Music

Digital Learning, Pastoral Care, and the Performing Arts

Simeon A. Smith

COVID-19 has catalyzed ‘twenty-first century’ digital learning in an unprecedented way, and this has raised important questions about the place of music education in the online learning space that the next generation of scholar-teachers must be prepared to confront. A discipline delineated across the traditional separation of musicology, performance, and composition, undergraduate music instruction cannot confront the challenges and opportunities of digital learning with a singular strategy. At Royal Holloway I have taught courses with very different learning outcomes and associated teaching/learning practices, ranging from those that lend themselves reasonably well to a transmittal model with the ‘university teacher as a singular figure of authority’ (Kleiman 2014)—such as a second-year course on music and philosophy—to much more practical and performance-based courses such as the first-year introduction to ‘world music’ which demands a ‘tutor-practitioner’ approach. Although digital learning has occasionally been maligned in universities as entailing transmission from an enthusiastic instructor to blank squares on a screen, it also brought several unexpected benefits to the students. Among my classes, digital learning brought research methods to the fore of the learning process, enabled more individualized and personalized feedback, but most remarkably it shifted social dynamics, bringing the intimacy of a small tutorial to large lecture spaces. Far from bleak disengagement and limited communicative potential for empathy and inspiration, Microsoft Teams provided a new platform for close personal engagement which increased student-teacher connection and brought about a substantial shortening of the feedback loop. The ambivalent psychological implications of the digital ‘turn’ in music education are clearly ripe for further research but simultaneously this is one of the few issues that the discipline (with all of its disparate strands and teaching practices) might confront as a whole. As an undergraduate discipline music has unique potential to foster a more pastorally active teaching and learning whereby ‘the teacher, more often than not, […] acts as a mentor, guide and critical friend, and the student is regarded as a partner in learning.’ (Kleiman 2014) Far from providing a barrier, then, digital interaction can erode distance and create a more equal field between teacher and student and the possibility of a closer learning partnership. 

Forming new interconnections in music (Amanda García Fernández-Escárzaga)

My time as a TA consisted in teaching Studies in Music History to second year students. It was a challenging time for all of us, since students had just returned to class for the first time after Covid restrictions, and this was my first experience in HE teaching. Furthermore, the course was divided into two modules which students found rather upsetting and grave. The first was Schubert’s Winterreise song cycle, which essentially follows the path of a lonely wanderer and his internal struggles, along with themes of love, loss or isolation. The second module discussed music and its position within narratives of the Holocaust.

As I was told by one of the students, the themes in Winterreise were, and I quote, ‘depressing’. For this reason, and taking into account how the students felt after the paradigm changes caused by Covid, I decided to change my methodological approach to the subject. Our course leaders not only suggested to find similarities between both modules, but also similarities perceivable in our time (Sharples’s ‘Crossover learning’). Thus, for two seminars I linked the music of Schubert, with a special focus on irony and subjectivity, to the music of Queen. This enabled me to perceive how students could ‘connect experiences gained in different settings’ (Sharples, 50). That is, that the relation to the music of Queen sparked in the students a new neurological connection more akin to their sensibilities because it was experienced in a very different setting, thus making it harder for them to forget concepts of irony inherent in Schubert’s music. In addition, I found that taking advantage of the unlimited elements in the discipline’s ‘poly-functionality’ (not only within music itself, but also with poetry, art or literature), can strongly benefit the student’s experience and apprehension of a subject as multifaceted as music (Khomenko, 322). While the module Music and the Holocaust posited difficult emotional challenges for the students, they were capable of analysing narratives with an acute critical thinking. For example, their success in the understanding of Primo Levi’s ‘Grey Zone’ was perceived in their final assessments, thanks to a combination of techniques that inverted, questioned and experimented on learning hierarchies (for instance, Bloom’s Taxonomy).

References: 

Khomenko, L., Rastruba, T., Parkhomenko, O., Shumska L., Kostenko, L., and Pavlenko, O.: ‘Peculiarities of Forming Students’ Motivation to Music-teaching Activity in Higher Education Institutions (HEI)’, BRAIN, Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, vol. 12, no. 3 (2021), pp. 319 – 342.

Kate Morss and Rowina Murray: Teaching at University: a Guide for Postgraduates and Researchers (Sage Publications: London. 2005).

Mike Sharples: Practical Pedagogy, 40 new Ways to Teach and Learn, (Routledge: New York. 2019).

The Inherent Difficulty of Critically Teaching the Unfamiliar (Micah Anne Neale) 

This year I have been a teaching assistant on a first-year music history course, and although I enjoyed teaching the students, there were a number of very significant challenges. Some of these were specific to this year - my inexperience, the long strike at the end of the term - but others were inherent to the role the course is required to play in the overall curriculum. 

The aim of the course is primarily to introduce students to the conventional historical narratives of music history, the canon of famous composers, and other 'pegs' that more critical musicology requires familiarity with (the idea of 'pegs' coming from Morss and Murray 2005). However, since many of these conventional narratives are factually questionable and/or historically misleading, we must also try to encourage students to remain critical of these historical narratives. That is a hard balancing act to master. 

One problem I saw repeatedly was with students' understanding of musical style periods (e.g. Renaissance, Baroque, Classical). While lecturers had been careful to emphasise the imprecision of, and controversy over these constructed periods, students still internalised the style periods as concrete, unshakeable facts to be memorised and regurgitated. As well as the mechanical way in which music history is taught at GCSE and A-level, Kolb's experential learning cycle might shed some light on why this became such a widespread misunderstanding. 

Kolb's cycle begins with an experience: the learner reflects on that experience, forms concepts and generalisations to explain and understand it, then tests those concepts and generalisations upon other experiences (Kolb 1984). As the cycle continues, revisions are made to the concepts and generalisations in response to new evidence, shifting flexibly as the learner's understanding improves. Musical style periods are, of course, classic examples of concepts and generalisations. Yet students were learning about them in the very same lectures, at the same time as, the musical examples they generalise from; for the students, the style periods became 'experience', not 'concept', every bit as real as the composers and works associated with them. 

