Sigma - Supporting Excellence - Structuring Progress

The CETL funding has enabled us to enhance university-wide mathematics and statistics drop-in support offered to all students at both Loughborough and Coventry Universities. This support enables students to receive one-to-one help with the mathematics and/or statistics elements within their chosen course. 

sigma's enhanced mathematics support includes:

• increasing the variety of resources available to students;
• improving the material and information available over their individual websites;
• increasing the staff time dedicated to the support centres; and
• extending and improving the drop-in centre environments.

In general the term "Mathematics Support Centre" should be interpreted to mean a facility offered to students (not necessarily of mathematics) which is in addition to their regular programme of teaching through lectures, tutorials, seminars, problems classes, personal tutorials, etc. The term should be regarded as an umbrella term encompassing a wide range of provision (known in different institutions by various names including Maths Workshop, Maths Help, Maths Drop-In).

The provision of Mathematics Support Centres in Higher Education is already extensive. It is thought that at least 50% of Higher Education Institutions now have some kind of Mathematics Support Centre provision. In 2004, 66 out of 106 UK universities questioned offered some form of mathematics support. [Perkin, G. & Croft, A.C. (2004). Mathematics Support Centres – the extent of current provision. MSOR connections, the newsletter of the LTSN Maths, Stats and OR network, 4(2), pp14-18.]