Interactive Course Materials for Music Appreciation: Increasing and Enhancing Student Involvement

Patrick Setzer

Drexel University

A HyperCard-based Music Appreciation course uses interactive CD ROM programs to describe and illustrate the course content. Observed rates of use among the students spur revisions in the software to make it more genuinely interactive and fully integrated into the course requirements.

Introduction

This presentation and paper is part of an ongoing course development project in Music Appreciation that has been co-developed by the author and a colleague, Alfred Blatter. The aim of this project has been to create a complete set of interactive course materials that use HyperCard stacks linked to CD-ROM players. The stacks are used by the students for study and review in the departmental computer lab, and also serve as CD controllers for class lectures. The project uses low-end Macintosh computers such as the SE, and commercial, off-the-shelf audio CDs.

The goal of creating a study stack for every lecture has largely been accomplished. Except for a few classes that rely on vinyl recordings or video,1 all of the lectures are available for study and review by students in an interactive environment that allows users to play predetermined excerpts that illustrate and reinforce the text. In addition, the stacks allow the student to control the pace and the order of the discourse: the audio examples can be repeated indefinitely, and various navigation buttons facilitate the browsing process. Finally, the stacks are an especially effective tool for illustrating musical form. Programmatic works such as the Fantastic Symphony or symphonic movements with various formal schemes can be displayed with diagrams that allow the student to hear any section by simply clicking on it, and then to play the whole movement with a scrolling commentary.2

Accordingly, the course development process has now entered a second stage devoted to evaluation and refinement. A major focus of these efforts has been to increase the students’ use of the stacks and to make the stacks more dynamic and responsive.

Survey Results

First implemented in the fall term of the 1992-93 academic year, the course is now in its sixth consecutive quarter term of use. Throughout that period, surveys have been regularly given to the students to assess the overall effectiveness of the course. By the third term of the project (Spring 1993), an essentially complete set of study stacks was available for student use. At that time the survey was expanded to measure the students’ response to the stacks in three areas: usefulness, ease of use, and frequency of use. The results are summarized below.

At first glance the results seem to be quite favorable: 65% of the students either agreed or agreed strongly that the stacks were useful in their studying, as opposed to 19% who disagreed or disagreed strongly with that premise. Even more emphatically, 0% disagreed with the statement that the stacks were easy to use, while 84% either agreed or agreed strongly with it.

However, these results are somewhat compromised by the responses to the last question. More than half of the students used the stacks either very little (32%) or not at all (23%). Of the 40% who used the stacks, only 8% did so in the manner envisioned by the author - that is, for every unit. Furthermore, the 5% that did not respond do not represent surveys that were not returned, but rather surveys in which that particular question was left blank. It is likely that the NA and NR percentages represent non-use of the stacks.

The figures on frequency of use can be reconciled with those on usefulness without difficulty: if we subtract the 40% that used the stacks from the 55% who found them to be useful, 15% still remains. It is possible that those figures come from the 32% who used the stacks very little - students who were comfortable enough with the course material that they only needed to reinforce the lectures a few times, and found the stacks useful on those occasions. Such a pattern of use, while far from the ideal of the developers, is nonetheless a reasonable explanation that does not contradict the survey results.

The figures on ease of use, however, are less compatible with those for frequency of use. After the 16% that indicated NA or NR for ease of use are subtracted from the 23% who never used the stacks, that leaves a minimum of 7% who apparently endorsed the stacks’ ease of use without ever actually using them. That discrepancy actually represents two respondents out of a total of 37.

However well or badly the various indicators match, the fact remains that the frequency of use was substantially below the goals and expectations of the stack authors. And although there were probably mitigating factors that contributed to the low participation,3 the results clearly suggested that both the stacks and the context in which they were used could be improved. The subsequent analysis of the project’s weaknesses and the steps taken to correct them are the basis for this presentation and paper.

Analysis of the Problem

Careful analysis of the work done to date combined with detailed discussions with students and colleagues revealed three kinds of obstacles that hindered the user: 1) logistical conditions that render the process inconvenient or frustrating; 2) the noncompulsory, voluntary role assigned to the stacks through the structure and dynamics of the course; and 3) the flat, ultimately passive design of the stacks. Each deterred student involvement in its own way; and each required a different solution.

