Why become a demonstrator?

What are the benefits of becoming a demonstrator within the School of Biological Sciences.

Teaching experience

Teaching experience is becoming more important for academic roles and promotion. Demonstrating provides relevant experiences to enhance your CV. Find out more by reading the Nature article below:

Academic employers seek research experience and teaching skills

Professional growth

Demonstrating experience can be used towards professional accreditation by the Higher Education Academy and in academic applications and promotions.

Find out more by reading the section below on 'Developing Personal and Professional Skills'.

Knowledge enhancement

Demonstrating allows you to revisit, evaluate and solidify your current understanding of fundamental biological principles. You may gain new knowledge and learn new techniques that expand and enrich your experience of biology.

Find out what the University Careers Service has to say about building relevant teaching experience by following the link below:

University Careers Service - Teaching and research in Higher Education

Your experience as a demonstrator will help you develop many personal and professional skills that you can take into your future career.

Communication skills

Demonstrating involves providing clear guidance on experimental and technical issues as well as explaining basic scientific concepts to students. Good communication is therefore essential.

Demonstrating will refine your communication skills, crucial for working in research teams and presenting your work at lab meetings or conferences.
Marking student papers or reports will make you reflect on good writing practice and improve your own scientific writing.

Teamwork

You will be working with fellow demonstrators and the floor leader to achieve the goals of a particular class. You will work towards shared goals, learning to implement scientific knowledge in real-time group situations.

Interpersonal skills

You will learn how to:

Approach students and inspire enthusiasm for the subject
Adapt explanations for students from a variety of educational backgrounds
Develop your ability to deal with tricky situations in a professional manner

Management skills

You will learn how to manage groups of students, ensuring they keep to time-frames and deadlines. You will also learn how to manage your own time - ensuring your demonstrator work fits in with your own goals and study commitments.

Other skills

Our current demonstrators and tutors also said they developed the following skills:

public-speaking, presenting and self confidence
time management, multi-tasking and organisation
problem solving, perserverance and adaptability
listening, patience and understanding varied perspectives
explaining, abstraction and mentoring

Community

Being an active member of the teaching team will enhance your sense of belonging within the academic community

Build confidence

By becoming an approachable member of staff who students can look to for help or inspiration.

Network building

Meet and make new connections with staff, peers and students every year.

Personally rewarding

Passing on your wisdom and knowledge, by helping students to achieve goals, can be very rewarding.

Financial

Get paid extra on top of your PhD stipend.

Wellbeing

Engaging in the diverse teaching tasks, outside of your PhD research, and being open to the above experiences listed can positively impact mental wellbeing.

Find out about the effects of teaching on PhD students' mental health by reading the research paper below:

PhDepression: Examining How Graduate Research and Teaching Affect Depression in Life Sciences PhD Students

I decided to get into demonstrating during my post-graduate studies for a couple reasons.
I wanted to stay in academia and teaching undergraduates as a PhD student helped me get teaching experience at the university level, develop my teaching style and decide whether it was for me. It also looked great on my CV and put me a step above other PhD students (and PostDocs) when I started looking for academic positions that involved teaching.
Teaching really helped me develop important academic and professional skills. My understanding of the subject matter deepened when students asked questions I had never thought; this built my confidence in my subject. I also developed an appreciation about how students learn and what kinds of things students get stuck on.
I never get tired of seeing students get excited about all the interesting things in biology that I get excited about.

I worked as a demonstrator on several different biology courses. At first I was apprehensive as I'm quite shy and didn't think I'd be very good at it, but there was always plenty of support from the course organisers and other demonstrators.
It was so rewarding to work alongside the students and help them understand sometimes complex topics and watch them learn and grow throughout the year. I also learned loads myself!
Demonstrating built my confidence in communicating and explaining things, and I ended up getting a teaching job when I finished my PhD. I don't work in teaching any more but still use the skills I learned in many of the jobs I've had over the years, as so many roles require training and mentoring experience.
Demonstrating always finds its way onto my CV and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to do it.

My experience as a demonstrator has been incredibly rewarding. I took on this role as a PhD student to develop my teaching skills and share my passion for ecology and evolution while advancing my research. Supporting undergraduate students in building practical skills felt like a natural extension of my academic interests and a potential step toward a future in teaching.
I’ve gained experience in teaching and mentoring and adapted my communication to diverse learning styles. I also deepened my own understanding of key concepts by engaging with them through teaching, and this has been very useful for my own PhD research. The connections I built with both undergrad students and fellow demonstrators made the experience even more enriching.
The experience has helped me build valuable skills—effective communication, mentorship, and collaboration—that I know will serve me well in academia and beyond. Personally, I’ve grown in patience, adaptability, and empathy, qualities I’ll carry with me long after this role.
Overall, my time as a demonstrator with the Biological Teaching Organization has been overwhelmingly positive, and I highly recommend it to other PhD students.

Demonstrating was a good chance to develop a different skillset to that which my own research project involves.
I hoped to gain understanding and experience of helping undergraduate students learn different aspects of biology. I also hoped I’d gauge how much I’d enjoy having teaching components in potential future jobs.
My confidence in having discussions with students definitely grew. I learned how to guide students towards engaging and thinking critically. Finally, I gained lots of knowledge about animal diversity - some of the content I’d learned during my own undergraduate degree, so I enjoyed both learning new things and getting a refresher on things I’d forgotten!
My experiences will prove to be very useful and it was a good opportunity to get a wider skillset. If I pursue job opportunities in academia, it would be an important first experience of teaching. And for jobs outside of academia it could show employers that I have a range of skills to offer, not just the ability to work on my own research project.
I’d definitely recommend demonstrating to other students – it’s a nice way to supplement a PhD stipend and it can be really good to have a point in the week where you do something other than your own PhD project.

This article was published on Monday 29 June 2026

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