Good Practice Highlights
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Welcome to Good Practice Highlights at the University of Sheffield. This is an ongoing resource which captures examples of good practice from across the faculties and makes it available for staff, students and colleagues to improve their own practice.
Please choose from the categories below, read one of the featured case studies or use the search function on the top right of the page.
You can search the full directory and please be sure to read the Elevate Blog for more examples of good practice from across the University.
Featured Case Studies
Featured Case Studies
Embedding ESD Principles into Anatomy Teaching
This article shares how I’ve brought Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into my anatomy teaching to help students think beyond the textbook. By weaving in real-world issues like health inequalities, environmental challenges, and disability inclusion, I aim to prepare future professionals to think critically and act responsibly.The article also reflects on what’s worked, what’s been challenging, and how these ideas could be adapted by educators in other fields.
Dr Ofelia Meza-Escobar, University Teaching Associate
School of Biosciences
Spoiler alert: writing a good script makes a really good tutorial video. Read on to find out why you should write a great script and how you can do it!
Matt Gilchrist, Digital Learning Officer
Online discussion forums are a core part of an online programme, as they offer an opportunity for students to engage with both peers and tutors about what they are learning and other relevant professional issues.
TUoS offers guidance for online communication. While this guidance is helpful, it is aimed primarily at on-campus students who have other opportunities to engage with peers face-to-face during the week. Our programme team felt it was important to create more tailored guidance for our distance learning students.
Dr Jayne Finlay, Lecturer in Librarianship
GTAs (Graduate Teaching Associates/ Assistants) are an integral part of the teaching team in the School of Biosciences. Last semester, I developed and introduced a form for Academic teaching leads to give feedback to GTAs in the School of Biosciences on key areas of their teaching practice. The aim of the GTA Development Form is to provide fast, actionable feedback and facilitate teaching development discussions between GTAs and their supervisors. The form was developed to map onto the UK Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education.
Dr Emma Hughes, Teaching Associate
In today's digital world, access to information and resources online is crucial. But what if you can't see the screen clearly, navigate with a mouse, or process information in the traditional way? Digital accessibility is all about breaking down these barriers and ensuring everyone, regardless of ability, can experience the web.
Sophie Ward, Digital Learning Team
Stefan Ash, Corporate Communications
For a while now, we’ve had students working in pairs as part of their lab sessions. More recently, we’ve ramped up the group work side of things, both in learning and assessment. There’s a good reason for that—working in teams helps students build important skills like communication, collaboration, and problem-solving.
These are exactly the kinds of skills that students will need in their future careers, where working with others is standard. In fact, many degree accreditation frameworks now require group projects because of these benefits.
Dr Matt Mears, Senior University Teacher in Physics
At the University of Sheffield all staff and students have access to Wonda VR. Wonda now also has an AI feature and here we explore how that AI feature can be used by staff and students.
Sophie Ward, Digital Learning Advisor
When attending events and conferences, notes are often made. You may have a preferred way to capture your thoughts. Over the course of an intensive day or few, these thoughts and observations can become a wide-ranging record.
Coming back to these a day or week later in order to make sense and share these with colleagues can often seem a large amount of work.
Find out one way of using AI to create digestable and useful outputs for yourself and to share with colleages.
James Little, Digital Learning Advisor
In Biomedical Science, Louise Robson, Francesca Henshaw and Gordon Cooper have been using an open book, online assessment in their Physiology module for several years. This inclusive approach to assessment gave them the opportunity to evaluate student knowledge and understanding of the topics covered in the module, with students asked to write a topic based essay from a title they were given.
However, when large language models became available, they took the opportunity to evaluate their assessment approach, considering whether they could include AI to enhance student skills, particularly around critical thinking and analysis.
Prof Louise Robson, Professor of Digital Innovation in Learning and Teaching; Dr Francesca Henshaw, University Teacher; Dr Gordon Cooper, Senior University Teacher
Generating images using AI tools such as Adobe Firefly is an increasingly popular method of creating visual materials, however consistency remains an issue as it is challenging to create sets of images that work together as a set.
To a certain degree, image prompting is a science and finding a consistent prompt which can generate consistent images requires some trial and error, but it is achievable.
This article was originally written as advice to a JISC project on AI image generation.
Dave Holloway, Senior Digital Learning Advisor
Lindsay Pantry, from the School of Journalism, Media and Communication, recently created a unique learning experience for first-year Journalism students. To provide a more realistic and engaging approach to news gathering, Lindsay designed a crime scene simulation based on a local incident.
By immersing students in a simulated crime scene, the experience aimed to help them understand the complexities of gathering information for a news story. The experience provided students with a hands-on opportunity to apply their classroom knowledge in a practical setting.
by Lindsay Pantry, University Teacher and Sophie Ward, Digital Learning Adviser
Our new online resource 'My Digital Induction: A Guide to the Apps and Software You Will Use at the University of Sheffield" is aimed at all new and returning students to help them understand the wealth of tools they will use during their time as students.
The resource was to be significantly promoted to staff and students and, as such, needed a logo to help identify it. This is how I utilised AI to help me create it.
by Dave Holloway, Senior Digital Learning Advisor
This resource is a result of a student focus group and a staff workshop held at the Law School in 2022 which introduced the concept of decolonisation into legal pedagogies at the University of Sheffield.
The resource explains the concept of decolonisation and why it is important, includes student's views on the subject, and, most importantly, provides guidance on how to inject decolonial thought into teaching at the university-level.
by Saira Turner, LLB with Chinese Law
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