Logistical Planning

The logistical difficulties are both the easiest to overlook and also potentially the most crippling. Educators can easily get so caught up in the exciting possibilities of multimedia that they overlook the mundane issues of administering their innovative programs. Some of the many administrative details that initially hampered the program at Drexel include

This list, while far from complete, illustrates the kind of planning that, if neglected, will result in user frustration and inconvenience which in turn will yield non-use. While less stimulating than the design tasks, careful planning of delivery systems is every bit as important. The survey results given below reflect a dramatic and immediate increase in frequency of use; and, while that increase is probably due in part to the summer term’s lower enrollment (22 as opposed to 37, resulting in increased access to the computers), it also coincides with both reorganized sign out procedures and more class time devoted to hands-on training at the workstations.

Query: How much use did you make of the HyperCard Stacks? (Answers in %)

The Role of The Stacks

The role of the stacks in the overall structure of the course requirements has also shaped their use patterns. Once implemented, the stacks quickly became test preparation tools, largely ignored most of the time and much in demand during the two days prior to an exam. In part, the authors contributed to this development by printing and distributing all the text fields as course handouts. A more important point, however, is this: if the stacks could actually be displaced by hard copy text, then they were obviously not utilizing anything near the full range of resources that are available in a multimedia environment. In any event, one clear way to increase the level of student use would be to integrate that use into the course requirements and grading procedure. That in turn raises issues concerning testing procedures: relevance, fairness, and effective safeguards to prevent cheating. Which brings us to the third set of obstacles: passive stack design.

Passive Stack Design

The first generation of stacks linked discursive and analytical text to aural events, to closely correlate a musical performance with a verbal analysis. However, even the most sophisticated applications (such as the scrolling commentaries that accompany a tone poem or sonata form movement) were still passive learning environments, in which the student would read the screen and then click on the demonstration, or click on the excerpt and then read the screen. While this is in some ways an improvement over the traditional type of text, it also has some disadvantages. To begin, it is fatiguing to read a lot of text on a computer screen, particularly if the typeface is smaller than fourteen points. Second, the process still consists of a one-way flow of information, from the source to the user. In a book that may be acceptable, but in an interactive environment the user expects - and deserves - more.

User-Oriented Revisions

The goal of the course revisions outlined below is to increase the student use of the HyperCard stacks through two initiatives:

Both initiatives are represented in the style, format, and structure of the stack described below.

The Analysis Project

The Analysis Project is a three-stage interactive stack that guides the user through all the steps necessary to analyze a sonata form movement by Mozart. Its completion is a course requirement equal in weight to any of the four exams. To make the compulsory more attractive, students are allowed to do the project up to three times (each time on a different movement); then they take the highest grade of the three and substitute it for their lowest test score. They may do the project at any time, although the required listening skills are not usually in place until the last fourth of the term.

Part 1: Music Elements Review

The first stage of the Analysis Project is a set of forty cards that each ask one question . The questions are grouped according to six categories: Rhythm, Texture, Instruments, Tonality, Melody, and Structure. There are navigation buttons that allow the student to go to any card in any category whenever he or she wants; there are no restrictions on the number of times a student answers a question, and there is no score kept of right or wrong answers.

The questions all have a similar format: a button plays an excerpt from the CD, and the card asks a multiple-choice question about some aspect of the excerpt. After selecting an answer the student can check to see if it is correct. Incorrect answers generate comments that explain why the selected answer is wrong. In addition, every card has a Help button that provides written and audio demonstrations of the terms addressed in that specific question. The questions proceed from simple observations about one feature of an excerpt, such as the meter, to more sophisticated judgments based on a combination of elements - for example, if an excerpt is a theme statement, a bridge passage, a development section, or a coda.

Part 2 The Music Elements Quiz

At any point in the review the user has the option either to leave the review or go on to the next stage of the analysis project. When the user elects to go to the next stage, he or she is taken to another set of questions - the Music Elements Quiz. The quiz is actually the same set of questions as the Music Elements Review, but with two crucial differences: the navigation buttons are all removed, and 2) the questions are reshuffled in a random order. The students are given up to fifteen tries to get ten questions right. If they fail to get ten right in fifteen attempts, they are sent back to the beginning: the question cards are reshuffled, and the student can either try the quiz again, go back to the review, or leave the program. When the ten correct answers have been reached, the student is then allowed access to the last stage: the actual analysis.

