Teaching Jazz Appreciation
Online: An Examination of Course
Design and Online Moderating Techniques
Deborah Elizabeth Cohen
deborahc@nova.edu
Development and delivery of an online jazz appreciation course results in lessons regarding online moderating, use of web resources and instructional design for online courses.
Keywords: on Ð line instruction, instructional design, online moderating, distance education, distance teacher, faculty development, teaching styles, Usability Testing, jazz education, constructivism.
Last year at Nova Southeastern University, as part of the curriculum for my doctoral studies in the Computer Technology in Education program, I developed and taught an online course in Jazz Appreciation. Fellow doctoral students participated in my course, reciprocating for my having been a guinea pig in theirs. I had moderated online previously and though it had resulted in some valuable interchange, I had not been entirely comfortable with the experience. I had felt unnerved by the lack of visible signs of student reaction and in particular, with a near silence that had ensued during the last week of the course despite assignments being due. The interim provided me with time to consider how experience might be improved.
Because of the number of unresolved question regarding the results of my actions in my first online class, I felt a strong need for usability testing my next time around. Usability tests are often employed to help software designers determine how their products can be improved (Sheiderman, 1998). They reveal a lot about how users respond to a product and provide the designer with an opportunity to see it in a completely different light. Unlike in the classroom, where the reactions of oneÕs students are immediate, student reactions are invisible online. As I had predicted, a usability test (a questionnaire that I designed including questions bout everything) went a long way towards letting me now how the students had responded to different aspects of the course. Others who feel the need for more feedback about their online course might want to consider developing and using such an instrument.
In the interim between the two courses, I also became aware of a source, Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators (G. Collison, B. Elbaum, S. Haavind, R. Tinker, 2000) that I planned to rely upon for guidance in responding to my students. Teaching online requires online facilitation techniques. Additionally it is a very textual endeavor, both in terms of the writing than one does and the necessity of responding to the writing of others. Facilitating Online Learning provides comprehensive strategies for facilitation based upon textual analysis, and I felt much more comfortable armed with this support.
After having chosen my topic for this course, Jazz Appreciation, I became excited by the challenge of designing the course for an online learning medium. I knew that the availability of excellent jazz education resources on the web would make it an adventure for students. I also eagerly anticipated teaching again. As an instructional designer for many years, I was used to designing courses that would go on to live a life of their own Ð with students and without me. Designing for an online class offered the opportunity to create an experience for the student in which I as the instructor could share.
The next thing I decided to do was to relax. I realized that my expectations had been a major part of the problem the first time IÕd moderated online. I had expected that teaching online would feel the same as teaching in the classroom, and it just doesnÕt. Now that I knew more about teaching online, I knew that at worst, lack of response was to be expected, and at best that students would be responding on their own timetables rather than instantaneously aw we come to expect when teaching in the classroom.
The usability test both confirmed the success of the course and allowed me to see as an online instructor what worked and what didnÕt. With the success of this Jazz appreciation class, I have concluded that strategies for teaching a successful online course combine use of instructional design techniques that are applicable to the online learning environment, providing access to excellent resources, and knowledge of best practices in moderating online asynchronous conferences.
This course was delivered entirely through Coldfusion forums (electronic bulletin boards) with hyperlinks. After designing the basic structure of the course and locating online resources, the first step in teaching this course was to recruit students with an online course synopsis. The next communication, available on the first day of the class was a course syllabus and a request for students to sign in introducing themselves and their personal objectives for the course. The first assignment was to listen to an hour of jazz (several web sites were suggested) and to select anything (any performer, composer, lyricist, instrument) for further research and respond to the bulleting board with what they had listened to and what they planned to pursue for their research. Next they surveyed and compiled websites that would be potential sources for their research and posted about these. After that they did their research and created a posting about that they had learned, including references for others to listen to. Next they responded to some elseÕs posting, finding commonalties with their own research if possible. Last, the completed a questionnaire, the previously discussed usability test.
As the course progressed, I added further topics for discussion in response to statements made by the participants when appropriate. Additional threads I added for student comment included such topics as Òwhat has contribute to the longevity of jazz?Ó, ÒWhy has jazz had unsteady popularityÓ, and Òwhat is your personal style preference?Ó.
For each assignment, I estimated how long the task should take and included this estimate with the task description. It is easy to over Ð assign work with online classes, and I wanted to avoid this common problem. The usability test at the end helped me to verify that my assignment time estimates had been pretty accurate Ð though students found themselves spending more time listening to music just because they enjoyed it.
Instructional design is a discipline dedicated to understanding and improving the process of instruction; the job of the instructional designer is to create a product analogous to a blueprint for that the instruction should be like. Traditionally the instructional design process includes the following steps (Lin, Bransford, Hmelo, Kantor, Hickey, Secules, Petrosino, Goldman, and the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1996):
This approach as applied traditionally is generally carried out apart from the learners who will be taking the instruction and far in advance of its implementation. When applied to online class, instructional design takes place not only prior to the class but during the class in response to learnersÕ participation. Instructional design as traditionally practiced is limited by its isolation from learners. Instructional design for online classes remove these barriers.
The traditional instructional design process is also usually implemented with the assumption that someone beside the learner generally whoever has assigned the instructional designer to the project, is making the judgment about what learners need to learn. In many online courses, students, too, take part in determining learning objectives.
