I have referred to the HELM (Helping Engineers Learn Mathematics) notes many times over the years on this blog. They are referred to on the Notes and Examples page for Further Mathematics as well as in many individual blog posts, for example, Mechanics – Dimensional Analysis, Differential Equations, and Further Calculus.

If you have not come across the HELM Project before, the project was designed to support the mathematical education of engineering students and includes an extensive collection of notes which include very clear worked examples. Whilst the workbooks cover the basic engineering mathematics and statistics teaching for first and second year students in a typical UK undergraduate engineering degree many of the workbooks include content appropriate for A Level Mathematics and particularly, Further Mathematics. For easy access to these resources, the HELM Project Workbooks are hosted by Loughborough University’s Mathematics Learning Support Centre. Alternatively, the complete set is hosted by the Open University. To access the Open University resources you will need to create an account (easy and free), this will also give you access to the numerous free online courses.

Looking at Loughborough University’s Mathematics Learning Support Centre as well as providing access to the workbooks, we can additionally read about the past, present and future of the resources and see the details of the HELM consortium members and their roles.

You will see from Loughborough’s description that each workbook varies in length from 25 pages to 75 pages (average 50 pages), and includes Mathematics (and Statistics) for engineering simply explained, worked examples, tasks and exercises with answers provided. Note the last workbooks in the series, Workbook 49 is a Student’s Guide and Workbook 50 a Tutor’s Guide.

The Student guide includes a description of the format of the workbooks and a comprehensive list of contents.