The course needs to teach students both the 'experiences' and 'concepts' of traditional music history, without muddling the two. Otherwise, the development of students' critical skills might be hampered. I would be very interested to hear any specific ways of teaching you might know of that would help differentiate 'experiences' and 'concepts', between what one might crudely call 'facts' and 'narratives'. 

Other courses are tasked with the development of students' critical and historical skills, but clearly these skills are required to help students understand how to employ a useful historical fiction (such as a style period) and when to revise them. This opens up a broader problem with a music history course like this: we are teaching knowledge, but in essays and exams, we assess skills. There is an inherent lack of constructive alignment in the niche this course must occupy within the first-year curriculum, and this problem does not seem to me easily soluble (Biggs 2003). 

References:

Biggs, J. (2003) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 2nd edn. Buckingham: SRHE and Open University Press. 

Kolb, D. (1984) Experential Learning. New York: Prentice Hall. 

Morss, K. and Murray, R. (2005) Teaching at University. London: Sage Publications.

Response:

Dear Micah, I agree entirely with your comments relating to periodisation, which expose the continuous problem of students coming to university with fixed ideas about such things. You are also right that faculty staff emphasise the faults of these assumptions, but I wonder whether curricula might be adjusted from the more typical examination of ‘turning points’ which reinforce these periods (such as Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the beginning of the Baroque and Beethoven’s Eroica as the foundation of Romantic ideals) to case studies which explicitly challenge the ‘pegs’ you talk about. (James Ritzema, Music)

This was a breath of fresh air to read, Micah, as it is something that I have been negotiating throughout my time teaching also. That is ‘teaching the unfamiliar’. I often find my role in the seminar room is to challenge the preconceptions of the students, facilitating the space for students to explore the unfamiliar (in my case, often music written since the 1950s that few students would have come into contact with during secondary education) and opening the conversation. I took a lot away from Kolb’s experiential learning cycle – experience to testing concepts – as within the margins of practice-led teaching, this often manifested itself in the performative experience; allowing the students to perform new music, reflect and so on. (Nathan James Dearden, Music)

Sensorial learning: using music video clips as a didactic tool (Eugenio Giorgianni)

Inspired by Brookfield’s (2015) idea of including examples from the students’ world when introducing new concepts, I decided to experiment with music video clips as an analytic tool in one of my tutorials this year.

RHUL Music students are generally very well trained in Western Art Music, but it can be difficult to engage them in critical debates besides music scores and great composers of the past. As the first lecture was about the cultural relevance of popular music, I decided to introduce a piece of diasporic African music – one of the fundamental genres of today’s London music scene, although not generally part of the students’ playlist.

I gave the students some basic information about one song and then I showed them the video clip. After the clip, I opened up the debate asking the students ‘What’s the point of studying something like this?’ The class engaged in a very interesting discussion in which everybody took part. Experiencing popular music in class as they do in their everyday life – that is, through a music video clip – students were able to pick up many points of cultural interest in the popular music piece, whereas in a previous, more abstract debate they had appeared more sceptical to assign cultural relevance to music forms other than their Classical repertoire.

I have noticed that several students usually less outspoken than others have proficiently engaged in the discussion, expressing personal points of view and referring to their own experiences and cultural backgrounds. The didactic use of a video clip has worked as an ice-breaker: a familiar artefact, the video clip made it easier for students to relate the lecture topics to their everyday life. Images have encouraged students who favour visual cognitive processes to enjoy the seminar, inciting also more ‘textual’ learners to a more sensorial, ‘embodied’ participation in the debate.

By using a sample of popular music outside well-known Euro-American pop and rock genres, I introduced the theme of cultural diversity to the debate. Music analysis through audio-visual media responds to Nick Cook’s (1998) call for an interdisciplinary turn in Music Studies and contributes to reducing the distance between academia and the ‘outside world’.

References

Brookfield, Stephen D. (2015), The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, And Responsiveness in the Classroom, London, John Wiley & Sons.

Cook, Nicholas (1998), Music: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Response:

I completely agree with you on video clips being an ice-breaker. It becomes something the students can directly relate to and share their opinions on. I find that the idea of ‘sensorial learning,’ that you introduce here, very useful. In my case, using video as a tool was helpful in relating the case studies (of musical forms from different regions of the world) that they read to what they saw and heard in the videos. They could experience what they were reading (albeit virtually). For me too, these videos often acted as important base to start off discussions. (Aditi Krishna, Music)

Respose:

This is a great example of using popular culture and technology to engage students in new ways. I often find that video tools are excellent tools, however the use of a popular piece of music as a way to engage more students could be an interesting model for engaging with material that is perhaps a little dry in more exciting ways.(Sidonie Carey-Green,Drama)

Composing Chip Music Develops Student-Centred Learning (Annabelle Lee)

During the Spring Term, I was a Teaching Assistant for the undergraduate Music module ‘Studies in Music, Media and Technology’. In one seminar, the students were asked to compose music using Pulseboy, a web-based programme designed for a style of electronic music called chip music. Compared to traditional learning methods experienced during the module such as pre-seminar lectures, which mainly adopted behaviourist and instructional approaches, the task at hand allowed students to learn in a different way due to the practical and creative nature of composing music. For example, one account of teaching Music at university posits that ‘Creativity is active: it necessitates an engagement with an object or idea on a deeper level’.[1] The students, then, were engaged in active learning, more specifically, social constructivist approaches, because they composed in groups, consulted each other, and reflected on various decisions (e.g. harmonic and structural choices) during the exercise.

