Last Rentrée in Mulhouse?

Well, Last Tango in Paris it isn’t!

…But, if plans come together, 23-24 is likely to be my last full year before some kind of retirement… (though already I am being solicited to ‘come back’ to teach certain courses on a vacataire basis).  The jury is ‘out’ as to whether I will, and if so for which courses.

So it seems, I should put some thoughts together before I launch out into my last full year of teaching / lecturing … so here they are:-

• From year to year, as  teacher, one always seeks to learn, to change, things, to improve: as if there will always be time to do so.  But this is the proverbial ‘it‘ – one last chance to be the best I can to offer students the best possible learning opportunity…. so ‘no pressure, then, Tony‘!
  • Please, ‘Meet me in the Middle‘. As a teacher, I can ‘offer the opportunity to learn‘, but learning is something that students must do for themselves (and their teachers can’t do for them), as they have to ‘seize the opportunity‘.  For me it is as if we are building a ‘bridge‘ (teachers and students) together: teachers from the ‘offering opportunity‘ side of the valley and students from the ‘seizing opportunity‘ side. It only works if we meet in the middle and that takes equality of effort and partnership.  [If you want to see this metaphor in steel and concrete : watch the Megastructures video on the Millau Viaduct – they met in the exact ‘middle’ to an accuracy of something like 99.99999% – not bad when you reflect that the Eiffel Tower could pass comfortably below the road level of the bridge!].
  • Please: No AI. No Plagiarism.  These are the wrong tools and wrong materials to build the all-important ‘Learning Bridge‘: getting AI to do the work is pointless because the user would not be learning; so its use serves no purpose other than ensuring 100% failure to learn.  Ditto plagiarism: uncritically ‘dumping‘ paragraphs/pages of other people’s work and effort and having it masquerade as ‘my own work‘ is a sign of lack of any intention to learn.  The user of AI and a plagiarist not only seek to ‘cheat‘ on tutors’ trust, the academic system and their colleagues, they also cheat on themselves: they squander an opportunity to learn which will benefit them their lives (and careers) through.  I am earnetly hoping that in my last year of teaching I see no-one refusing to take up the learning opportunity I am doing my very best to offer.
• The need to re-invent teaching and learning at University level in the light of many factors such as [IMHO]:
  • the Covid experience;
  • the desirability of ‘blended learning‘ which sees a valid contribution of some distance-based synchronus and asynchronous learning when melded with the traditional attendance mode of delivery.  Teachers should be free to bring together any and all means of delivering learning opportunity.
  • TO ADD!