This paper discusses and evaluates strategies at the University of Sheffield for both engaging new engineering students in a proper appreciation of their mathematical standing and helping them develop the requisite skills. Within this context the paper reviews the efficacy and role of a recent move by an engineering department to teach the mathematics module in-house.
The need to encourage students to reflect on which mathematical topics they may need to reinforce quickly and to give them proper direction on how to go about this is well understood. However there is also a desire from parent departments to understand the needs of the whole cohort alongside the early identification of individuals who may need extra support. In 2009 for the first time certainly at Sheffield a diagnostic instrument was delivered and monitored by the Maths and Statistics Help Centre rather than each individual department doing its own thing. The advantage of such an approach was consistency across all engineering departments; secondary benefits included the involvement of both students and first year tutors in the support available centrally.
