Centre for Engineering Education Blog

Tag: teaching

  • From Red Line Week to Engineering Education Scholarship Week: Why Taking Time Out Matters

    University of Sheffield staff attending a Engineering Education session

    The Centre for Engineering Education is an initiative to support the educational aims of Engineering at The University of Sheffield, and open to all, and especially the many and varied people who support these aims. In this post Emma Kenny-Levick, a Senior Administration Officer at The University of Sheffield and super power behind the CEE blog, shares how scholarship led her to challenge her assumptions, and to make time for reflection that changed on her own practice.

    When I first joined Multidisciplinary Engineering Education (MEE), a recurring block of events appeared in my calendar titled “Red Line Week.” I didn’t really know what it meant. I knew it was something to do with scholarship and personal development, two terms that, at the time, felt distant from my day‑to‑day role. I was new, busy and focused on learning the practical realities of my job. Taking time out to think about scholarship didn’t feel relevant.

    I was a professional services member of staff so why was scholarship relevant to me?

    So, like many others across the Faculty of Engineering might have done, I ignored it. I didn’t read the emails. I didn’t consider attending the sessions. Not even when hot refreshments, pastries and lunch were offered.

    If only I’d known then what I understand now.

    With hindsight, I can see clearly what Red Line Week was always intended to be and why it has become such a valuable part of our engineering education community today, now known as Engineering Education Scholarship Week (EESW).

    Drawing a line through the working week

    Red Line Week was developed and championed by Dr Matteo Di Benedetti, Senior University Teacher in MEE and Co‑Director of the Centre for Engineering Education (CEE). The idea was simple: draw a red line through your work calendar and use that protected time to focus on your own development.

    At the time, I associated development with formal training courses or mandatory requirements, not with taking space to think, reflect, write or talk with others about how I did my job and how I could do it better.

    And I certainly didn’t see how scholarship related to me.

    “What is scholarship and what has it got to do with my role?”

    For me, scholarship felt abstract. It sounded academic, theoretical, something for university teachers, not for someone in professional services.

    It wasn’t until my third year in MEE that something shifted. I looked more closely at the programme and spotted a session on effective evaluation, something directly relevant to my work. I decided to attend.

    That was the moment the penny dropped.

    I realised that scholarship wasn’t about doing something extra or becoming someone different. It was about developing ideas to improve practice. About taking what you do every day and looking at it more critically with the aim of making it better. Scholarship wasn’t separate from my role, it strengthened it.

    Space to think, not just sessions to attend

    What I came to understand is that EESW isn’t just about workshops or keynotes, though those matter. It’s about creating space.

    Space to sit in a room with like‑minded people.
    Space to reflect on what works (and what doesn’t).
    Space to talk openly about teaching, learning, evaluation, identity and confidence.

    Over time, the programme has grown from strength to strength. What began as Red Line Week has evolved into a rich programme that now includes:

    ●      Keynotes and workshops on engineering education, scholarship, academic identity, writing and open practices

    ●      Engineering and Teaching Shorts (EATS)

    ● Education Themed Networks (ETNs) bringing colleagues together around shared interests

    ●      Dedicated scholarship spaces for focused thinking, discussion and writing

    ●      Sessions delivered in partnership with colleagues from across the University, including Elevate and Student Support

    University of Sheffield staff attending a Engineering Education session

    Crucially, EESW welcomes academics, researchers, GTAs, professional services and technical colleagues. It recognises that improving engineering education and the student experience, is a shared endeavour.

    Seeing the value of time taken out

    Now, when I see EESW in my calendar, I see it very differently.

    I see the benefit of stepping away from routine tasks to think about what I do and how I might do it better. I see how confidence grows when people realise that their experiences and ideas matter. And I see how investing time in staff development feeds directly into stronger teaching, better support services and richer learning for students.

    I also see something else: permission.

    Permission to slow down.
    Permission to reflect.
    Permission to invest in yourself without feeling that you should be doing something else.

