Matthew Rolfe

I initially heard about the Brilliant Club through a career development program at the University of Sheffield – I was talking over coffee and I mentioned I was considering a career in teaching. A fellow participant said that they had recently been to a talk about the Scholars Programme and that it sounded like a good experience. I have to admit that I’d forgotten about this conversation, but a few days afterwards an email arrived from our development officer about the scheme and I then actually looked into what the programme was. For me, it highlighted the problem of widening participation in higher education, particularly in selective universities, and I liked the idea that by contributing to the program I can help in a small way to resolving this. In addition, if through the tutorials my tutees can advance their studies it is beneficial.

I taught groups of 14 year olds from four local schools on a biology topic called ‘Befriending bacteria – using bacteria for our benefit’ based upon the research I perform on a daily basis. I deliberately tried to keep this analytical, so that the tutees had a problem they had to interpret and understand to enhance their numerical reasoning and analysis skills. Designing a course was quite novel and the use of well-defined templates and mark schemes seemed quite restrictive at first. The tutor training away day was fantastic – it explained the rationale behind the templates (which I was thankful for), what was required in a tutorial and teaching techniques. In fact, the training I received from the Brilliant Club team was in many ways far superior to what I have received in the higher education sector that seems predominantly reflective rather than providing actual techniques.

The launch trip and tutorials seemed to fly-by; it really emphasises that you need to teach as much as possible in as short a period of time as possible. In the tutorials I think the pupils gained more of an idea what research is – what research papers look like and scientific terminology. They certainly know much more about bacteria and what they can do. From my perspective the whole scheme has realty enhanced my planning skills and on the spot thinking, whilst my organisation of tutorials developed really quickly. The teaching techniques suggested were really good and many of my peers in higher education are quite envious of the training I received.

The key thing that I have learnt throughout these tutorials is how influential group dynamics are and my awareness of the consequences of this has improved dramatically. In undergraduate teaching with large groups (over 180 students) this is not really an issue and most of the time in smaller groups a dynamic already exists. In small tutor groups in the scholars program it is plainly evident when pupils don’t know each other well. There were also visible differences in pupil progression between schools that heavily assist their pupils on this programme and those that provide less support, as the students knew each other better and developed together as a group. I found it initially really difficult to get groups mingling and discussing and the small discussion exercises and icebreakers that we were shown in the training weekend really helped me.