Part 3 The Analysis

The analysis begins with a menu card that allows the user to select a work from three choices: a sonata form movement with a clear second theme, a monothematic sonata form movement, and a minuet and trio movement (the CD contains Mozart’s Symphonies 38 and 39). Each movement may be previewed - that is, played - before the choice is made. At this point the student can still choose to return to the review for further preparation, although it will probably not be needed: the excerpts for all of the review and quiz questions are drawn from these three movements. No matter which piece is chosen, the user will have already heard every passage several times, demonstrating triple meter, or balanced phrases, or motivic development, etc. So, that which usually constitutes the greatest difficulty facing a student attempt to analyze classical forms - a simple lack of familiarity with the music - will be greatly diminished. Even an impatient student cannot reach the third stage of the project without first hearing most of the music at least once. And the student who reviews thoroughly will already know all of the components of whatever piece he or she selects before the first note is played. All that remains is to put the pieces together and grasp the form as a whole.

Upon selection of a work, the student is prompted - for the first time - for his or her name. The next screen contains a complete, annotated diagram of the movement, along with buttons to play, pause and scan in either direction. As the piece plays, the student is instructed to click on each part of the diagram when it begins playing, and immediately the elapsed time of the movement appears on the chart. By clicking on each term or section at the appropriate moment, the student fills in the time of arrival for each part of the piece. The user can change his or her mind as often as is necessary, simply by scanning to the appropriate part of the piece and clicking again. And, there is on-screen help available: clicking on any part of the diagram - "First Theme," for example, or "Recapitulation" - triggers a Help screen that provides a brief verbal description of that part’s most noticeable features. When the user hits the "All Done" button, the program records the answers and then provides the correct times for immediate comparison. If the times are completely different - that is, if the student has been unable to correctly identify the various formal components - he or she has the option of returning to the review, the quiz, and finally to another analysis.

Evaluation

The Analysis Project meets and satisfies both of the previously stated goals for this undertaking: 1) it provides a compulsory use context that is still flexible enough to allow students to set their own pace; and 2) it moves beyond the more passive style of the first-generation stacks to draw the student in to a more dynamic interaction. In addition, it provides a guided structure that we hope will prevent the user from getting into an analysis situation for which he or she is inadequately prepared.

However, the program is not without its weaknesses. On a practical level, the heart of the analysis process - clicking on a term when it commences - is difficult to do accurately. On a Mac Plus or an SE the program is so slow that the time routinely enters one or two seconds late, or sometimes not at all. At the same time, the scanning buttons usually operate too fast: if you try to go back ten seconds you wind up going back thirty. And, while this is clearly more interactive than previous efforts, it still requires the student to adapt his or her formal perception to our preconceived diagram: instead of asking ‘What’s next?’ the student is asking ‘Where’s that bridge?’.

A more serious consideration is the knowledge that our tools - in this case, a computer - carry with them a built-in bias towards certain kinds of information. The Mac is much better suited, for example, to illustrating the linear, event-oriented components of sonata form than to exploring the nuances of Tibetan chants. How much will this technology shape the curriculum that it ostensibly serves? This is a big question, and addressing it properly beyond the scope of this paper, but it is also a question that merits the consideration of every participant at this conference.

Conclusion

This paper has described some of the difficulties encountered in the development of a HyperCard and CD-ROM based course in Music Appreciation. The focus of the discussion has been an analysis of low student use of the study stacks, and a description of steps taken to increase the level of student participation in the interactive course materials.

While a significant part of the low use problem was solved by reorganizing the sign out and training procedures, the main area of improvement has been in the design of the stacks. Study stacks have been revised to make them more dynamically interactive, and HyperCard based analysis assignments have been incorporated into the course requirements.

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1 Videodisks are of course ideal for similar interactive uses; however, budget constraints have thus far prevented their inclusion in the study stacks.

2 For a more detailed discussion of this project see Patrick Setzer and Alfred Blatter, "A HyperCard Based Curriculum for Music Appreciation," in Music Curriculum and Current Technology: Models for Application: Proceedings of the Conference held in Duluth, Minnesota, July 25-27, 1993, by the University of Minnesota Duluth (Duluth: University of Minnesota Center for Professional Development, 1993), 151.

3 More than half of the students were graduating seniors in their final term, for whom the course was a free elective.