    In a sector that often feels pressured and reactive, having structured, protected time like this is not something to take for granted.

    Why I wish more people would give it a try

    If you’ve ever looked at EESW (or Red Line Week, as it once was) and thought, ‘this isn’t for me’, I understand that reaction as I had it too.

    But my experience has taught me that taking time out for personal and professional development isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It sustains good practice and strengthens not only how we work but how we work together.

    Engineering Education Scholarship Week is, at its heart, about people: their ideas, their growth and the space to develop both.

    If you’re curious about what that looks like in practice, here are a couple of highlight videos from past programmes:

    ●      Why Engineering Education Scholarship week and the benefits of attending

    ●      EESW July 2025 Highlights Video

    ●      EESW January 2026 Highlights Video

    And if you’re on the fence next time it appears in your calendar, my advice is simple: draw the red line and see what happens.

    When citing this work, please use the following citation:
    Kenny-Levick, E (2026). “From Red Line Week to Engineering Education Scholarship Week: Why Taking Time Out Matters” Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. May 2026. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/10/27/redlineweek/

  • Finding the Right Engineering Path

    In this personal blog, undergraduate student Maddy McGuire reflects on how an uncertain start, brought on by Covid and virtual course searches, led to discovering the perfect course – Bioengineering (now called Biomedical Engineering) here at The University of Sheffield. Maddy shares how her course, team projects and a transformational placement at Mercedes AMG have shaped her technical skills, confidence and career aspirations.

    When I was looking for courses during my A-level years, Covid stopped me from attending open days, with only virtual tours available. I had limited information about Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield, but had always loved maths and chemistry and wanted to find a way to apply those subjects to the real world. I found out the course offered me a way to change the future of healthcare without having to undertake a medical degree or an intense amount of biology. Through the course, I quickly realised that my passion was in healthcare technology, rather than the biological functions themselves.

    Experiment in a bio bacterial lab

    With Bioengineering being an interdisciplinary course, there were many different routes and modules available throughout the years. I have studied Biomedical engineering, but also automated control systems, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science and even business. This breadth of course choice has allowed me not only to explore possible routes, but also refine and specialise in those that I found the most interesting. I have thoroughly enjoyed group projects, where I worked with different engineers with distinct expertise. Although challenging at time, submitting a completed project as a team was an incredible and rewarding, and helped me improve my interpersonal skills.

    With Bioengineering being an interdisciplinary course, there were many different routes and modules available throughout the years. I have studied Biomedical engineering, but also automated control systems, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science and even business. This breadth of course choice has allowed me not only to explore possible routes, but also refine and specialise in those that I found the most interesting. I have thoroughly enjoyed group projects, where I worked with different engineers with distinct expertise. Although challenging at time, submitting a completed project as a team was an incredible and rewarding, and helped me improve my interpersonal skills.

    A Year in Industry

    As an additional part of my course, I undertook a year in industry at Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, that was both enriching and personally formative. I oversaw the creation, build and testing of plans, presented them to colleagues and managed resource allocations to ensure that all hardware was distributed correctly. If changes were required, I coordinated with many different departments, including manufacturing to schedule these modifications and ensure completion under strict time pressure. I compiled shortage reports and burndown charts which help to track parts against their due dates. During build days, I would have to communicate between the building and engineering teams, release Build Requests and ensure that each team was on hand to support whenever needed. My role was pivotal in finding causes of unit failure and resolving these issues.

    Students working in a bio tissue lab

    My placement gave me professional and technical skills. I learned to communicate for effectively, and by coordinating teams have developed my confidence, time management and leadership skills. I gained experience of industry relevant software including Excel, SAP and PowerBI. However, the most important skill I developed was my organisational skills, with constant shifting priorities and a fast-paced environment, I often had to adjust my plans last minute to achieve the goal within the deadline.

