PeterSmith: Portfolio

New Zealand Leadership Institute
Co-sponsored by the
The University of Auckland Business School

It is with great pleasure that I write a letter of endorsement on the calibre of Peter Smith's teaching efforts. I have known him for 10 years and I have had the opportunity to team teach with Peter for 5 years in the Management Theory and Practice paper -- MGMT 301. This paper uses a simulation to provide the students an opportunity to share a business experience so that they may learn from their management decisions, behaviours and interactions. That requires the structure of the paper to be carefully constructed so the simulation itself does not overcome the focus on their management practice.

My experience of working beside Peter is that he is tireless in his intent to design and deliver a course of study that meets the students learning needs and the learning objectives of the paper. In the first years that this paper was taught, it required someone to have the confidence and understanding of how the learning environment would work alongside the technological aspects of students running virtual companies. Peter took on that role in addition to working closely with me and another colleague on the pedagogical aspects. His efforts in these early years ensure that the paper was a success and that the workload was streamlined and manageable. Peter has an ability to see what is required and then create a process that will simplify the overall effort. That allowed our teaching team of three to be able to focus on the students rather than the technology.

Whilst MGMT 301 is an innovative paper in its design, it requires a vigilant eye on how the students are learning and what the simulation surfaces in terms of "learning opportunitities". Peter is unrelenting in his commitment to provide students with the best opportunities to learn from their experience and from the content material to which they are exposed. He will go the extra way to create powerful experiences for the students. This paper has an emergent aspect to how the specific content is delivered to the students. That has required weekly planning/review meetings. His contributions to the weekly meetings often lead to very innovative suggestions and breakthroughs in how the paper is taught.

The result of working with Peter is that I have continued to learn from the teaching team, from the teaching methodology and from Peter, himself. He is truly a model of a dedicated teacher. He thinks about his teaching approach and the course structures before, during and after the paper is over seeking improvements and insights for the next time it is taught and for his own learning.

It has been a very rewarding experience working along side Peter for this many years. I no longer teach with Peter but continue to see him as a vital resource to my teaching and learning.

Department of Management and Employment Relations
The University of Auckland Business School

Auckland, 29 October 2004

Peter Smith and I have been working together for more than 5 years. We have designed and taught MGMT 302 Business Policy and Strategy course. The course is very demanding for students and for us teachers, as it involves intensive case classroom discussions and thorough weekly preparations for class. Peter invests enormous amount of energy and all his theoretical and practical knowledge in preparing the course: designing assignments, finding new and interesting cases and readings, and developing new ways of class discussion. It was Peter's idea to develop a test bank (more than 600 questions) to accompany the course textbook. The test bank was accepted by editors of the textbook (de Wit and Meyer, 2000) and published at the Thomson Learning website as a supplementary material with the following comment "the best multiple-choice questions ever seen".

Peter is a great facilitator in the class environment. He leads case discussions superbly; paying attention to every detail, leading students through all important aspects of the case, allowing students to be creative and to broaden their perspectives, and giving everybody an equal chance to participate. Peter's communication with students, either in the form of individual consultation or classroom interaction, shows the occurrence of intellectual exchange of ideas and, at the same time, support and encouragement. Peter selflessly gives his time to students and provides them with all of his available support. In his unique way, he motivates students to learn more and do it efficiently so they can achieve what they thought would be impossible at the beginning of the course.

Needless to say, Peter is of great help in administering the course. As a colleague and co-teacher, I have to emphasise that Peter is the most skilful person in course administrative matters at the MER department.

It is my enormous pleasure to work and teach with Peter Smith. I warmly support Peter's nomination for the School Teaching Award and wish him all the best in his future teaching and research endeavours.

MGMT 101 Course Co-Ordinator
Department of Management and Employment Relations.
University of Auckland.

It is with great pleasure that I provide these words of support for Peter Smith in his application for a teaching excellence award. I have been a colleague of Peter's over the past three years and have work closely with him in the preparation and delivery of Mgmt101 over the past year. Peter is a trusted and respected colleague. He is consistently the first person to offer assistance with the preparation of the course and advice on assessment and content related matters. Peter is strongly commitment to teaching excellence and places an extraordinary amount of effort into searching out new methods of teaching delivery to assist with student learning. This commitment has enabled him to create vibrant and enjoyable learning environments for his students, and has lifted the bar of expectation for his colleagues regarding their commitment to teaching and learning. Peter's positive nature and his desire to do what is best for his students and his colleagues makes all interactions with him, and especially having him part of the MGMT 101 teaching team, enjoyable and rewarding. I believe that a teaching excellence award for Peter would be a welcomed decision by all of his colleagues and students and would send a strong message of support for the level of teaching commitment that teachers like Peter Smith show throughout the University.

It is with pleasure that I offer this endorsement for a Teaching Excellence Award for my colleague, Peter Smith. I have had the honour of collaborating with Peter Smith for the past six (6) years on a course entitled, Management Theory and Practice (MGMT 301). "301" is a full-semester intensively experiential, web-based multi-disciplinary business simulation, where student "management teams"compete with one another and peers from other institutions (e.g., EIT in the Hawkes Bay, Canadian teams, etc.) in a virtual global bicycle industry. The course has been wildly successful and a great deal of the credit goes to Peter's unparalleled enthusiasm for innovation and continuous improvement in pedagogy, course design and teaching delivery.

