BEYOND CAI: MULTIMEDIA INTERACTIVE SOFTWARE FOR THE MUSIC EDUCATION CLASSROOM

Oedia M. Hatcher and Grace L. Ohlenbusch

Lynchburg College and University of Central Arkansas

hatcher@lynchburg.edu gohlen@mail.uca.edu

Over the past two decades numerous educational critics have urged action to improve the quality of teacher education programs. Throughout the history of music education in the United States, reform in education as a whole has been the driving force in improving the quality of music instruction in the public schools. Without the impetus of educational reform, many music educators might have been willing to settle for teaching methods lacking in reflective practice and unwilling to administer many of the newer methods of effective implementation. The ability of new teachers to incorporate technology use appropriately into instruction is dependent, in large part, on their pre – service education. Researchers in general pre – service education reform rank multimedia creation and presentation as the most important technological application to be used by teachers in contrast to a much lower ranking by those involved in the pre – service education of music educators (Ohlenbusch, 2001). In a survey of members of Texas Music Educators Association, Ohlenbusch (2001) found that the greatest use of technology as a teaching tool in the classroom was by the more experienced teachers. Teachers with less than five years of experience reported the lowest use of technology in their teaching, and those teachers with ten or more years of experience reported the highest use.

There is no longer a question as to whether technology will be used in schools; the question is how it will be used. Since teachers tend to use the methods by which they were taught, the responsibility for preparing the teachers of today is with the teacher preparation programs in colleges and universities. In a survey by the national Office of Technology Assessment (OTA, 1995), fifty percent of recent graduates surveyed reported that they prepared to teach with drill and practice, tutorials, games, and writing and publishing centers. Fewer than ten percent of those surveyed, however, felt they could use such formats as multimedia packages, electronic presentations, and collaborations over networks, or problem – solving software. In the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) report (1997), a recommendation was made that schools, colleges, and departments of education should have a vision and plan for technology that reinforces their conceptual model for teacher education. For example, the use of modern communications technology in carrying out its various functions and responsibilities should be established and explored by education programs. Music education professors could utilize e – mail and web pages for registration, advising, and course syllabi and assignments or perhaps model PowerPoint of HyperStudio presentations in their classroom lectures.

In this age of technology, it appears that additional learning skills and new learning tools will be necessary for the next generation of students and teachers. Technology is the tool that introduces new forms of collaborative and inquiry-based learning. Initial research indicates that technology can have a positive effect on student learning, particularly in higher – order thinking skills. A new set of standards should be mastered in digital learning environments in orders to prepare students with the skills they will need. Primarily students will need to develop multimedia literacy in order to understand the nuances of technology and form their own conclusions. Digital learning is “the educational approach that integrates technology, connectivity, content and human resources” (Year 3 Star Report, 2000, p. 7). When implemented correctly it gives students a firm foundation in all these essential skills by “building on the unique, dynamic characteristics of digital content to create productive and engaging learning environments” (Year 3 Star Repot, 2000 p. 7). Digital learning does not change the essential purposes of education by dramatically alters the options for inquiry, analysis, and expression: In a digital learning environment, emphasis is not place on single correct answers but rather on project – centered inquiries that prepare students to answer questions with additional supporting arguments. This type of digital learning environment changes the teacher’s role from provider of knowledge to facilitator while furnishing the framework, goals, and guidance to manage and encourage students as they pursue their own learning. In order for technology to be relevant and effective in undergraduate teacher education it must be readily accessible and fully integrated and modeled by college faculty to provide students with a variety of tools for teaching, learning, and introducing instructional strategies and processes using technology in the classroom (Knapp & Glenn, 1996).

An effective use of technology in the teacher preparation program is the incorporation of multimedia instruction programs into the field experience component of the curriculum. Typically, within a four – year undergraduate music education course of study, there is insufficient classroom contact time for pre – service teachers to observe, identify, develop, or practice music teaching strategies. One way to extend practical classroom experience may be through the use of instructional technology. The digital learning environment, or instructional technology is a systematic means of first identifying instructional problems and then formulation, implementing, assessing, and revising solutions to those problems.

The use of multimedia instruction technology has the potential to enrich the undergraduate field experience:

• Pre – service teachers will have the means to practice and review teaching techniques without time restraints imposed by class scheduling or teacher availability in the field experience situation.
• The available secondary school classes often do not neatly coincide with the undergraduate students’ class schedules.
• This technology can also be an effective vehicle for the purpose of providing practice and increasing automaticity for performance tasks related to teaching. Although teaching is a skill in which thinking is always required, certain aspects call for immediate response that is close to automatic. Burkett (2000) suggest that “future educators need to apply their newly acquired skills and techniques in a ‘theory – to – practice’ loop, thereby creating opportunities for immediate feedback and evaluation” (p. 4). Music education is one field where teachers are expected to perform multiple tasks automatically, and technology may enable them to practice and perfect some of these skills or tasks where a more traditional classroom using students, as test subjects, may not allow.
• When pre – service teachers travel to school sites to observe music classes, not every teaching situation is readily available for review. Technology – based field experience may be able to provide examples of situations that a pre – service teacher may not be able to observe.
• Pre – service teachers will have ready access to “true – life” teaching experiences on a repetitive basis. Repetitive basis is distinguished from the Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) drill and practice in that right and wrong answers in repetitive basis are remediated through discussion, analysis, criticism and practice and review.

