Fred J. Rees, University of Northern Iowa

In Fall of 1993, the state of Iowa began testing an integrated system of two-way audio and full-motion video classrooms in public schools, government facilities, and collegiate institutions. This system, called the Iowa Communications Network (ICN), was linked by ground-laid fiber optic cable, thus allowing for a wide range of information platforms including computer, videodisc, audio and video tape, slides, CD, overhead projection and for us in music, electronic or acoustical instruments. As the ICN has continued to evolve, access to the World Wide Web, satellite-based transmissions, in-classroom fax and direct telephone line links, and television cameras that automatically pan to students who are talking in the classroom have become added features to the network.

Approximately 200 classrooms have been built to-date, with rumors of 500 being operational by the turn of the century. All classrooms operate with the same equipment (although the availability of information media beyond television cameras vary according to the resources of a given site), thereby making of hardware a simple task for users who need to commute between sites. In a given broadcast, teacher and students from sites can be seen and heard instantaneously by all other sites. Rees and Safford (1995) and Rees and Downs (1995) provide extended description of ICN classroom configurations and the dynamics of working with the network for teaching.

The arrival of the ICN was timely for the Masters of Music program at the University of Northern Iowa. UNI's physical isolation from major urban centers in a state where the majority of taxpayers reside in small farming towns inhibited significant development of graduate student enrollments, particularly among the full-time working and family-obligated population of music educators. Affected by financial cuts that dictated minimum student enrollments for courses and emasculated the university's summer school budget, the UNI MM program in music education was doomed to extinction without some kind of extraordinary initiative. Nevertheless, periodic requests by prospective students for a distance learning program suggested that a market did exist for the MM program, if only there were a way to avail them of it without compromising its integrity.

As an experiment, a core music education course, Foundations of Music Education, was offered over the ICN to 13 students at 4 off-campus sites from UNI in September of 1993, with some students at distances in excess of 150 miles from the university campus. Initial sentiment from the course teacher and students was positive enough to support running the more formidable Research Methodology in Music Education course during the Spring of 1994. Both courses used the same reference materials and maintained the same requirements as their on-campus counterparts. By this point, the prospect of using the ICN as a tool for broadcasting graduate coursework began to gain some currency. In April of 1994, the UNI School of Music Graduate Faculty voted in favor of placing MM coursework on the ICN in a three-year cycle of courses that included two four-week on-campus summer residency periods for those subjects that required extensive library resources. The original plan intended for the course cycle to conclude in July of 1996, leaving comprehensive examinations and final projects or theses to be finished by the end of the Fall 1996 semester.

Of the 12 courses required to satisfy minimum degree requirements, 8 will have been offered over the ICN. They include six music education courses and two style analysis subjects taught by the music theory division. Additionally, a music theory review course was also taught over the ICN as a remedial subject for those students who had difficulties with the departmental diagnostic examinations.

To date, four music faculty have taught on the network (two each from music education and music theory respectively), and a fifth music education specialist is expected to teach during this July. Over 40 music educators have taken one or more ICN classes, along with a score of graduate music students in performance, conducting, and composition from the on-campus program who registered for the styles analysis courses (required of all graduate music students regardless of major) when they were offered over the ICN. Seventeen music teachers who have taken ICN courses have been accepted into the Masters program since the Fall of 1994, with another two currently under consideration. Six of these students will likely be completing the existing three-year cycle this summer (another cycle is being proposed for Spring of 1997), along with two other music education graduate students who have commuted to UNI and taken some of their coursework via the ICN. Student enrollment per course in the ICN program has ranged from 8 to 34.

Of the four music faculty who have taught on the system, three would readily teach on it again, with the fourth faculty member likely to so do if he could teach a different course with fewer students than that which was delegated to him. Three of the faculty have used an electronic keyboard in class for teaching and demonstration purposes in at least one course. All have used the existing overhead camera projection system for displaying musical and textual information. Three faculty have used a CD player, with one faculty member also using an audio cassette recorder for playing musical examples. One faculty member has used the PowerPC resident in the UNI ICN classrooms and a Macintosh PowerBook for classroom instruction, with MIDI-based music applications. The same instructor used the system's access to the university's computer backbone for teaching how to negotiate Gopher, Archie, Veronica, Lynx, Usenet, electronic mail (now superseded by access to the World Wide Web), the campus library on-line catalog, and conference facilities. He also exploited the system's satellite uplink/downlink capabilities to team-teach between his students and a technology workshop in Indiana for two nights of the course, and taught the same course from ICN sites other than UNI.