    My placement gave me professional and technical skills. I learned to communicate for effectively, and by coordinating teams have developed my confidence, time management and leadership skills. I gained experience of industry relevant software including  Excel, SAP and PowerBI. However, the most important skill I developed was my organisational skills, with constant shifting priorities and a fast-paced environment, I often had to adjust my plans last minute to achieve the goal within the deadline.

    When preparing to undertake this placement, I focussed on taking business modules throughout my course. These courses gave me insight into what to expect as part of a company as large as Mercedes and the technical skills to be able to execute my role in the operation with success.

    Life as a Biomedical Engineering Student

    With a limited number of Bioengineering courses available across the UK, I was pleased to find that Sheffield offered one. With the top-rated student union in the UK, Sheffield appealed to me as a social and lively university – and I have not been disappointed. Furthermore, having virtually toured Endcliffe and Ranmoor accommodation, they appealed strongly to me as a place to live as I started my degree. With the correct course, vibrant social life and top-notch accommodation, Sheffield was the perfect place for me to Study Bioengineering.

    Student working in a bio bacterial lab

    For me, the most enjoyable aspect of Sheffield university has been the social aspect, and the variety of ways to engage with other members of the community. From my course to sports and societies, I have been introduced to such a wide variety of people, many of which have become my closest friends. Many of my friends have graduated, but they are lifelong friends, and we still maintain contact and see each other whenever we can. A particular highlight of the social and sporting calendar was watching the varsity Ice Hockey match, which quickly became a tradition as a reliably fun event.

    Now looking forward, I will be applying to programme management and logistics roles in different industries, including healthcare. This will allow me to understand how different roles function within different sectors and see the differences in their supply chain management. All of this will give me the insight I need to decide which sector or industry I will want to specialise in and start my career progression with that sector in mind.

    When citing this work, please use the following citation:

    McGuire, M. (2026). “Find the right engineering path”. Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. November 2025. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/10/27/findingtherightengineeringpath/

  • Group-led didactic teaching – is this novel?

    people in a large lecture theatre

    Have you ever heard of Group-led didactic teaching? What is it? These are questions Professor Andrew Garrard has been considering as he develops the pedagogy behind the Engineering Sheffield ‘Project Weeks’. Called GEC and EYH, they are both core to undergraduate engineering education here at the University of Sheffield, well supported by our industry partners, and provide students the opportunity to develop important engineering skills. If you think you know the answer the questions, check first to see what Andrew thinks.

    The curricula for all our Engineering programmes at the University of Sheffield include “project weeks,” during which approximately 1,500 undergraduate engineering students simultaneously engage with an open-ended design problem.  As we do not have a space large enough for the entire cohort, the students are allocated to multiple teaching areas across the campus. These areas are each staffed for a substantial proportion of the period during which the students are engaged in their work.

    Part of the teaching delivery involves students receiving didactic instruction from staff on defined design methods, such as problem definition and design selection. It is this mode of distributed didactic learning that I am updating. The traditional lecture format, in which academic staff present using pre-prepared slides, is being replaced with a digitally enabled sequence of bite-sized content, steps, and milestones that allows learners to engage with the didactic material independently. This structure is similar to that of a MOOC. However, whereas a MOOC is typically designed for learners working individually and separated physically and temporally from others on the course, this material will be designed for groups working collaboratively. For example, embedded instructions will prompt groups to discuss a topic or to ensure that all members understand a concept before progressing to the next step.

    When exploring the introduction of a new method of learning and teaching, it is standard practice to review previously published literature to understand what has already been attempted and to ensure that any new approach aligns with established best practice. This was my intention when considering an update to the didactic content within the project weeks. However, I have been unable to identify discussion of anything closely aligned with this idea. My search has not been exhaustive, but there comes a point at which the potential value of locating comparable work is outweighed by the time required to uncover it. I suspect part of the problem is not knowing the search terms necessary to uncover appropriate sources.

    This blog post therefore has two aims. First, if any readers are aware of similar published work, I would be grateful to be pointed in the right direction, as collaboration with others exploring related themes is always welcome. Second, if no such work exists, this serves as a way of sharing the concept more broadly.

