Peter Smith has been a colleague for the last five years. Peter has taken a pedagogical lead in many activities, discussions and initiatives in our department and others and that has meant he has made a real impact in the teaching and learning of this department. He has a passion for effective, student-centred, stimulating learning and that zeal has galvanised many of us to work at our own teaching development.
Peter continually seeks new ideas to enthuse, extend and galvanise students. He is truly innovative, creative and original in his planning of learning experiences. He engineers role-plays, develops simulations and games, and seeks out new business cases in order to produce fresh challenges for his students. Peter is the true reflective educational practitioner to the extent he thinks about and evaluates each learning occasion.
Perhaps the biggest impact Peter has had on his colleagues lies in his willingness to embrace and foster new technologies, curriculum and assessment tools. Time after time Peter has volunteered to be in teams to rewrite and create new programmes and instruments of learning. He has taken a lead in trailing new plagarism instruments such as Turnitin, writing new student assessment descriptors and working out new ways of involving interactive technologies. He is always generous in supporting others in their uptake of new teaching techniques and has taken a real leadership role in this.
Peter is an energetic, knowledgeable and greatly skilled teaching colleague who continually inspires us to improve our own teaching performance. I can not think of a worthier candidate for such an award.