[Smt-talk] Online music courses?

[Elizabeth Sayrs]

Dear Eric and Gretchen, 

I've been teaching an online music fundamentals class for several years for incoming music majors who score low on the music theory placement exam given at auditions. The course was designed for online (and grew out of an online music fundamentals course for non-majors that I developed at a previous institution around 2002, where it is still being taught). Students enroll the summer before they arrive on campus. It is a one-credit course to keep costs down for students, but it is essentially 2-3 credits worth of material. I use MFun: Music Fundamentals e-text (published by MacGAMUT), which does have interactive drills/quizzes/assessments that can be tracked by the instructor as well lots of audio clips and animations, a virtual keyboard, etc. [full disclosure: I authored MFun, so I'm fond of it!]. 

Because the class is for incoming music majors, I also use Blackboard to both build relationships (so students will feel like they already know someone when they arrive), and to build their ability to articulate conceptual knowledge. For example, I have had them do peer critiques of a series of very simple compositions. To strengthen their conceptual understanding (in addition to the skill-based activities), I have had them collaborate on a wiki of key terms, so by the end of the course they have had to produce both verbal definitions and examples in music notation for each term. They can continue to use this group glossary as they begin their core theory and aural skills classes as music majors. I've rotated similar activities over the years, so this is a sampling.

In terms of data, when I crunched numbers for a paper I presented at CMS/ATMI a few years ago, if a student had a B or better in the online course, they passed the first year of core theory. (This also gives us an early warning that those who did not receive a B or better in the online course would need intervention right away.) An important caveat to this data is that we are not allowed to *require* the online course, so it's possible that this is a result of more motivated students self-selecting (we have 10-20 students enroll each summer - it would be closer to 35 if everyone who should enroll did so). Anecdotally, one of the freshman instructors told me this week that two of his students had recently remarked that they were really glad they had taken the online course, because otherwise they would be "really lost" in first-year theory right now. I think a hybrid or flipped course (with a format similar to what Anna Gawboy described) could be even more effective for this purpose.

With best regards, 
Elizabeth



Elizabeth Sayrs
Associate Professor of Music Theory
Chair, Faculty Senate
Ohio University
sayrs at ohio.edu

>> Quoting "Isaacson, Eric J" <isaacso at indiana.edu>:
>> 
>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>> 
>>> We would be interested in hearing about the experiences you or your
>>> institutional colleagues have had with online teaching in music. Our
>> interest
>>> is not limited to music theory, but could encompass music history, music
>>> education, other academic areas, as well as performance studies. We are
>> NOT
>>> interested in speculative critiques of the idea of online education (we
>> are
>>> perfectly capable of conjuring these ourselves!), but rather in real-world
>>> stories from the trenches. Responses might address:
>>> 
>>>  *   What subject was taught?
>>>  *   Who was the target population?
>>>  *   Was it an online adaptation of an existing course or designed for
>>> online delivery?
>>>  *   Was the course wholly online or blended?
>>>  *   What technolog(ies) were involved?
>>>  *   Is there any statistical or anecdotal information about the course's
>>> effectiveness, efficiency, etc., from the perspective of the students? The
>>> instructor?
>>> 
>>> Best wishes,
>>> 
>>> Eric J. Isaacson
>>> Director of Graduate Studies, Assoc. Professor of Music Theory
>>> Gretchen Horlacher
>>> Assistant to the Dean for Research and Administration, Assoc. Professor of
>>> Music Theory
>>> Indiana University Jacobs School of Music
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 






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