Moreover, I was not teaching them in a didactic sense (i.e. the student observes and imitates the master’s style) but they could compose whatever they liked.[2] As a recent paper on teaching music composition in higher education comments, a ‘hands-off’ approach encourages the freedom and space for creative development, collaborative work, problem solving, and reflective practice, thus emphasising student-centred learning.[3]

The students enjoyed the task because they were very much engaged in an active, experience-based learning process. By applying David Kolb’s model of experiential learning, the students gained a direct experience of working with musical technology, and reflected on this via group discussion (e.g., the frustrations of using Pulseboy, what might be its appeal for composers).[4]

[1] Natalie Edwards, James Whittle, and Alice Wright, ‘A student perspective on creativity in higher music education’, in Creative Teaching for Creative Learning in Higher Music Education, ed. by Elizabeth Haddon and Pamela Burnard (Routledge, 2016).

[2] Mandy Lupton and Christine Bruce, ‘Craft, process and art: Teaching and learning music composition in higher education’, British Journal of Music Education, 27.3 (2010), 271‒287 (p.274).

[3] Ibid, p.275. 

[4] David A. Kolb and Ronald Fry, ‘Towards an Applied Theory of Experiential Learning’, in Theories of Group Process, ed. by Cary Cooper (London: John Wiley, 1975), pp.33‒57 (p.33).

Response:

It sounds like your students very much benefitted from your application of Kolb’s experiential learning and thrived when granted creative freedom. I wonder whether, as your students had previously been exposed to more behaviourist ways of learning, pairing experiential learning with a social constructivist approach (i.e. the group work/peer support) was a good way to prevent your students from becoming overly anxious towards the creative independence.

Your ‘hands-off’, experiential, social constructivist approach also seems to be the perfect environment for what Oliver Belas describes as ‘lightbulb moments’.[1] He thinks that deeper, active, independent learning revelations ‘must be allowed to happen’, and that these moments ‘can’t be taught’ but that we can ‘create background conditions in which lightbulb moments might be more likely’.[2] (Lucy Thomas, English)

[1] Oliver Belas, ‘On Lightbulb Moments’, unpublished paper delivered at the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain London Branch Research Seminar (online, 28 April 2021).

[2] Belas, p. 6.

Debates and Group discussions: The multiplicity of approaches (Aditi Krishna)

It was my first experience as a Teaching assistant this year. I was to lead one of the tutorial groups of first-year undergraduate students every week, and encourage discussions based on the lecture and the core readings. Before every tutorial, I had a prepared set of questions (and, at times, videos as well) as discussion points – many of them suggested by the lecturer. Over the course of time, I found that there are two methods which really helped me keep the students engaged in discussions, encourage them to think critically, and interact with each other with regard to these questions. 

The course involved a different case study in every lecture, though they all interacted with the overarching themes of globalisation, tradition v/s modernity, and musical contexts. Therefore, the first method I adopted was a classroom Debate. Debate can be a useful tool in fostering group and peer interaction as well as critical thinking (Tumposky, 2004). As Vygotsky (1978) also points out, social interaction helps develop higher psychological functions (Tumposky, 2004). Thus, I presented the questions to the students as opinion-based ones and divided them into two groups – one for and the other against. This was based on the idea that students may find it easier to share their opinions (in relation to the lecture/reading) once given the platform to and once assured that there were no right or wrong answers. It was indeed interesting to see the groups engaged in discussing the points of arguments amongst themselves and present it. . This practice I understood can turn out to be helpful for the students in terms of taking note of the possible arguments that could come up in the light of prescribed readings and lecture. I acted more as a mediator in the process. 

However, also recognising the downsides of debates as discussed by Tumposky (2004), and in order to break the monotony, I came up with other possible strategies to use in the tutorials. Thus, the second method I used involved dividing the students in three or four smaller groups. Letting the groups work, think over a particular question for a while, giving them time to formulate their views on it, and then asking each group to share their views turned out to be mostly fruitful. Given the broader themes the course involved, I also aimed to encourage students to bring forth any similar points from the past readings and lectures (or even personal experiences beyond) if they could.

References

Tumposky, Nancy Rennau. 2004. "The Debate Debate." The Clearing House: A Journal of Educational Strategies, Issues and Ideas 78 (2): 52–56. 

Vyogtsky, L. 1978. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

Response:

I do also think that it is very important for students to feel encouraged to express their own views in class debates, so that knowledge can be generated from them. Introducing different strategies to structure discussions can certainly help to make seminars more engaging. (Xabier Etxeberria Adrien, Music)

Preparation for music tutorials (James Ritzema)

Students’ lack of preparation for tutorials poses a constant challenge in higher education, and this emerged frequently as a theme in our inSTIL workshops. While this substantial topic easily becomes the subject of ranting, the significant issues it causes warrant some critical reflection; here I offer some thoughts in relation to the Music Analysis course I have taught this term. 

While preparation for humanities tutorials typically consists of critical reading to facilitate a group discussion, many educational theorists’ suggestions for dealing with non-preparation in this context, such as encouraging students to read some material in the class (Morss and Murray 2005, 19), are impossible in the context of musical education. These tutorials might require students to listen to substantial musical works to be able to contribute to a discussion, and while students might be able to garner an equally superficial understanding from the first page of a score and scholarly article, playing sound excerpts which should have been heard in advance of a tutorial is highly disruptive to the other students. Likewise, some of these tutorials required students to construct graphs or diagrams in advance of the session as a way of facilitating discussion about the value of these analytical techniques: if students then endeavour to complete these in the tutorial, they transform the tutorial from a reflective and critical discussion on the worth of these analytical methods to skills-based learning, which is often ill-suited to a tutorial discussion setting (Brookfield 2006, 118). 

Neither my teaching experiences nor pedagogical literature have offered clear answers to how to deal with this problem, but chastising individuals can have clear negative effects on their future contributions and attendance, even affecting the atmosphere of the learning environment for students who do prepare (Macfarlane 2004, 57). I found that the most effective solutions to dealing with non-preparation involved encouraging students to think of work outside of the classroom as part of the course, and quoting the amount of private learning which curriculum designers are encouraged to include in courses (Butcher, Davies and Highton 2006, 35). I also found that the clearest possible definitions of the preparatory tasks, including a suggested timeframe to allocate the work and offering facts which were essential to completion but not to the learning exercise (Morss and Murray 2005, 62), tended to improve completion rates for future sessions and I will continue to incorporate these techniques into my teaching in the future. 

