I’m delighted to have received a nomination in this year’s Student Teaching Awards (formerly the Bristol Teaching Awards), in the category of the Inspiring and Engaging Teaching Award. I’m hugely grateful to the student who took the time to write such a thoughtful and generous nomination — it genuinely means a great deal. The full citation, structured around the award’s four criteria, is below.

Criteria 1: Inspires your curiosity and creativity, motivating you to learn

Paul’s willingness to teach core concepts from a fundamental level has really encouraged me to seek a deep understanding of quantum physics, so much so that I have felt it has enabled me to transition into a range of extra curriculars with relative ease (competed and placed highly at the world’s largest quantum computing hackathon and found Paul’s teaching methods very useful here). By implementing this in his teaching, it makes it drastically easier for students to come up with thoughtful questions about creative applications of the subject, providing motivation both academically and professionally!

Criteria 2: Uses new or engaging approaches to teaching (e.g. interactive activities, digital tools, open discussion, flexible assessment choices etc)

Paul’s flipped learning approach is incredibly accessible. As a student who has occasionally had to find paid work to help me through my time at University, being able to fit his unit around my own schedule has made this relatively easy for me. In addition to this, Paul’s efforts in providing huge amounts of practice questions for the course have made it very reasonable to obtain good grades in a notoriously hard unit, especially for my cohort (3rd year Physics), as we are the first year taking the reformed Physics programme, so resources (like past exam papers) have been a little scarce at times for other units. Paul’s methods navigate this very well.

Criteria 3: Creates an active and inclusive learning environment where you feel you can take part by making contributions or asking questions

Paul does an excellent job with interspacing high quality information and teaching sessions with friendly chat and methods that, although a little unorthodox (e.g. the meme competitions!), work really well in forming an environment where people feel ‘safe to fail’ - in this case, asking questions and not having to worry about any judgment.

Criteria 4: Helps you see how your learning connects to the real world and your future career

Paul’s teaching has inspired hundreds of undergraduates at the University to explore quantum physics and its applications in the real world. Regular links to industry, the history of the field, and his willingness to share information on content outside the scope of the course make it incredibly easy for students to see how they can make a career out of a field they love.