The environment in an online course is different than the traditional one in which the instructional designer generally operates. As can be seen from the description above, traditional instructional design is generally delivered in a predetermined manner, before the educational event and in isolation from the student. There is also an assumption that there is a body of knowledge that the learner must absorb, and that the instruction that is developed will be the means through which the knowledge is transferred.
In contrast, online best practice generally concurs that the ability to put the learner at the center of his or her own learning experience (also known as constructivism) is one of online learningÕs strong suits. This implies that the student as well as the instructional designer/instructor contributes to determining his or her own learning objectives. Rather than viewing the learner as an empty vessel to be filled, constructivist teaching philosophies view the learner as a person embarking upon a voyage of learning discovery (Wilson, 1996). The role of the instructor/instructional designer in this environment thus becomes that of aiding in this process of discovery. One way to do this is through making excellent materials available to students either through providing them on a website of making them accessible through hyperlinks as I did in this course. Another is by designing activities that will provide the learner with helpful structures that will not impede growth. Both of these activities occur prior to the course actually occurring. Another way to help the student move rapidly in constructing a knowledge base is by providing feedback during the course. I did this primarily through asynchronous forums in this course.
Instructional design for the online environment offers the opportunity to be more flexile and customized to the needs of the students taking the class than the traditional instructional design environment where instructional design decisions are totally predetermined. In fairness, when possible, the responsible instructional designer in a traditional situation will try to gather as much data as possible about the potential users. For one reason or another, however, this approach is often very limited. Creating instruction traditionally (prior to its implementation and separately from learners) rather than in partial collaboration with them as in the online situation is by its nature an isolated process. By contrast, the online instructor/instructional designer can respond in a timely manner to the needs of the students, putting structures in place in the forum to facilitate the movement of the discussion along avenues directed by the learners.
Instructional design for the online environment thus offers the best of both worlds: the ability to thoughtfully create an exciting learning environment for students that can be used repeatedly and the ability to customize it to a specific group process and individual learning needs.
Online resources are critical for online classes. For a music appreciation course such as this one, online resources take full advantage of the webÕs ability to deliver audio and other multimedia. Such resources can be provided as part of the class, or students can be directed to recommended web sites. In this class, links to recommended websites were provided, and students were expected to refine their explorations through independent searching. Fortunately there are many fine Jazz web sites on the web.
This class provided links to various web radio stations, lyrics web sties, and links to several web sites with jazz audio clips. These included the web site of the International Association for Jazz Educators (2001) which includes audio clips from the Verve Music Group and NPR Jazz, the Basic Jazz Record Library (2002). The PBS Ken Burns Jazz web site (n.d.) contains area called Music 101 in the Jazz Lounge which contains much of use to beginning jazz students including examples of improvisation, melody, harmony, rhythm, notation and instruments and an area with samples of different styles including New Orleans, Swing, Bebop, Cool Jazz, Hard Bob, Free Jazz, Fusion. These web resources proved very useful to the students in this course.
As mentioned previously, the delivery of this course was through asynchronous forums. Asynchronous forums provide a terrific vehicle for students to share about intense experiences they are having on their own. (Discovering artist like Marianne Williamson and Thelonious Monk turned out to be such experiences for my students). They also provide a wonderful means for the instructor to provide information and encouragement in response to the postings students have made, informing them of additional resources and encouraging them in their individual endeavors in a shared forum accessible to all of the learners. Through these means, students can learn from each other and learn from the responses made to others in addition to their own communications to and from the instructor.
Best practice in moderating a course of this kind, which relies heavily on asynchronous forums, involves spending a lot of time with the studentsÕ communications and on communicating oneself. StudentsÕ posting must be carefully read, and consideration must be given to how best to communicate to move the asynchronous discussion towards a fruitful direction (G. Collison, B. Elbaum, S. Haavind, R. Tinker, 2000). For some, online facilitating techniques will come intuitively after adjusting to online moderating, while for others these skills will need to me methodically acquired. This is labor intensive work but work that I am convinced must be don if the forums are to be high quality.
The jury is still out on how effective asynchronous communications are for transforming ideas and teaching higher thinking skills (Garrison, Aderson & Archer, 2001). It is indisputable, however, that forums this kind provide excellent mechanism for the sharing of knowledge both from instructor to student and from student to student.
It was very gratifying to teach this course, to watch the progress students made in acquiring musical knowledge Ð and to know that they truly were appreciating the music and that it was making a difference in their lives. Music appreciation is a fertile field for pedagogy of this kind for several reasons. Music and information about music exists in abundance on the web. Also, listening to music on oneÕs own is an experience that lends to itself well to independent study. Having a forum in which to share listening experiences provides a good balance to the solitary activity of listening Ð and a potentially enlightening one. Communication asynchronously, the musically knowledgeable instructor will find it easy and rewarding to help the student build a knowledge base by point him or her in a direction furthering his or her interests.
Deborah Elizabeth Cohen is currently completing her doctoral course work in the Computing in Technology program at Nova Southeastern University. She is also an amateur jazz vocalist, and her love for music has manifested in the development of several computer based music course. A nationally award wining television producer, she has worked distance education for nearly 20 years and administered an authored with an early CBT system. She has worked as an Instructional Designer, Project Manager, and Creative Writer adapting graduate courses for delivery via CDROM and the Internet and has coached instructors in their transition to online teaching. She lives in Portland, Oregon and can be reached at deborahc@nova.edu.