Butcher, C., Davies C. and Highton M. 2006. Designing Learning: From Module Outlines to Effective Teaching. London: Routledge. 

Brookfield, S. 2006. The Sillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust and Responsiveness in the Classroom, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 

Macfarlane, B. 2004. Teaching with Integrity: The Ethics of Higher Education Practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer. 

Moriss, K. and Murray, R. 2005. Teaching at University: A Guide for Postgraduates and Researchers. London: Sage Publications.

Response:

Thanks James - interesting points - yes, never an easy one. I agree - setting out clear expectations (as you say, including those of time) and guidance for completion has reaped rewards too. (Fiona Prendergast, EDC)

“This was an interesting read James. It is true, seminars and tutorials for certain subjects are impossible to manage when students have not prepared properly. It is important to make students understand that contact hours are only a minimal portion of the work that goes into their degree, and that working outside the class is as valuable as a lecture can be, if not more.”  (Giusi Pollicina, Psychology)

“I don’t like contemporary music”: A case study in changing perspectives and facilitating the space for new music in higher education (Nathan James Dearden)

Introductions

The average adolescent actively listens to music for approximately 4.5 hours per day (implying the exclusion of passively-received music in public places, etc.). So, 18 percent of all of the time in their lives is spent bathing themselves in the sounds that inspire them. Much of the music that adolescents listen to is created digitally and produced through software, keyboards, touch pads, guitars and drums kits. However, music in both further and higher education in the UK is largely based on conservatoire models of musical transmission with roots in Western European art music.Hasstudents’ learning kept pace with these changes that started happening more than a century ago? Or, is it way past time for music education to undergo a metamorphosis of sorts, as some scholars such as John Kratus (‘Music at the Tipping Point’; 2007) suggests?This has certainly been well documented in the UK in recent months with a recent study from Birmingham City University, Youth Music: Exchanging Notes, claiming that “Stormzy should be taught in schools instead of Mozart to prevent exclusions”.

As a contemporary classical composer, my role in inspiring (or fundamentally introducing) undergraduate students to music written by living classical-contemporary composer (generally encompassing music written since 1950s onwards) has become more difficult within this context. So how does one break this preconception, this barrier? Is there a creative way in which I can deliver this knowledge? If creative, what purposeful use can it serve? As Elliot Eisner (2008) argues, any use of performative elements within the teaching space should be more than just aesthetic, tokenistic or provide novelty; it must have utility to have any value. In seminars over the past year I have explored the possibility of finding a commonality between undergraduate students to achieve an Eisner-like, creative method of teaching new material: that being through music performance.

Opening the conversation through the commonality of music performance I have found to be the most successful method in exploring new music with undergraduate students, engaging with the creation of new music far more tangibly and creatively than through a more typical lecture-style presentation. Immediately demystifying the concept that new music is intangible, difficult and a distant and outdated form of expression. 

Further to this, the diversity within student’s ability to read and critically engage with music notation has grown since I have been teaching (as a result of the aforementioned changes in secondary-level education and modes of engaging with music) and therefore can be a stumbling block when it comes to inclusion and engaging as wide a demographic of student. Therefore, in the same vein as Sue Spencer (2013) engaging with image-making in the aim of self-expression, I have incorporated an exercise in which music notation or the ability to read music notation is negated (I should express here the importance of inclusivity in this exercise between varying ability brackets as opposed to the total disavowal of music notation; the latter I still feel a vital part of music education and creation thereafter). 

The exercise itself

Participants in the exercise may use their own musical instruments or voices, or provided handheld/portable percussion, or items within the space that can be used percussively (such as chairs or stationery). The number of participants remains flexible, however the greater the number of participants the more difficult for individual tutor/peer feedback and lessens the participants’ collaborative input, which will become apparent. This exercise can last between 25 minutes to one-hour in duration, dependent on the circumstances in which it is used (for instance the exercise has been used as a sole educational exercise, or as part of a larger seminar schedule). 

The exercise is split over 8 steps (please feel free to contact me if you require detailed breakdown of each step):

STEP 1                    Nomination of “coordinators”

STEP 2                    Coordinators choice: selection of in situ, inanimate objects and descriptors

STEP 3                    Group formation with all participants

STEP 4                    Coordinators assign descriptors to participants

STEP 5                    Participant sound creation using assigned descriptors

STEP 6                    Evaluation of individual sounds

STEP 7                     Creation of a collective soundscape

STEP 8                    Presentation and experience of soundscape in performance

STEP 9                    OPTIONAL Cross-group creation/evaluation of collective soundscape 

The Outcome

Having used this exercise in several circumstances the aspect that I find most interesting is that any individual, regardless of their music literacy, can take part and create new music. The product of the exercise – the piece of music created – deciphers any such notion that new music is difficult and opens the perception of this seemingly niche field even within the confines of a music undergraduate degree.

Throughout this exercise, students are inadvertently engaging with many of music’s constructs: tonality and sound production, structure and form, texture and timbre of sound. It also engages students with many higher order of thinking skills through analysis of their own thought processes (often in conjunction with others), regular evaluation of the process and ultimately generating and creating a final product (Anderson and Krathwohl; 2001). 

References

Anderson, Lorin W., & Krathwohl, David R. (eds.)A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of        Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives,complete edition (New York: Longman, 2001), pp. 67-68

Eisner, Elliot, ‘Persistent Tensions in Arts-Based Research’, in M. Cahmann-Taylor and R. Siegesmund (eds.),            Arts-Based Research in Education: Foundations for Practice(London: Routledge, 2008)

Fautley, David & Kinsella, Victoria & Whittaker, Adam, Youth Music: Exchanging Notes, based on research by             Birmingham City University (London: National Foundation for Youth Music, 2019)

Kratus, John, ‘Music at the Tipping Point’, Music Educators Journal(November 2007), pp. 42 – 48. 

