Many PhD students desire a career in academia, despite this the focus on learning how to teach in higher education is often limited. This poses a problem, if the PhD student intends a career in higher education. Subsequent consequences are risk of PhD graduates having insufficient capacity to enhance learning experiences of future students. A potential way to improve this issue is through the approach of work-integrated learning (WIL). WIL can be described as an umbrella term covering education, collaboration, and research integrating knowledge and skills from academia and work life. WIL in PhD education is under-used, under-researched and can be considered complex, as PhD education can lead to careers both inside and outside of academia and in combination. However, WIL targeting a specific skill, in this case pedagogical understanding, is a more straightforward action. In a new PhD career planning course via WIL, the use of pedagogical tools was intended to be both a way to teach strategic career planning and to include learning activities with pedagogical tools to increase PhD students´ pedagogical understanding.

The objective of this paper is to present teachers’ reflections from including novel pedagogical tools in a hybrid PhD level course on strategic career planning. This includes reflections of how WIL can be included in course design, with a specific focus of including learning pedagogical tools and understanding pedagogical actions, while taking a PhD course in a non-pedagogical subject. Despite being a PhD course in career planning the course aimed through its interactive and creative course design to provide opportunities for enhancing PhD students' pedagogical skills through layers of learning. Pedagogical strategies to enhance layers of learning were interactivity, engagement, sharing of experiences and joint reflections in a hybrid PhD course. The pedagogical tools used in the course were Miro, Feedbackfruits, Feedforward and Liberating Structures.

A key reflection from teaching this course, was the joy of being part of the shared learning with the PhD students. This was due to several of the pedagogical tools being new also to the teachers. This innovative course design can be a way to support learning of pedagogical tools and pedagogical understanding for PhD students, and hopefully also increase the pedagogical interest of those aiming for a career in academia. We argue that research schools should design PhD courses to also include elements of learning pedagogical understanding useful for teaching in higher education. The layers of learning design can also give an increased understanding of skills needed to succeed as a teacher in higher education, regardless of discipline.