From PhD student to Professor in physiology education

When I was asked to write this article about my career path as a physiology educator I suddenly realised that I had been teaching physiology for 36 years, with 29 of these at my current institution, the University of Sheffield. They say time flies when you are enjoying yourself, and that has certainly been the case for me.

I started my career as a physiology educator in the first year of my PhD at the University of Leeds. I had graduated from Leeds at the start of the previous summer, and when they were looking for someone who knew the programme, I was the obvious choice. In I stepped to deliver academic tutorials on physiology to students who were only a year or two younger than I was. The rest they say, is history. I realised that I loved teaching, seeing the lightbulb moment when students were able to grasp the concepts and ideas we had been discussing. From that point I took every opportunity I could during my PhD and postdoctoral studies to get more teaching experience. By the time I left to become a junior lecturer at Sheffield, I had experience of delivering a wide range of teaching sessions, and importantly I also had experience in the setting and marking of assessments. 

As standard for the time, I started in a research and teaching lectureship at Sheffield, but over the years I realised my real passion was in teaching and scholarship (still research of course, just in teaching). I eventually moved over to a teaching and scholarship contract, and took on a number of internal and external leadership roles in education, including chairing the education committee at the Physiological Society. In that role I was able to introduce the Otto Hutter Teaching Prize and Rob Clarke Undergraduate Awards, which still recognise excellence in physiology education today.    

As a physiology educator I put student support right at the heart of my teaching design, and importantly I am always looking for ways to enhance the student learning experience. I deliver didactic lectures and flipped activities supported by active learning sessions, to ensure my students actively participate in their learning. My move to using active learning was driven by the increasing importance of the skills development of physiology graduates over the years. I want my graduates to be able to take their physiology knowledge and understanding and use this to solve novel problems, the problems of the future. Taking an active approach to learning allows me to develop the various skills my students need for their future careers. 

As well as the shift towards skills development, another major change I have seen is the use of digital technologies to support learning. As a junior lecture I started teaching using overhead projector acetates, before moving to Powerpoint. Now, while I still use Powerpoint, I also utilise many different tools such as lecture capture, anonymous online polling, skills support videos, the virtual learning environment, discussion forums, electronic handbooks and whiteboards. I am a strong advocate and champion for the use of lecture capture, to support students who cannot attend class, or who struggle to process all of the information in my teaching sessions.

I am also a huge fan of anonymous online question platforms, as these allow students to answer questions in in a low risk environment. This is really important for large cohort sizes (I teach 100 to 350 students in my modules), where students may lack the confidence to raise their hand and verbally answer questions. More recently I have been grappling, as we all have, with the impact of large language models. I am trying to incorporate training for the appropriate use of AI into my learning and teaching activities, and considering the implications for assessments. There are no easy answers in this space!

The final change I have seen over the years has been the increasing importance of teaching and scholarship roles in higher education. Such roles just didn’t exist when I first started as a junior lecturer.  It’s a real positive that institutions now recognise the tremendous value teaching and scholarship academics bring to departments and schools, particularly their expertise in teaching excellence and the impact of their scholarship projects. It’s great that PhD students and new academic staff can see there are a range of pathways to success in academia.

So, if you are considering the educational pathway as a PhD student, my top tips to you would be:

1. Get some teaching experience early on. Starting with demonstrating in practical classes is a great first step (I did this).
2. Where opportunities exist to complete formal training in teaching at your institution – do it.  This didn’t exist when I first started, but I know there are loads of courses out there now.
3. Get yourself a mentor – someone who you can ask questions and seek help from. 
4. Go and watch others deliver their teaching, learn from them.

If you are already on the educational pathway, my top tips would be:

1. Make sure you showcase your work, e.g. blog posts, using social media.
2. Get involved in networking and collaborative opportunities.
3. Get yourself a mentor, to help guide you on the next steps.
4. Check out the promotion criteria for your institution, and map what you have and don’t yet have.
5. Don’t say yes to everything you are asked to do, you should be selective (see point 4).
6. Check out my top tips for promotion.

Finally, what are the best parts of my role as a physiology educator. The first is the opportunity I have to teach and interact with my students (by my estimate around 7000 students over the years). I know that I am making a difference by the messages graduates send me, remembering my teaching even years down the line. I also love collaborating with academic colleagues, e.g, at Sheffield in developing our new curriculum, but also colleagues at other universities on scholarship projects and publications. There is still so much to be learnt and developed in education.