McIntosh, Paul, & Warren, Digby, (eds.), Creativity in the Classroom: Case Studies in using the Arts in Teaching            and Learning in Higher Education(Bristol: Intellect Ltd., 2013)

Spencer, Sue, ‘Using Imagery: Beyond Words’, in P. McIntosh, & D. Warren, (eds.), Creativity in the Classroom:         Case Studies in using the Arts in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education(Bristol: Intellect Ltd.,          2013)

The Practical Difficulties of Practical Musicianship (James Savage-Hanford)

The last course on which I assisted was in Practical Musicianship – a module which presents some unique pedagogical challenges, because of the way it assesses the critical listening and aural skills capacities of those students enrolled in the module. Which is to say every first-year undergraduate music student, as this is a core component of the Music course. A broad range of musical abilities in such circumstances is inevitable, and this often shows in exam results. It has consequently become quite commonplace to criticise modules like this one for the way it apparently rewards higher levels of a quite rarefied form of ‘prior knowledge’ (which is of course linked to entrenched perceptions as to which groups are most likely to cultivate this prior knowledge in the first place – through schooling opportunities, upbringing, and various other social and cultural factors). 

Every teacher, regardless of course or discipline, will find themselves teaching to a group which demonstrates varied levels of prior knowledge. Often, this is addressed by creating a methodological framework in which concepts are cemented through numerous practical examples (Brookfield: 2015, 166; Nuthall: 2007, 161). This is very much the learning framework for this module, except we are not always concerning ourselves with concepts as such (sometimes this is the case, of course: using practical examples to help conceptualise what it means to improvise; listening to certain repertoires to aid a conceptual understanding of musical form). This course, as the name suggests, is practice-based: it is designed to equip students with necessary tools for gaining a deeper and more visceral critical understanding of how musical materials function in the context of performance; it encourages the capacity to think ‘through’ music’s temporal unfolding. Viewed in these terms, the module is anything but exclusionary. However, I do think that its effectiveness depends very much on what students are willing to ‘bring’ to the sessions: how familiar are they with the genre or style being discussed, for instance? 

It may seem obvious, but if I taught this course again I would insist on every student keeping a listening log, in which they explored as many different examples of a ‘type’ of music from week to week. Given the co-constructive learning framework that this would encourage (and which in any case is the methodological basis of this module – how we might derive musical meaning out of shared listening and performing experiences), the realisation I have come to has less to do with how I teach methods or techniques (still important, of course), and more to do with adaptability of approach. Given the co-constructive, student-centred learning framework that is in place here, what role do I ascribe myself as a teacher – mediator? demonstrator? guide? facilitator? The short answer is ‘all of the above’, but in no other course on which I have taught has the focus shifted so much between those roles from one seminar session to the next. In one seminar, I may be demonstrating methods for ‘hearing’ intervallic patterns in a melody; in another, I may be taking a step back and allowing students to debate the technical merits of an improvised guitar solo. 

This is less a resource, then, and more a kind of reflection on how teachers might view themselves (or how they may wish to view themselves) in the classroom. My own approach is now shaped by the desire to gain a deep, critical awareness of how best to create what John Biggs calls a ‘constructive alignment’ between learner and teacher, not just within a module or course, but from one shared interaction to the next. 

References: 

Biggs, J.B., Teaching for quality learning at university (Buckingham: Open University Press/Society for Research into Higher Education, 2003). 

Brookfield, S. D., The skillful teacher: On technique, trust, and responsiveness in the classroom (John Wiley & Sons, 2015). 

Nuthall, G., The hidden lives of learners (Wellington: Nzcer Press, 2007).

Video presentations and ‘the flipped classroom’ (Anon.)

This year on the ‘Contemporary Debates in Music’ course, for which I was a Teaching Assistant, we implemented a different approach to the students’ preparatory work for seminars. In previous years the students had been asked to prepare presentations in groups of two or three on one side of a debate relating to music in the contemporary world. Each week during the seminar, two groups would give their presentations, one for and one against the motion. Holding student presentations during a seminar can be problematic: they take up a significant amount class time and only actively involve those giving the presentation, whilst the other students are usually left as passive observers. This year the students were asked to create video presentations and upload these to Moodle at least 24 hours in advance of the seminar. The creation of a video meant that there was a wide variety of presentational styles. For example, some produced animations and chose not to appear on screen and others gave a presentation in the traditional style but to camera. Furthermore, students were able to play to their strengths in terms of the contribution they made to the group effort, for example, by taking the role of video editor or director if they did not feel comfortable as a presenter. This variety of approaches also made for refreshing viewing by the other students, who were asked to watch the videos before the seminar and to comment on them in the Moodle forum. The use of pre-recorded video material for students to digest outside the classroom draws on the instructional strategy of ‘the flipped classroom’. This model has several key benefits (Arnold-Gaza, 2014): seminar time is used more efficiently and is available for active learning activities; the students take responsibility for learning; it accommodates multiple learning styles. 

References 

Arnold-Gaza, S. (2014). ‘The flipped classroom: A survey of the research’. Communications in Information Literacy, 8(1), 8-22.

Response:

Thank you for sharing your experience. Considering the current coronavirus situation, it’s especially helpful to know how you transformed conventional group presentations into video presentations and how effectively the new approach worked. I can clearly see the benefits of this way of using technology and digital space in teaching. In this age of technology and uncertainty, I think it’s important for teachers to try to find alternative as well as creative ways that can maximise the key benefits that you listed. (Bomi Choi, Drama, Theatre & Dance)

Opening up the Process (Samuel Messer)

 On MU1112, students were given an introduction to a number of post-1950s compositional procedures and asked to follow them rigorously in the production of a portfolio of short pieces. Procedural slips were common, and many (wrongly, for this module) took the procedure as an inspirational starting-point rather than a strict method. Beyond the quantifiable, the student composers were asked to produce something musically effective, even (at the higher end) demonstrating signs of an original creative voice. I felt they were under pressure here - even those who had internalised the procedures correctly produced hesitant work, and certain very gifted performers tended to produce something that failed to harness the unique capabilities & character of their instruments.

