Music, Education, and Technology

Interesting article in the New York Times.

It’s true, especially in online learning. An engaged instructor can be the difference between a thriving online course and one that falls victim to attrition and failing grades. We see how effective online faculty can be every day with Berkleemusic.

I just read an excellent article on keeping online learners engaged and recommend it to anyone involved in teaching and learning online. The article is entitled “Distant, Not Absent,” by Ann McClure from universitybusiness.com.

“I don’t think there is anything that
can help retention as much as an
engaged faculty member.”
-Ken Udas, Penn State World Campus

Because online students are not receiving visual clues from the instructor, they can feel isolated. An engaged faculty member can help students overcome those feelings. “Teacher presence is a cornerstone of online learning, along with social presence and cognitive presence,” says George Saltsman, the director of Educational Technology for the Adams Center for Teaching and Learning at Abilene Christian University.

For more information, please check out the full article.

And, thank you Berkleemusic faculty, for all that you do to help our continuing education students feel part of our educational community!

Email can be a challenging way to communicate for business. It’s an informal, fast-paced, text-based form of communication and can easily be misread.

In an online education environment, text-based communication can be challenging too. Constructive criticism can be difficult to read objectively when presented as text, and sometimes, what’s intended to be “constructive” can often be perceived as merely criticism.

At Berkleemusic, many of our instructors supplement text-based assignment critiques with narrated MP3 files, as a way to offer feedback and suggestions related to a student’s assignment post. For example, “You played it like this, [guitar] but if you changed this chord and that voicing to this, it would sound like [guitar].” Not only does the MP3 file help to further the student’s understanding of the lesson assignment, but it also conveys the helpful and encouraging tone of their instructor’s voice. This not easy to convey with text-based communication. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I believe an audio/MP3 file with spoken words and (in this case) music, is worth a thousand more!

This not only holds true for business and educational correspondence, but for important interpersonal communication as well.

Here’s an example.

Last week, at a holiday gathering, friends and family were upset about a very sick family member who is in the hospital in England. Communicating via phone was not an option. We decided to send her an MP3 greeting compilation. I set up a portable digital recording device called the Edirol R-09 in a quiet room, and family members took turns going in and recording heartfelt get-well wishes. They said what they needed to say, then I assembled the dozen-plus messages in Garageband, adjusted levels, added a background track of my own instrumental music, and sent the 10-minute MP3 file as an email attachment to England, where it was played at the patient’s bedside. The whole project took no more than an hour, and the effect this audio-based communication had on everyone involved was immeasurable.

With a portable digital recording device and/or a simple, free, cross-platform desktop recording/editing tool like Audacity or GarageBand (ships with the Mac), you can communicate effectively with audio files to colleagues and students, and perhaps even “say what you need to say” to a loved one.

Happy New Year!

So, what’s it like from a teacher’s perspective? What kinds of tools and technologies are used? How much can a student really learn in this environment? Do the students learn from each other? How is teaching online different from teaching in a traditional classroom environment?

To find answers to these questions, I turned to one of our pioneer educators with Berkleemusic: Matt Marvuglio, Dean of the Performance Division at Berklee.

In the following clip from October 2007, Matt shares his thoughts on what it’s like to teach Ear Training online through Berkleemusic.

Rick Peckham, Berkleemusic Online Guitar Instructor

“You can’t teach music online!” That’s what we heard time and again back in 2002, when we first began making plans for Berkleemusic.com, the online continuing education division of Berklee College of Music. And now 16,000 students, 75 countries, 85 courses, 30 certificate programs, and three National Awards later, “You can’t teach music online” has changed to a rousing affirmation that you CAN, in fact, teach music online; quite effectively, indeed! All you need is strong leadership, the best staff, and the finest faculty all working together to make it happen. These are the ingredients of Berkleemusic.com!

Online learning, also known as distance learning, has the attention of every major university in the world, most offering online degrees, certificates, and individual courses. Distance learning draws upon hundreds of years of established pedagogical principles and offers a student-centric approach to education. Berkleemusic is an example of a distance learning program founded in tradition. It all started in the early 1950s with Berklee’s original Correspondence Course, a 25-week “Berklee-by-mail” course in music theory and arranging. That early distance-learning initiative had the very same primary goal as the online school does today—to expand Berklee’s reach and provide educational opportunities by bringing Berklee to those who simply could not get to Boston.

What is it like to teach and learn music online? In this two-part series, we will look at online music education from the teacher’s side of the desk. Stay tuned!

How do you go from being thousands of miles away from your instructor in an online course, to several feet away from him onstage performing a show? Berkleemusic is the answer! Here’s Berkleemusic student Jeanine Guidry and her instructor, Dave Olsen’s story.

Berkleemusic business faculty, Dave Olsen was teaching Legal Aspects of the Music industry during the Spring 2007 semester. As Jeanine recalls, “During one weekly scheduled course chat, another student asked him if he played any instruments, and he said keyboards and a little bass,” Jeanine said. “I jokingly said he should come to Richmond next weekend because our band has two shows and because of high school graduations, we had no keyboards or bass. Well, turns out that Dave had to be in New York on Friday, and he just changed his plane ticket to stop in Richmond and played with us Saturday afternoon and late Sunday morning! It was an amazing weekend.”

Dave Olsen is also helping the band to reach one of its long-term goals. He was instrumental in signing the band Evanescence’s first sheet music publishing deal, is going to use some of his connections to help Offering publish one of its original songs.

“That brings me to one of the reasons I love Berkleemusic—the connections and contacts. If you invest yourself you can develop work/music relationships and even friendships that will last a long time,” Jeanine said.

There are lots of stories like this amongst the continuing education student body at Berkleemusic. It’s a vibrant learning community where professional connections that make a difference are made.