First, pedagogically, as someone who holds a Masters degree in the Social Foundations of Education, with a specialisation in experiential education, I am continually amazed at Peter's deep and profound understanding of how humans learn. Much of the philosophical underpinnings of advanced study seem to just come to Peter. His world view seems naturally moulded around how to take an idea or concept and make it real and meaningful for students. This intuitive wisdom is matched by his persistence in keeping up with the literature on simulations in education, organisational behaviour teaching methods and other related management education topics. Beyond learning in the classroom, his overarching goal is for our students to become what Argyris and Schön (1974) have called "reflective practitioners".

Second, course design is a real specialty of Peter's. Again, I consider myself a fairly innovative teacher, but I'm no match for Peter's ability to think of incredibly interesting and effective ways to approach age-old problems of teaching. For example, while our 301 course was no doubt interesting and different for the students, it was also very time-consuming in the early days. This was fine for a year or so, but ultimately we had to find ways to be not only effective, but also efficient at what we were doing. And, that is precisely where Peter's imagination really kicks in. Subsequently, we have kept the best parts of the course and totally revamped aspects that were not working as well as they could for us and the students. The result is that the course remains as engaging and challenging as ever for students, but also is manageable and sustainable for us as Lecturers, something that is essential in a research-led institution.

Third, in the area of teaching delivery, Peter is a master in front of the class and "behind the scenes". I love watching him work a room, with his well-organised and deftly crafted slides. But, it is with systems such as Turnitin and course management software that he also shines like no else I've ever worked with. Besides leading a Departmental initiative to actively confront the issue of plagiarism, he is a keen user and tutor for the rest of us when it comes to CECIL, nDeva and other courseware tools. He gets our students blogging, which most of us are just too lazy to do. Moreover, when we decided to start doing research with our undergraduate students, Peter wrote a software application to put problem-solving exercises into a virtual environment. Mind blowing! You get this sort of person at MIT, but not generally around the U of A!

In summary, my teaching in the past 6 years has been made so much more rewarding and enjoyable because I have had the privilege of working with Peter Smith. It has been so much fun for me and I'm sure that our students will attest to the quality of instruction they have received from Peter. He is a rare and inspiring teacher, who deserves to be rewarded as much as possible. I heartily support this award for such an outstanding innovative and hard-working teacher!

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

I have worked alongside Peter as a tutor this semester. His innovativeness surprises me; Peter constantly looks for ways to improve his teaching, and his course, not just for the benefit of students next semester but for his current students. This is facilitated by his openness towards feedback from his students and me about the course and his teaching style. The immediate approach he takes of honest self reflection and correction was refreshing. This semester has seen Peter through investigation and readings establish alternative participation avenues to cater for different learning styles, which was very much appreciated by many students whom had been struggling under the previous methods. Peter?s passion for teaching the best way possible has led to the creation of a constantly evolving teaching environment that is a brimming with engaged students who enjoy not only being taught by Peter but engaging with Peter after class. Many have freely expressed on completion of the final class that their knowledge, ability and confidence has 'grown'. It was a pleasure to work with someone who not only teaches students but takes a holistic interest in their wellbeing and inspires them to do the best that they can.

Peter has been a long term Cecil user, always adopting the new technology and using it to try improve teaching and learning for his courses.

To name a few examples:
From 2000, if not earlier, Peter has been using item banking and TestGraf analysis for his courses. He runs the careful analysis for each questions in his item banks, which allows him to He has been continuingly doing so to improve the quality of his item banks, so that the students are assessed in a better way. He also implemented the tests through scantron and online tests. This provides the students timely feedback on their performance.

Peter has also kindly shared his knowledge and experiences of using these technology for improving his teaching with other academic staff members in The University.

Peter is one of the very first person among our user group to implement various synchronous chat sessions for his class. He would go through great trouble to allocate students into different groups for the chat sessions; guiding them through the sessions for various teaching purposes.

Peter has recently been involved in the AHA project, which is assisting students to be academically honest. He approached Team Cecil for embedding the testing technology into the online tutorials built for the AHA project. Through the online tutorial and the online quiz, the project has been successful in increasing the students' understanding in academic honesty and reducing the number of plagiarised assignments.

Peter is also one of the first people for submitting final grades, allowing speedy feedback on the final grade for his students.

Peter always has a great passion for his teaching and research. It is evident that he continues to adopt different technology for improving in the teaching and learning for his courses. He's always willing to share his knowledge and experiences with others as well.

Therefore, I think he deserves to be recognised for all his hard work and continuous improvements made to his teaching.

Peter Smith is one of the most dedicated teachers I have ever met, if not the most dedicated. His ideas and innovations have inspired, and will inspire, my teaching practice. He is truly concerned about student learning and high academic standards.

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.