 It seemed to me that two things – a lack of experience in the application of practical methods, and an anxiety about creative self-expression – were combining to hamper students in the production of work that met both standards. For one part of the portfolio, the task was to create a cell based on the application of a number series to a given rhythmic unit, which could then be manipulated & transformed. I asked participants to write a single rhythm on a piece of paper, and then pass it to the next student. From there they would add another, and continue passing the paper along until a complete set of rhythms had been achieved. We were then able to discuss these as a class free of anxiety attached to authorship. After discussions, we continued the process with each subsequent rhythmic transformation, with students shaping their responses according to their own aesthetic judgements.

 What I found effective about this method was that it tightened-up the process – students were forced to focus on each step, and the ‘racing ahead’ which can result in errors was less likely. The group-authored nature of the cells allowed us to have open discussions about how well things worked, creating a space where individual participants could make their own personal aesthetic judgements about the material on show. The session was also efficient – students ended up with a lot of practice at the technique in question before even beginning their own submissions. It was hard to find ways to balance an emphasis on procedural correctness with an open, welcoming space for aesthetic discussion in the rest of the module, but this exercise remains something I’ll be returning to for future inspiration. 

Teaching Computer Technology with Limitation of Facility (Xiaolian Zhang)

This year I taught the first-year practical composition course, which contains two parts, including a more classical approach in the first semester, and a computer-based approach in the second semester. For this blog post, I will focus on the latter, which possess main challenges regarding students’ learning experience and outcome.

Due to the limitation of the facilities available at the college’s iMac Suite, this course has been divided into two sections, containing a one-hour lecture where lecturer gives tutorials on how to use Logic Pro to compose various styles of music, and a one-hour seminar where students can experiment with those techniques learnt from lecture. However, because students are not able to get on-hand experience while watching the lecturer’s instruction, to some extent, they tend to forget what to do and feel overwhelmed in the seminar. To solve this problem, I designed three approaches to make the students more engaged in the lecture and make sure they know what to do in the seminar:

1. Provide a step-by-step graphic instruction about each tool and how to start using it, so that they can follow along during the lecture, and have something to start with in the seminar;

2. Ask questions such as: any difference between the previous sound and the sound after specific effects, which can not only strengthen students’ memory, but also maintain their focus in the lecture;

3. Organise small tasks in the seminar, so they have a framework of what to do at each stage, and can ask questions regarding the specific work.

I experienced these methods in my teaching session and found these very helpful. However, this experience has shown that the educational facilities available can cause significant influences on the curriculum design and teaching method, which means as an educator, it is crucial to be flexible and able to adapt teaching methods regarding what is available.

Response Tom Barton Politics and International Relations

As someone who also teaches classes where students have to use technology I can empathise with this experience. One method that I have found useful is to increase the amount of group work, where each member of the group has a defined role and/or who is leading the group changes on a weekly basis. In this case students are still achieving learning outcomes but can share limited resources. 

What if . . . ? Imaginative thinking and practice in music theory and analysis (Lucía Camacho Acevedo)

Last term I taught four MU1110: (Music) Theory and Analysis seminars. “Thought experiments” and “musical reimaginings” are strategies that I found to yield particularly great results, both for developing students’ critical thinking abilities and analytical skills and in terms of student participation during group discussions. The thought experiment method has a rich history in the natural sciences (see Moue, Masavetas and Karayianni 2006), but it can also be a powerful tool in music and the humanities. 

In order to integrate imaginative and analytical thinking, I routinely asked students to consider how specific alterations to the case studies would affect their observations, and to attempt to provide different rationales for certain creative decisions. Responses ranged from ““I feel that if…then…” statements to collectively notated or transcribed musical reimaginings. The end goal is not to produce a *good* piece of music or to improve an existing one, but to encourage conscious awareness of the range of creative possibility (“the roads not taken”), which I believe is one of the primary levers at theorists’ and analysts’ disposal. 

This and similar questioning strategies can gently help manage students’ anxieties about creative self-expression, demystify the figure of well-known composers, and promote the development of individual critical voices. 

References: 

Aspasia S. Moue, Aspasia S., Masavetas, Kyriakos A., and Karayianni, Haido, ‘Tracing the Development of Thought Experiments in the Philosophy of Natural Sciences’, Journal for General Philosophy of Science, Vol. 37, No. 1 (March 2006), 61–75

Becoming “Un-learnt:” Opening Portals to History For First-year Undergraduates (Caroline Lesemann-Elliott)

This year, I was a teaching assistant for a first year undergraduate course entitled “A Very Short History of Music.” It was an incredibly difficult time for these students, with some being locked down in accommodation with unfamiliar people, some scattered across the globe, all with little chance for the building of camaraderie and support networking that is so crucial for those first entering higher education. This is particularly important for those entering the world of the humanities (particularly music studies), whose academic discourse is vastly different from the often wildly inaccurate grounding provided by British secondary education.

Many students perhaps came to this course thinking they were going to receive essentially the “next stage” of what they learned in secondary education (particularly if undertaking English a-levels), i.e., more composers and pieces of music to memorise, more dates, definitions, and facts to memorise. Certainly, some “pegs” in the form of composers, works, and basic theoretical terms must be taught (Morss & Murray 2018) for more in-depth discussion of history and theory surrounding musicing historically and today. However, more broadly speaking, this course in particular is designed to guide students towards a re-assessment of the ways in which they conceive of the music they engage with, to provide them different “threshold concepts” (Meyer & Land 2003) to allow them to uncover new paths of thought around music.

Threshold concepts, however, require some amount of risk-taking on the part of the student. The risk of saying the wrong thing, looking foolish in front of peers they have yet to see, foolish in front of the teachers who theoretically have power over their academic progress, foolish to themselves; these things can easily pile up, particularly for young people suffering from isolation. Equally, students are often coming from an environment within secondary education that actively punishes risk taking, as opposed to at university, where (at least for the first two years) a student theoretically has relative freedom to explore and risk exposing their ideas with somewhat less concrete consequences. 

