMA) |
| Chris Budd | Professor of Applied Mathematics | Bath University |
| Alan Champneys | Professor of Applied Non-linear Mathematics | Department of Engineering Mathematics, Bristol University |
| Emma Emmerton | Administration Officer | Institute of Maths and its Applications (IMA) |
| Shaheen Hassan | Assistant Professor | Warwick Manufacturing Group |
| Tony Hill | Founder | Levelling Up: STEM |
| Peter Wake | Engineering Lead | Levelling Up: STEM |
Progress
So far, we have had two steering groups, and the topics we are working on are:
- probability and statistics
- differential and integral calculus
- vectors
- trigonometry
We have had a lively discussion about matrices, which are viewed as fundamental for engineeering, but which isn’t taught at A-level!
Our next meeting will be an in-person meeting in Bath on 2nd May, where we hope to have our first session almost ready for release. It will be great for everyone to meet in person rather than online.