    If this approach has not been explored before, I will  make the bold claim that I can coin a term for it. After some careful consideration, review of various options, and frustration with ChatGPT “just not getting it,” I’ve settled on:

    Group-Led Didactic Teaching (GLDT)

    The acronym seems to appear primarily in the context of cryptocurrency trading, so with luck there will be minimal overlap—unless, perhaps, one happens to be teaching in a business school. With that noted, let me outline what the term is intended to capture.

    How is GLDT different from other modes of teaching?

    There are well-established methods for delivering didactic teaching. These include synchronous lectures delivered by academic staff and asynchronous lectures, which are usually provided remotely. A range of digital learning approaches also exists, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs), which present taught material in small, self-contained units.

    A synchronous, in-person lecture offers the social benefit of a shared learning experience, but it restricts all students to a single pace of delivery. In contrast, an asynchronous lecture allows learners to engage with the material at a time and speed that suits them, though it lacks opportunities for social interaction. Asynchronous lectures can also be produced quickly as an alternative when in-person teaching is not possible, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, or to support learners who have missed a session.

    MOOCs use a similar delivery format to asynchronous remote lectures, but they are designed specifically for fully remote learners. They typically provide short, focused segments of content along with multiple in-course milestones or formative assessments.

    My approach to Group-Led Didactic Teaching applies a MOOC-style structure to the design and delivery of content for learners who attend scheduled sessions and work in assigned groups to complete learning tasks. This model combines the social interaction of an in-person, communal lecture with the flexibility for each group to set its own pace. It is also scalable across multiple rooms on campus.

    GLDT differs from a typical tutorial. Tutorials usually do not include tasks designed specifically for groups, and they often focus on problem sets that test the application of knowledge rather than the learning of new didactic content. In addition, learners in tutorials commonly work on different parts of the curriculum and seek help on varying topics, depending on which aspects of the material they are experiencing difficulty. In GLDT sessions, all learners engage with the same material and are expected to achieve the.

    GLDT is a form of group work, which is a widely used teaching method. However, most forms of group work involve student-led or group-led learning for open-ended design challenges, in which students are given a problem brief and follow a process to produce varied, undefined outcomes. For example, in a design project, each student or group develops its own solution to the problem. This approach differs from the delivery of didactic taught material, where all students are expected to reach the same defined learning outcomes.

     Intended learningStaffingPace settingSocial interactionScale up limits
    Synchronous, in person lectureDidactic content1 lecturer per lectureStaffYesTheater size
    Asynchronous remote lectureDidactic content1 lecturer per recordingLearnerNoUnlimited
    MOOCDidactic contentAcademics to design, then reuse.LearnerNoUnlimited
    TutorialsFormative assessmentTeaching assistantsLearnerYes (optionally)Number of Rooms/TAs
    GroupworkOpen ended problemsTeaching assistantsGroupYes (mandatory)Number of Rooms/TAs
    GLDTDidactic contentOptional Teaching assistantsGroupYes (mandatory)Number of Rooms/TAs

    So what do you think? Is it new? Do you do any teaching of this nature? Let us know via Linkedin, we’d love to hear from you about this.

    When citing this work, please use the following citation:

    Garrard, A. (2025). “Group-led didactic teaching – is this novel?”. Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. February 2026. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/10/27/group-leddidacticteaching/

  • Open Educational Resources (OER) in Engineering at Sheffield

    Why make education openly accessible? Don’t worry, Tom Howard will help us by explaining it’s about equity and quality.

    Why Make Education Openly Accessible?

    The benefits of using Open Educational Resources (OER) for teaching and learning in Higher Education are well established [1]. The key benefit to learners is the unrestricted (and zero-cost) access to learning materials, regardless of age, geographic location or economic situation. There is evidence to suggest that students perform better when enrolled on courses that make more extensive use of OER too [2].