When introducing threshold concepts, Biggs’ model of “constructive alignment” can be quite helpful (Biggs 2003). Biggs proposes that students construct meaning through learning activities, i.e. actions that require the learners to create meaning themselves (with teaching being a catalyst for this meaning). The alignment is what a teacher does: setting up an environment that supports learning activities that will achieve desired learning outcomes. The teaching methods used and assessment has to be aligned with the learning activities. Thus the teacher must define the intended learning outcome (ILO), the teaching/learning activities (TLAs, i.e. peer teaching, interactive groups, etc.) and assessment. 

To some extent, Biggs’ model is most helpful for situations in which students must radically “unlearn” the lessons taught by a system, insomuch as it addresses the need for a clear alignment between system, ILO, and TLAs. Equally, it addresses the more concrete factors necessary to ensure that cycles introduced by Kolb (i.e., that learning begins with an experience, followed by a reflection, abstract conceptualisation, and finally active experimentation that leads to a new experience) continue to function in a way that perpetuates reflective learning (Kolb 1984).

It’s impossible to say whether or not the students I taught began to approach the thresholds of a new way of looking at music. I like to think they have. I truly believe the community nature of a university is one of the most important aspects of acquiring the confidence to challenge the “acquisition of facts in lieu of reflections” narrative pervasive in the education of arts and humanities. I look forward to this community burgeoning once again come the passage of the pandemic.

1. Kate Morss and Rowena Murray. Teaching at University: A Guide for Postgraduates  (London: Sage Publications 2005)

2. Erik Meyer and Ray Land. “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4 (ETL Project, Universities of Edinburgh, Coventry and Durham, 2003)

3. John Briggs. Teaching for Quality Learning at University, second edition (Buckingham: Open University Press//Society for Research into Higher Education 2003).

4. David Kolb. Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development (New York: Prentice Hall 1984)

From Eastern Musical Studies to Jazz: Vocalizing Scales and Melodies

During jazz education, the current training method introduces the chord-scale theory, meaning approaching harmony as a structure that carries various scales. And the way to practice the scales is described as patterned permutations of chord & colour tones. As a result of this standardized approach, jazz pieces sound quite the same after introducing the melody. Jazz students spend long years before finding a unique voice that separates them from their peers. And there's another core course called "Ear Training", which lasts for the first two years; however, they do not go hand to hand with other performance classes. From my university years at Berklee College of Music to my teaching era at Hacettepe University, I have always come across the same problem with the jazz learners: the melodic side to their playing is somehow missing. This is not an easy void to fill, as the whole aesthetic concept of any music comes from the richness of the melodies. 

Then comes "the direction/expression phase," which is a bit more complicated. One gets more experience in judging the necessities of the musical genre in scrutiny. Inevitably, knowledge and control bring self-consciousness, then self-doubt. Yet, the student is about to turn pro at this stage, and a majority of listeners would enjoy a performance/concert by this young artist. The intention is good, the learning is deep, and the outcome is pleasant, but the artist now starts feeling "shallow"  because the gun of esthetics is pointed right at its face. Outer knowledge becomes insufficient without inner research, so the artist seeks the uniqueness in its personality, as without that, the depth of expertise resonates in the shallowness of imitation. 

In Eastern music practice methodology, singing/vocalizing before performing on an instrument is crucial, as it is the shortest bridge from the mind to the inner ear. The students must sing the pieces, scales and embellishments. The scales are called makams, and they are performed with a relative approach, meaning each root of the 12 tone cycle should be included in practice. This detailed system develops the ear, but more importantly, it does it within a live/performance-based context, connecting the student with the core melody. To be clear, it is not repeating vocally after playing the part; it means first being able to sing, then play it on an instrument. This system also simplifies the transposition aspect, a crucial necessity in jazz music. Therefore a more vocalized jazz education may be beneficial to the musical depth of the jazz learner. As Wynton Marsalis says in his course on blues: "One melody is worth a thousand scales." Hence, the student starts playing as humming naturally what she/he hears within. That's where originality, uniqueness lies. This new division creates new material, which involves, once again, self-consciousness, self-doubt, a high level of control, judgment and critical thinking, but new and original. 

Onur Yuce 100931854 (Music Dept.)

Warm-up (easy) questions and quiz (Aniarani Andita)

One the teaching tips given in the Retrieval Practice website is to do “Two Things” with students. This can be done at any point during a lesson, where we ask students to write down Two Things about a specific prompt, such as “what are two things you learned today” or “what are two things you would like to learn more about?”[1] I thought this was a great idea, but I changed it slightly, so it served as warm-up (rather than closing) questions. In the first seminar of the course Introduction to World Music, I asked the students the “two things that first came to your mind when you hear the term ‘world music.’” This worked really well as it got the students ready to engage and it helped me to gauge their basic knowledge of “world music." After the first seminar, I stopped using the Two Things, but I continued asking warm-up questions or doing a warm-up quiz because I thought it was an excellent good way to establish the seminar and for me to get to know the students. Sometimes I only asked one question, and often the questions were about something basic from the week’s reading. For example, instead of asking students if they have done the readings (to which they often hesitated to answer), I gave them a 1-question quiz at the beginning of the seminar about a basic but important point from the reading (e.g., in the week about Taiwan indigenous music, I asked the question “who are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan?”)  The question was not difficult, so it was not intimidating for the students, but at the same time it gave me an idea of their level of engagement with the week’s reading. It was also an opportunity to correct or affirm their answer the question. In short, I think my point is do not hesitate to ask easy questions! I did all of these through Mentimeter, which I think worked really well to kick-off the seminar, as it allows anonymous answers so the students were more encouraged to respond.

[1] “Two Things,” Retrieval Practice, https://www.retrievalpractice.org/strategies/2018/two-things.