Among ICN-based graduate music education students, there has been consistent appreciation for the technology, according to the teacher evaluations of faculty who have taught courses on the system. While none seek the ICN as a preference to live instruction, all seem appreciative of the convenience that taking classes at ICN sites (which has ranged from being located within the school they teach to a driving distance of an hour as a consequence of broadcast schedule conflicts at closer sites). So far, it appears by the number of accepted applications for graduate study and the likely completion of coursework by 8 students this summer (most of whom have taken every course in the three-year cycle without a break), that the concept of the ICN can attract a strong student who is willing to complete an extended course of study.

Graduate music students who did not have music education concentrations were not necessarily supportive of the ICN. In both of the style analysis courses, this population, which would normally have taken these subjects in a traditional classroom setting, was not satisfied with the kind of attention that it expected to receive. One problem that may have contributed to this perception was that these courses had the largest student enrollments, with 34 and 31 registrations respectively. In the first of the two style analysis offerings, there was an initial attendance of 19 students on campus and 17 students at off-campus ICN sites for a course that traditionally enrolled around 7 students. This relatively large on-campus population, coupled with the ICN teacher using a teaching model that was originally intended for fewer students while working on the ICN for the first time, made a hallmark of the ICN format–interactive instruction and learning–difficult. The latter issue was also a complaint of the off-campus student population, pointing to the need for either smaller class size or a revision of the teaching/learning model that would best work in the ICN setting. A similar criticism also surfaced for the second style analysis course. However, there was also a distinctively different set of attitudes between the music education and non-music education graduate student populations which was difficult to identify, but was clearly present. It may have been an historically elitist posture of the non-music education population toward the music education majors or a different set of expectations toward what and how learning was to occur among the music educators who were experienced public school teachers, but there was social incompatibility between the two groups.

All of the ICN teachers, including the instructor who taught the group of 11 music educators who came to campus in June of 1995 to complete the first of two four-week summer residency periods required in the degree program, praised this group highly. They remarked about the high level of motivation, interest, camaraderie, seriousness, and for the most part, performance of this students. As an instructor of four ICN courses in the program, this presenter found that the off-campus ICN population's work was generally of higher quality, more punctual in submission of assignments, less fraught with personality problems, and more committed to effective completion of coursework than the on-campus population. One reason for this outcome may have been that the off-campus ICN population consisted of experienced teachers who imposed upon themselves the same standards of work that they expected of their students.

An interesting phenomenon has occurred with the off-campus ICN students that might be referred to as a cohort effect. As participants in a new and potentially revolutionary mode of instruction, the off-campus students have tended to band together at their individual sites, driven by both their physical remoteness and the excitement of participating in an unusual learning environment. Some communicate through electronic mail or telephone between sites (as well as with the ICN teachers), including the sharing of assignment and degree program information.

Driven by a combination of necessity and a tradition of advanced planning, the ICN off-campus students expected the MM program to operate in an organized and timely fashion. For example, students (and the UNI Department of Continuing Education, which administers the ICN program) required a timeline of courses to which the School of Music was expected to adhere. The timeline had to be planned for a three-year period in order to include all course requirements. This process meant that forethought had to be given to the sequence of courses, school year and summer course scheduling including prospective course instructors, and any resources that would be required (course texts, interlibrary loan service, reference material acquisition, photocopied handouts, course syllabi) almost from the inception of the program.

In practice, changing teaching personnel caused by resignations and death affected course content and sequence. Discovery of music theory deficiencies among all music graduate student populations necessitated the last minute inclusion of a graduate music theory review course (which was broadcast on the ICN). Also there were some administrative challenges from a relatively large influx of on-campus and ICN students into what had been a small graduate program prior to the 1995 calendar year. Nevertheless, adaptability of UNI music faculty, flexibility in understanding by ICN students, and excellent support services from the university Department of Continuing Education kept the program moving forward without canceling courses that would have put graduate students way behind. The entire cycle of courses, with re-runs of the first two courses offered in 1993-94 when the ICN MM program was not officially established, is expected to be completed by the end of Fall 1996.

Technological problems with the ICN have been few, considering the youth of the network and some of the idiosyncratic resource needs for teaching music. The biggest annoyance has been the relatively poor quality of musical sound in the UNI ICN rooms. While the ICN as a system can certainly accommodate musical sound, it has not been designed with the particular demands of sound production that a professional musician would expect. When Iowa State University initiated some ICN-based instrumental music classes with rural high school students there had to be significant adjustment of microphone placement and sound levels by technical staff to produce a satisfactory musical outcome (Simonson, 1994). For reasons that are not entirely clear, similar adjustments seem to be required for generating acceptable musical sounds using either acoustical or electronic musical instruments at the UNI television site. Also, volume levels for playing CDs are low at the UNI site, requiring them to be increased, which then immediately leads to sound distortion, even though sound levels and quality are satisfactory at remote sites.

