This session will consider the challenges and opportunities of creating and teaching a skill-based class in the distance learning environment.
Distance Learning has grown rapidly in recent years and is now an imperative in higher education. However, in applied (skill-based) courses, the pace of growth has been much slower. While there are many teachers inside and outside academe who teach one-to-one lessons via Skype, online instruction of group piano is still quite rare. I know of about five universities that offer online courses in group piano.
Because a high degree of individualization is required when teaching skill based courses such as group piano, it is necessary, yet challenging, to create online content that would be relevant for every user in the group. Moreover, in music pedagogy, the tradition of teacher modeling is normative. While content creation is a challenge, the real challenge lies in feedback and assessment when teaching skills in the online environment. Because both seeing and hearing the student performer is essential to proper assessment, some have argued that applied music instruction is fundamentally unsuited to distance learning. There would seem to be no elegant solutions for teaching piano in groups where many students need to be visually/aurally assessed at frequent intervals, and where the tradition of immediate teacher feedback is entrenched.
In spring 2014, I taught my first online group piano class, utilizing the Quality Matters rubric. I have now taught it four times. The first portion of this session will be a presentation of the challenges and opportunities that I experienced. Topics to be covered include course design and implementation, feedback and assessment, quality control and creating camaraderie among the students. Student video performances and student feedback will also be included. A PowerPoint slideshow will be available for any interested attendees.
The second portion of the session will be an interactive discussion with audience participants who wish to contribute ideas and experiences for improving the design of this or any skill-based course. Ideas generated from this discussion will be recorded and made available to participants after the conference.
This session should be of interest to teachers wishing to share ideas for teaching and assessing skills in any discipline. Each successful endeavor in creating an applied course creates opportunities to develop additional courses in other skill-based disciplines that formerly have not been considered appropriate for online delivery.