Sharing Our Narratives on Developing Our Practice in Online Music Pedagogy

This chapter begins with an introduction focused on the importance of instructor's reflection on his/her teaching practices and pedagogy through the theoretical lens of Schön's work on reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action. Five case narratives are presented that highlight instructors at different entry points into their experiences of teaching music online. The narratives outline significant learning processes that took place as instructors continued on their journey in teaching music online. The implications raised from the narratives identify the need for effective online learning systems for music, institutional support for instructors teaching music online, and a need for online music instructors to have resilience and adaptability when teaching music online. Additionally, the various contexts of teaching music online signals a need for future research in the areas of: active learning for online music courses, appropriate technology tools available with a LMS, and collaborative online music tasks for effective student learning outcomes.

Playing Together

Music education, like many disciplines, is transitioning to the online environment, which impacts the learning landscape. This transition, along with a mindshift by instructors, requires careful consideration of the theoretical underpinnings needed to inform the design, facilitation and assessment to create conditions where students are actively engaged in learning and meaning making. The affordance of digital technologies (e.g., synchronous and asynchronous, multimedia) provides a means for creating and articulating knowledge. This chapter discusses online learning and explores the nature of constructivist and social-constructivist theories and how they can be applied in the design, facilitation, and assessment of online music education. Examples of constructivist learning in online music courses are shared for the purpose of examining how technology can be used to support the learning outcomes grounded on social constructivism. The chapter concludes with directions for future research and implications for practice.

Extending the Apprenticeship Model of Music Instruction in Higher Education With Facebook Groups

Although faculty may not believe that they are legitimately “teaching” while engaging with students via Facebook, results of interviews and publicly available Facebook data clearly document intentional music faculty activities that fit the description of teaching through enculturation. This situates the phenomenon of Facebook groups firmly within the larger apprenticeship model in use in music departments; the process of enculturation through Facebook is used to teach new apprentices how to become functional members of their musical communities. Recommendations generated from the research and discussed in this chapter include addressing faculty concerns about personal and professional risk, departmental development of guidelines for Facebook group use and management that is based in enculturation theory, and training for music faculty in the use of social media channels as opportunities for teaching and learning.

Using Interactivity to Improve Online Music Pedagogy for Undergraduate Non-Majors

This chapter explores two aspects of online music pedagogy. First, it covers the basic design considerations of offering an interactive music course online. This includes both pedagogical and technological aspects of online music instruction and delivery. After establishing the framework for online music course delivery, the chapter investigates the use of interactivity to improve undergraduate, non-music-major student performance in the author's online-music (jazz) appreciation course at the University of South Dakota (USD). The approach is evidence- and research-based, which is described in greater detail in the chapter. Furthermore, the tools used to enhance the interactivity of the course—specifically, adding game-based learning—are explored and connected to instructional research completed at USD.

Meta-Literacy in the Online Music Classroom

Studying music in an online setting requires that students and instructors leverage digital resources and participatory technologies with understanding and intentionality. Meta-literacy, a framework promoting critical thinking and collaboration, is an inclusive approach to understanding the complexities of information use, production, and sharing in a digital environment. This chapter explores the implications of meta-literacy for the online music classroom and identifies ways in which the librarian and music instructor can collaborate to promote student self-reflection on the use, creation, and understanding of musical information or content.

Creating Authentic Assessments for Online Music Courses

The need for identifying authentic assessments, or learning tasks, in online music courses is becoming integral as the rate of online music course offerings has been exponentially increasing. Supportive research also suggests that instructors teaching in higher education may require a paradigm shift in their pedagogical approach as they develop social-constructivist based authentic assessments for music subjects taught in an online environment. To assist with the understanding of both why and how to generate authentic assessment for a Bachelor's-level online music course, the chapter explores the nature of authentic assessment for music and Koh's Criteria for Authenticity in Authentic Assessment. Finally, to provide a practical exemplar of how online discussions can be used as an authentic learning tool in the online music class, an online discussion task for a songwriting class is identified and examined through the lens of Koh's characteristics.

A Model for Online Music Education

This chapter proposes a sustainable model for online music education in post-secondary contexts. This model is framed around the intersections and along the continua of formal and informal music teaching/learning, conscious and unconscious knowing/telling, synchronous and asynchronous musical e-spaces/places, currencies, and e-collaboration. The model maintains deterritorialization (i.e., an e-space or e-place without boundary) as a foundational underpinning. The purpose of this chapter is to interrogate notions of online music learning, challenge preconceptions, and leverage innovation and technological advancement to redefine and re-understand how music can be taught and learned in e-spaces and e-places. The chapter can serve to disrupt traditional conceptions of musical teaching/learning. By disrupting the cycle that perpetuates music education at the post-secondary level, this chapter seeks to leverage online innovation, draw out technological inevitabilities, and push the music education profession forward towards new frontiers.

The Cloud of Musical Knowledge

This chapter positions the teaching of music theory in the online sphere as a powerful and unlikely site for critical pedagogy. Teaching music theory in the online platform should not ask questions of how best to digitally recast music theory classes, but to consider how teaching online can change the way students approach, explore, and respond to theory content. This happens in what the author labels “the cloud of musical knowledge,” which is mutable, accessible, and democratic. Music theory suffers from being largely considered separate from political and cultural discussion, and as a result is a hidden bullet of neoliberalism and conservativism that reminds students from minorities that their opinions do not matter and similarly it does not remind other students to consider their own privileged perspective. By exploring the intersections of critical pedagogy and music theory and detailing the structure of online music theory lessons, the author argues for an open and inviting space in which students do not think of music theory as being other than themselves and their experience.

What to Listen For

This chapter is a reflective narrative. When the author took music appreciation as an undergraduate music major, it was still taught in the “traditional” style: an overview of the rudiments of music, followed by a chronological mad-dash through as much of the history of classical music as could be crammed into a semester. In her later experiences as a teaching assistant and guest lecturer, the approach she chose was similar. Many online versions of music appreciation courses rely on this format. Such a course favors only the most ideal student. This chapter focuses on addressing the needs of typical students in music appreciation courses, and offers suggestions for making online, hybrid, and traditional courses more useful to both students and instructors. If future online courses hope to succeed in giving students a thorough background in academic musical skills, then they will need to address the digital divide as well as the musical divide between their resourced and under-resourced students.

Online and Face-to-Face Voice Instruction

Traditionally, post-secondary-level voice training has relied upon face-to-face interaction. Concerns about the viability of the online environment to facilitate the interaction needed to teach discipline-specific vocal skills has delayed adoption of online voice teaching in online music programs. This chapter discusses online and face-to-face voice instruction and presents evidence of a research study examining the two delivery methods. The study examined the difference in pitch accuracy improvement scores of 78 female collegiate voice majors at a large university in the mid-Atlantic United States in an effort to determine efficacy of online voice instruction and traditional face-to-face voice instruction according to pitch accuracy improvement. These results demonstrate that no significant difference was found between pitch accuracy improvement scores of 37 voice majors trained and tested online versus 41 voice majors tested face-to-face, suggesting that online voice training is as effective as traditional face-to-face voice training pertaining to pitch accuracy instruction.