In the United Kingdom, the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) was introduced with the aims to enhance the quality of undergraduate teaching in UK higher education sector by assessing institutions on teaching standards, learning environments, and student outcomes. The emphasis is on student satisfaction and evaluation as to whether the educational experience provides value for money. As part of promoting teaching excellence, a shift is occurring from traditional teacher-centred learning to a more student-centred approach and this trend is set to continue. A student-centred approach to learning requires students to be active participants and encourages them to take more responsibility for their learning. Previous research explored the challenges facing educators required to teach subjects with high technical content in adopting a more student-centred approach rather than the traditional teacher-centred approach. Educators within the Engineering disciplines and other science-based areas were surveyed to ascertain their views on the potential challenges of using student-centred learning approaches in their teaching delivery. One of the key finding from this research that a significant number of students entering higher education programmes in Engineering do not have the required key pre-requisite mathematical skills to cope with the material content within their programmes. A consequence of the lack of these key skills results in valuable time lost in class having to revise topics again, moving onto more advance topics requiring these skills and making use of more innovative student-centre learning approaches. This paper considers the impact of having and not having the required pre-requisite mathematical skills for a module with very high technical content. The student feedback results indicate that it is crucial to have this key pre-requisite knowledge for the necessary self-confidence and better understanding of the new material being presented.

Keywords: Student-centred learning, high technical content, key pre-requisite skills, higher education.