Approximately one class a semester is canceled because of sites not coming on-line, either because of scheduling errors or technical difficulties. Occasionally, a scheduled site will be preempted by other events (e.g. the Iowa Caucus, which is to be broadcast over the ICN during a scheduled class session of a music education course this semester, has forced the class site to be moved from its scheduled venue to another ICN location - fifteen miles away).

Visual information broadcast from the university computing system on the television monitors at all sites has been difficult to read. The compatibility problems associated with moving between the RGB computer signal and the NTSC format of the television monitor generates a lot of blurring and ghosting of alphanumeric characters when reading from the VAX editing screen–a problem when using Lynx or other non-graphic World Wide Web browsers.

Pedagogically, numerous challenges have surfaced during different faculty's teaching experiences. Lesson pacing and student-teacher or student-to-student interaction seem to be two major issues. Because of the tyranny of distance, off-campus students are heavily reliant on the audio-visual information they receive over the television monitor. Lengthy one-way communication can be deadly in this medium, no matter how well-intended or seemingly necessary. ICN students have extended lectures or student presentations wearing on the senses. When one course instructor scheduled student presentations throughout the semester on prescribed subjects with over 30 students in the class during two-hour broadcasts, ICN students expressed frustration at the monotony of endless presentations that consumed vast amounts of air time they felt would have better been spent learning from and interacting with the instructor.

Frequent question-and-answer tactics between students at the various ICN sites and the teacher have proven to be important to maintain student attention and interest. Although ICN students have been quite forthcoming and spontaneous with questions concerning lesson or course content, they have also been locked out by one significant technical limitation of the two-way communication system. When someone at a given site is on the air, no one (even the course instructor), can be heard until that individual releases the microphone lever that serves to place him or her on-screen. Seminar, lecture-demonstration, collaborative learning, and team-teaching methods have been used during the ICN MM program. The seminar approach is the most interactive, because students come to class already prepared to comment on their homework assignments, thus placing the teacher in the position of prompter or facilitator of group discussion. All of the other teaching approaches have to be used judiciously, with lecture-demonstration making use of different information media to maintain stimulation and focus, collaborative learning employing problem-solving and debate techniques extensively, and team-teaching incorporating intermittent question-and-answer time to maintain student interest.

Another pedagogical concern which has yet to be resolved is the broadcasting of copywritten material over the ICN. As yet, there is no legal policy statement regarding this matter, technically leaving ICN teachers vulnerable to litigation should publishers or record companies view the broadcasting of their products as violating copyright laws. Prevailing views on the illustration of copywritten material over the network range from no use to open use because the system is a narrowcast to audiences with educational motives.

Mounting the MM program has been heavily dependent on several departments and services around campus. The Department of Continuing Education and the School of Music have been critical in entrepreneuring and administering the program. The Center for Educational Technology, which also overseas the UNI ICN classrooms, has been invaluable for not only technical operation but teaching resources using technology. The university library has been critical in providing additional services specifically for the student population in all of the ICN graduate programs operating from campus. Periodic assistance from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts multimedia computer laboratory has been very helpful in loaning software and providing expertise with certain aspects of music technology.

From the broader perspective of formal assessment of the ICN as an effective instructional or learning tool for the MM program, there remain unanswered questions. One of the greatest concerns of UNI music faculty is whether or not students learning via the ICN are receiving a comparable level of instruction to on-campus students. There is suspicion that learning through the televised medium leads to more superficial treatment of subject matter by the instructor and therefore lesser comprehension of course content than in live instruction.

There is also some residual technophobia among some faculty that work in a profession where personal contact, particularly in graduate work and the music studio, is valued.

A review of the literature regarding learning assessment when using television for distance learning yields few sources, with those tending to focus more on teacher effectiveness in working with the medium than with what and how students learn from it (e.g., Schlosser & Anderson, 1993). The domain of interactive televised instruction, whether through an integrated system like the Iowa Communications Network or the more localized compressed video systems of many collegiate institutions seems to be too new to provide a baseline of information for learning assessment. Nevertheless, its challenges to the process of teaching, geographical convenience for distance learners, and opportunity to use information and music technology, provide intriguing prospects for music education. The ICN has certainly provided an opportunity to explore this instructional mode, thus maybe offering another tool for effective teaching and learning.