In 2011 we received an HP award to develop online material on Basic Skills and Knowledge for Mathematics for the study of first year university mathematics. A research team at the University of KwaZulu-Natal developed the material after receiving feedback based on the first semester examinations for 2011, from module lecturers and students. The material developed was generic to all first year mathematics modules for engineering [Math131], main stream mathematics [Math130], commerce [Math134] and science [Math133, now Math150]. 

Feedback from our first year students in 2012 indicates that the generic material is helping them to cope with the required prerequisites to study university mathematics. Our team will now focus on developing core online material specific to the four first year first semester modules indicated above and three second semester modules. The online material for these modules will be open source. Our plan is for module coordinators to use this core material to develop their websites for the modules so that our e-learning material is more structured. Presently the quality and the depth of the content covered in each of the seven modules varies almost ever year, and depends on a lecturer’s eagerness or lack thereof to use e-learning. Long term goals are: 

To view online some of the generic material developed, click here and log in as a guest.

To view an example of how this material was incorporated into a website for engineering mathematics [Math131], you can log in as a guest here.