    There are many benefits to HE institutions as well, the obvious one (again) relates to economics: moving away from high (and ever increasing) cost, subscription-based journals to open access alternatives is a significant cost saving. But there are other important benefits: making educational resources openly available for all can help to showcase the teaching that a University provides, and helps to promote institutional reputation.

    There are also considerable benefits for teaching staff. OER can help to ease workload pressures since instructors can take existing open resources and either use them as-is, or adapt them to their own needs, rather than having to re-invent the wheel and write materials from scratch. Material created or adapted by instructors can help to promote individual reputation too.

    What are we doing at Sheffield

    In light of all these benefits, in December 2022, the University of Sheffield established new policy to encourage the use and creation of OER by university staff. In Engineering, we are really keen to engage with this, and it’s become one of the key themes of the Centre of Engineering Education (CEE). We believe that we can provide a unique take on it: Practical Engineering.

    We’re fortunate to have the Diamond, the home of practical teaching for the Engineering Faculty. We believe that the teaching that we develop here is unique and exciting. As such, we want to share this with the wider community to showcase what we do, to promote the great work of our staff, and to enthuse prospective students by giving them an insight into what a degree in Engineering at the University of Sheffield will be like.

    How are we achieving it?

    In order to support this, one of the key things we have done is to put together a website to showcase the open access educational materials currently produced by staff across the Engineering Faculty: https://sites.google.com/sheffield.ac.uk/open-eng

    Open Educational Resource showcase webpage

    We really want to see this grow, and we are promoting this across the faculty and encouraging staff to contribute as much as they can of their own work. We’re also promoting the idea of OER more generally, and encouraging staff to think about how they could use OER in their own teaching (and why it’s beneficial).

    One of the key issues around OER relates to perceived quality [3]. We are (of course) confident that the resources that we create here at Sheffield are of high quality, but how do we convince others of this? Having the University Logo attached to the site helps with this, and we are fortunate to be part of an institution with a good reputation, but there is certainly more that we must do to guarantee and assure readers of the high quality of each and every resource that we share.

    In academia we are very familiar with the concept of peer review, yet often in the context of OER this simply isn’t feasible [4]. There are various other techniques we can employ to help with this though. Each resource on the site includes the name of the primary author, and a link to their University profile page. Through this, viewers can view our academic credentials, to provide confidence that we are qualified to write about and teach a given subject.

    Please help us!

    Ultimately, the most effective way for us to demonstrate quality in our resources is through user feedback. And that’s where you come in!

    The site includes a mechanism for user reviews, and we would really value any feedback that anyone may have on any of our resources. Any review is of huge value, but particularly those from other qualified authors (both internal and external to the university) would be really valuable to us.

    Please browse our resources and provide us with feedback if you can. Ultimately an OER is never really final. We want to make sure our teaching is as good as it can be, and would welcome any suggested improvements. And finally, if you make use of any of our resources for your own teaching or learning then please let us know!

    When citing this work, please use the following citation:

    Howard, Tom. (2025). “Open Educational Resources (OER) in Engineering at Sheffield”. Centre for Engineering Education Blog, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. October 2025. https://ceesheffield.co.uk/2026/10/29/open-educational-resources-oer-in-engineering-at-sheffield/

    [1] Swain, B.K., Pathak, R.K (2024). Benefits and challenges of using oer in higher education: a pragmatic review. Discov Educ 3, 81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-024-00142-6

    [2] Kit W. Cho, Vahe Permzadian (2024). The impact of open educational resources on student achievement: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Educational Research 126. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2024.102365.

    [3] Anderson, T., Gaines, A., Leachman, C., & Williamson, E. P. (2017). Faculty and Instructor Perceptions of Open Educational Resources in Engineering. The Reference Librarian 58(4), 257–277. https://doi.org/10.1080/02763877.2017.1355768.[4]

    C. M. Kelty, C. S. Burrus and R. G. Baraniuk (2008). Peer Review Anew: Three Principles and a Case Study in Postpublication Quality Assurance. Proceedings of the IEEE 96(6) https://doi.org/10.1109/JPROC.2008.921613.