Author: Karabo Sibasa // Editor: Erin Pallott

Teaching is one of the key skills that many PhD students develop over the course of their studies, whether through tutoring, demonstrating in labs or teaching assistant roles. While some of us will have experience of lesson planning, it is not often that we have the opportunity to design an entire course based on our research interests. Until, that is, The Brilliant Club’s Scholars Programme.

What is the Scholars Programme?

The Brilliant Club is a charity with the mission to help young people from disadvantaged backgrounds access, and succeed in, the most competitive universities. Through the Scholars Programme, The Brilliant Club supports postgraduate researchers to design a course based on their research, pitched at a level that is suitable for Key Stage 4 students (14 – 16 years old).

This Autumn, I had the opportunity to design my own course as a Scholars Programme tutor. My challenge was to distil the basis of an interdisciplinary 4-year research project into an accessible and engaging course to be taught over seven tutorials.

So, why should you consider joining The Scholars Programme with The Brilliant Club? In this post, I’ll explain 5 reasons why this is a great opportunity for PhD students.

• Gain experience of curriculum design

Curriculum design is an important to skill to gain for an academic career, as well as for non-academic careers like instructional design. Making evidence-based decisions about what, how, and in what order students should learn something is exciting and encourages us to think about best practice in teaching. The Brilliant Club provides training in pedagogy to Scholars Programme tutors as well as feedback on course designs.

• Public engagement and outreach experience

It’s a great way to communicate your research to a non-specialist audience. You gain skills in translating your research to the general public who are not fluent in the language of academia. Taking research outside the ‘ivory tower’ helps to make it more accessible for everyone.

• Get involved in widening participation

Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to go to competitive universities compared to their more advantaged peers. As a Scholars Programme tutor, I get to talk to students from backgrounds which are underrepresented in higher education and show them the kind of research that we do here at UoM. It’s been rewarding to see the students grow more confident and more interested in going to university because of our tutorials!

• It helps you clarify your PhD project

One of the most challenging things to do as a PhD student is to explain your research project in one sentence. How do you condense a 60,000 – 80,000 thesis into a few words? A good place to start is to structure it into a series of clear lessons making up a coherent course. This forces you to think about what the main points are and how they connect with each other. It is also a way to look at your project from a different angle. As it is often said: “to teach is to learn twice”.

• It’s fun!

Lastly, designing a course allows you to be creative! I had a great time deciding on the page layout, which pictures and diagrams to use, and how to phrase particular ideas.

Want to try designing your own course? Find out more about the Scholars Programme here.