The purpose of this research was to develop a practical means of designing and producing a series of teaching experiences and examples into a format exhibiting “exemplars” for use with pre – service instrumental teachers. In an attempt to “bridge the gap” between theory and practice of teaching, the researchers designed and assessed a multimedia computer – based model. As part of this research, assessment criteria with associated descriptions and guidelines were determined and selected for identifying examples widely recognized by experience music educators. Many assessment criteria with specific descriptives and delineatives for instrumental music instruction have been published and were available. For this study the following instruments were used as a blueprint for the creation of this music education model.

• The first criterion was developed by Frederisen (1993) and established as part of the Educational Testing Service Video Portfolio Project as well as the Student Teacher Video Cooperatives (Berg, 1997), focusing on the feasibility of using videotape for teacher assessment and to assess the qualities of video cooperatives. The criteria for assessing music teaching are divided into four sections that holistically reflect the teaching in music education classes: pedagogy, musical thinking, climate, and classroom management. Each of these four criteria is delineated by specific factors.
• The second criterion, The Art of Conducting (Hunsberger & Ernst, 1992) was used in examining the conducting component of this research. The criteria was originally created from ten years of concentrated evaluation and revision of the basic conducting curriculum at the Eastman School of Music to provide guidelines for teaching and evaluating young conductors. These criteria for assessing music conducting are divided into ten sections.

To identify and establish a basis for good exemplars in teaching instrumental music, a panel of six expert music educators reviewed and rated 87 video examples selected by the researchers based upon the assessment criteria to be used in this study. The expert were public and private school band directors with a minimum of ten years teaching experienced as instrumental music educators. The evaluation instrument used by the panel for evaluating the exemplars was a Likert – type rating scale as well as an inquiry for a prompt soliciting additional comments to make certain that each of the exemplars adheres to the established criteria and is effective in identifying specific factors in conducting and teaching in instrumental performance ensemble. The Likert – type rating scale used as an assessment model by the panel of experts was pilot – tested for its effectiveness in identifying specific characteristics of the components by music education graduate students from Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. The results from the panel of music experts were analyzed using and inter – rater reliability Cronbach’s Alpha Test from SPSS to select video exemplars that were used in the pre – service teacher computer model.

Hyper studio (1999) was used as the authoring tool to format and illustrate the model for this study. This model included a multimedia computer – based hypertext program (HTP) for accessing quick literature and QuickTime video examples to be analyzed by pre – service teachers. The Hypermedia program was designed to be flexible, providing varied feedback, and allowing the user to access other resources at the click of a button. For example, after viewing a video clip, the pre – service teacher was directed to select an answer from a variety of categories that best describes the example. Upon making a selection, the user was linked to another card that would either confirm the correctness o the answer and continue to progress the pre – service teacher through the program building on that knowledge or to begin a series of tutorial links to gu9ide the user to correctly evaluating the example. This computer – based learning (CBP) program required the pre – service teacher to exercise critical and reflective thinking skills (comprehension, synthesis, evaluation) through the implementation of protocol analysis for each teaching example with the use of text, audio and video formats. Video examples from experienced music educators were used to illustrate good and bad exemplars for teaching instrumental music and the text questions were derived from best practice examples from related research. These digital video (DV) examples were captured on a digital Canon Elura camera and using FireWire transported to an iMac computer. The authoring tool iMovie was used for transitions, editing, and compression of DV’s and the creation of still digital pictures using Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) to QuickTime video examples. The CBL program was administered to eight music education pre -service teachers from Shenandoah University using Macintosh computers to record comments and suggestions as to accessibility, content, appearance, and readability.

The program was designed to allow the pre – service teachers to begin the process of thinking like expert teachers. As the pre – service teachers worked through the CBL program, they were actively involved in analyzing, inferring, interpreting, and determining courses of action in different educational situations and teaching lessons encountered by instrumental music educators. The purpose of the CBL model was to encourage the pre – service teachers to think in multidimensional terms of requiring them to make demands on prior knowledge received through theoretically based classes (methods classes), observational experiences, and ensemble rehearsals. The CBL model did not represent linear interactivity (reactive pacing) only, but was complex enough to provide the pre – service teacher with several opportunities for revisiting the teaching example from different approaches requiring the user to manipulate components to achieve specific goals. The pre – service teacher viewed a series of computer simulations of classroom teaching scenarios, and the CBL model led the user to make decisions concerning the presentation. The questions were designed to enable the student to select from a variety of responses that lead to additional observations, inquiry and practice. This technique included numerous scenarios for examples, limitless access to revisit the same site or scenario, and the existence of multiple solutions providing an interactive teaching and learning style stimulating the user to make critical analyses of the teaching scenario presented. The study was complex enough to provide the pre – service teacher with several opportunities for revisiting the lesson from several different angles of inquiry rather than as a single solution to a query as found in many drill and skill programs. Although this model was not intended to be all – encompassing in that every possible teaching scenario was represented, it served as a prototype, a first step in providing enough exemplars to establish a foundation of teaching experiences and practice situations for pre – service teachers.