mathcentre community project
mathcentre community project - supported through FETLAR.
encouraging academics to share mathematics support resources
mathcentre (www.mathcentre.ac.uk) has developed since 2002 into a well-used resource base for mathematics support at the transition to university. It contains hundreds of help leaflets and workbooks, in the form of pdf resources, on topics known to cause problems for students. It provides access to the mathtutor suite of resources containing video tutorials, diagnostic tests and exercises.
Whilst many of the common mathematical topics are covered, there is always scope for expansion. Over the years, many lecturing staff and students have drawn our attention to topic areas which might be developed. Others have informally offered to provide resources, but until now there has been no mechanism to accept such offers.
With the support of the FETLAR project we are delighted to announce the mathcentre Community Project. Brought together by Leslie Fletcher, Peter Samuels, Chris Sangwin and Tony Croft, it is now possible for the mathematics community to contribute resources to mathcentre.
With the formation of the mathcentre Community Project, LaTex and Word templates are provided for those who wish to make resources available in the form of Quick Reference leaflets. These often include a small number of exercises with answers and should be no longer than 2 sides of A4. Through this means, the volume of material available to support students may increase significantly. Those wanting to establish or develop maths support at their own institutions will have access to a dynamic, growing resource base.
Some sample contributions from the mathcentre community project can be found by following the links below. Other project outputs will be found amongst the main mathcentre resources as they become available.
Approaching Numeracy as an Adult
Information about creating and uploading a resource.
If you wish to contribute a leaflet you should download the templates. Complete the Excel template containing metadata such as keywords and email this together with a pdf file of the finished Quick Reference leaflet along with either
- a LaTeX source file and any accompanying figures in the form of .eps files, or
- a Word file and any accompanying figures.
mathcentre has developed a loyal user base over the years, so to assist in preserving this and the integrity of the site certain requirements are necessary:
- All resources should be submitted by completing either the LaTeX template or one of two Word templates. Download the templates and full instructions here.
- Metadata to enable the resource to be located should be supplied in the Excel template community-template.xls.
- The author must be a member of staff at a UK university (the submission must be from a .ac.uk email address). If you not a member of a UK university and wish to offer resources, please contact mathcentre directly community@mathcentre.ac.uk.
- Each author must get their submission checked by a suitably qualified colleague who, like the author, is named on the leaflet as the reviewer. This checking should ensure that the mathematical content is correct, and also that the layout is clear and as helpful as possible to students who may be struggling.
- The copyright of the leaflet remains with the author, and this is stated on the leaflet.
- The Creative Commons licence on the leaflet is CC BY-NC-SA.
- The LaTeX or Word source, and any figures, as well as the pdf itself will be made available on mathcentre.
- All resources should be restricted to a maximum size of 2 A4 pages. If a topic requires more pages, the content should be broken down into smaller chunks.
- Once you have emailed your contribution, mathcentre reserves the right to edit it for consistency of style and appearance. This process will be undertaken as quickly as possible, but please be patient.
At this stage, interest is restricted to mathematical rather than statistical topics. This is only because a sister site statstutor is currently being developed.
These instructions are provisional and will be refined as we learn about how contributors use the system, so for now please bear with us should the process be less than ideal.