Combining singing and listening as part of a musical experience in class (Romy Martinez)

As an academic and music performer, in recent years, I started to implement the citation of songs as a way of interweaving different voices from the music phenomena, cultures and peoples analysed in my work as a music researcher in ethnomusicology. My aim was to bring together the findings of the referenced authors and the voices of my research participants as well as the reflections set in the lyrics of songs as part of the cultural context I was referring to. In this way, as a singer myself, singing brief excerpts of selected songs throughout, say, either an oral presentation in a conference, or, including links to these songs in a paper, seemed like an effective tool to also include my voice as a researcher and culture bearer.

Although in the beginning it occurred to me it would be perceived very much like an odd approach, to my surprise, it was emphatically encouraged by fellow academics. Drawing on this previous positive experience, I decided to plan ways of using this strategy also as part of my teaching, given the openness and innovative approaches discussed and put in practice through the InSTIL course programme.  Thus, instead of just playing recordings as a listening exercise for my peers, I decided to learn and sing selected songs. To support this practice, I also prepared slides which included lyrics and translations. As an experiment, I prepared this, prior to the micro-teaching, which was the first time I tested this singing experience as a way of illustrating some of the contents of the class. 

I am aware that not all the music lecturers are singers themselves, but most of them do play an instrument. But following this experience, I just wanted to draw attention to the importance of bringing the musical experience back to the classroom, in whichever creative ways we can think of.

Encouraging students to be critical thinkers (Xabier Etxeberria Adrien)

In the Spring term of 2020 I worked as a teaching assistant for the undergraduate course “Introduction to World Music”. The course was delivered in the format of a one-hour lecture by the tutor to the whole class followed by one-hour seminar to smaller groups, focused on some set reading. My job was to take a seminar group each week.

Diversity of musical meanings and functions was a transversal theme of the course. Discussion being an effective way to become aware of the multiple interpretations that are possible in an area of intellectual inquiry (Brookfield 2015: 119), seminars seemed particularly relevant. As the seminar facilitator, it was important for me to create a supportive environment in which discussion and differing points of view were encouraged (Rogers 1983: 104).

I would like to think that the seminars I facilitated helped students to think for themselves. Some of their insightful contributions, were, in my perspective, indicative of this. However, the feedback I received in the two sessions in which my teaching was observed has made me question the effectiveness of my teaching in this regard. My two observers evidenced, albeit indirectly, my slight tendency to direct student’s responses. I was surprised when, after the seminar, my academic observer privately praised some of the students’ contributions, that, thinking to myself, I had not valued very positively. Maybe their only problem was that they did not match my expectations. My peer observer, on the other hand, highlighted my ability to reframe questions in order to make students understand what I was interested in, so that they could “correctly” answer. “If you find yourself leading your students to an answer, interpretation or distinction that you think they should cover, then you are taking an outcome-leading approach, teaching students a body of knowledge, and not educating for critical thinking” (Golding 2011: 366).

References:

Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, And Responsiveness in the Classroom. London: John Wiley & Sons.

Golding, C. (2011). Educating for critical thinking: thought‐encouraging questions in a community of inquiry.  Higher Education Research & Development 30 (3), 357-370.

Rogers, C (1983). Freedom to learn for the 80’s. Columbus: Charles E. Merrill.

Collaborative Learning and the Successes of Self-Reflective Practice by James Ellis 

In the Spring Term of 2023, I particularly enjoyed teaching on undergraduate music courses focusing on critical thinking around sensitive topics and current discourses in music today. Topics approached during these sessions ranged from issues around music and disability, mental health, music and violence and homophobia in music. The challenging subject material meant a sensitive approach had to be taken when teaching, impacting my confidence in my ability to teach the cohort. 

However, the role of the teacher in this scenario is not to teach at students, but rather to listen to multiple points of view before initiating and engaging in quasi-roundtable discussions. This allows the teacher to bring together tangents, carefully weaving deconstructed arguments presented by students into a unified whole. Throughout, I developed a collaborative approach to learning, one based on student-teacher self-reflection on these challenging topics and our own engagement with them, often from a privileged position. By utilising anonymising digital technologies to initially gather the thoughts and opinions of students, we could then engage the topic at hand in a critical yet safe, approachable setting. Khan and Anderson’s Developing Your Teaching: Towards Excellence proved useful in my creation of this environment. Collaborative learning, whether this be through small group work I set up, larger document-based conglomeration of ideas or whole class discussions around an issue proved fruitful and, in many cases, it was vital that I was able to be taught to by the students, allowing them to explain to me their understanding and knowledge. 

Response:

I can really associate with the teaching experience and challenge you are describing - though to a lesser extent as the topics we touch upon during the seminars are less controversial (I am teaching Economics). Sometimes, it is really interesting to let the students take the lead, listen to them and be introduced to their views and rationales, aiming then to create an environment that is safe and accommodates conflicting beliefs.

Konstantina Boutsioukou (Department of Economics)

Composers vs. Producers: teaching composing with technology (Tom Baynes)

This year, I lectured and ran seminars for undergraduate students on two composing with technology modules. In both modules faced the challenge of teaching two distinct skills: composing and producing. It was interesting to see that students rarely had a strong footing in both these skills, generally favouring one or the other.

For students with a background in traditional western notated composition, the challenge was adapting to technology, including unfamiliar software packages and operating systems. They had to transition from using classical notation to working with MIDI and understand the role of a composer more as a digital performer. To support these students, I provided pre-lecture materials such as self-made videos demonstrating the technology systems that posed the most frequent challenges.

For students with a stronger background in music production but weaker composition and orchestration skills, I set group analysis tasks. Students would analyse music and film clips and perform guided evaluations individually and in groups to create stronger links between the technology they understood and the more unfamiliar compositional processes. For the 1st year class this also involved creating short group presentation on film clips which could then be challenged by the rest of the class.

To encourage stronger peer-to-peer learning (and thus reinforcement through peer-guided teaching) I would group students with these different skills together. During feedback sessions where individuals would present work to the class, I made sure to call on students that I knew had a complimentary skill set to respond to the student work being presented which proved effective in helping to balance these separate skills within the module to the benefit of both sets of students.