Secondary General Music Methods Courseware Development:
A Collaboration¹

Interactive courseware, including text, graphics, animation, digital sound and video manipulations–all delivered through the internet–can enrich the learning environment offered to students. The journey toward creating these materials and learning how best to deliver them via the internet was a principle focus of this project, a creative instructor-student collaboration. It was important to engage the undergraduate students by involving each and every one of them in some component of the overall decision-making process and the creation of many of these materials. A few of the course requirements took advantage of this activity and the process itself acted as a learning resource/catalyst for students. However, responsibility for final versions of all multimedia materials rested solely with the instructor.

In teaching a Secondary General Music Methods course over several years, I decided to develop instructor-student based technology projects and place these and other course materials online. This decision was built on a strong desire by music education faculty to have undergraduate students gain cross-platform (Mac O/S and Windows 95) technology expertise. Music education students, as future teachers of music, were encouraged to gain these cross-platform skills through hands-on experiences. The need to facilitate email, grading, and discussion groups was also a strong focus throughout this project. The Music Technology Resource Lab at the School of Music at Ball State University is a cross-platform lab with Macintosh (system 7.5 and 8.0) and PC (Windows 95) computers, with both a Macintosh 9560 Server and a Windows NT Server.

Unlike presentation mediums such as PowerPoint, true multimedia materials need to include non-static visuals, connected sound (voice, sounds and music), and control over the content path by the learner. Most internet learning today has focused on text-plus-graphics delivery. While this will remain important, it needs to be paired with a more complete visual and aural experience. This is what ultimately makes multimedia so exciting for the learner: control over delivery and richer, more varied content. The utilization of sound via the internet has unlimited potential, and needs to be more fully explored by present and future music teachers. The ability to use technology to enhance the learning and teaching of music is important not only for our multi-faceted music culture, but other music cultures as well.

Work on this project began one semester before the course was scheduled. During this preparation time, the instructor was chosen as a "Teleplex Fellow." This experience enabled the instructor, in collaboration with Ball State University’s Teleplex instructional designers, to ascertain the appropriate applications including delivery software and models currently available on the internet. TopClass Lite, a downloadable version available at http://www.wbtsystems.com was chosen as the most appropriate delivery application. Sketches of multimedia materials were developed that were suitable for a general music methods course. Project descriptions were created, ready for development and beta-testing by students in the course. Hardware and software availability at the Music Technology Resource Lab was ascertained, including planned acquisitions for the semester that this course would run. Appropriate projects and timelines were established, and placed into a re-designed course syllabus.

Music education personal homepages with sound files, PowerPoint presentations, and a final project "18 Week Secondary General Music Curriculum"² were chosen as key projects for students. Cross-platform launching and delivery problems were addressed as they arose. Multimedia materials by the instructor were continuously refined, with TopClass facilitating much of the information delivery to and from students. Materials were refined for increased effectiveness and relevance to actual course goals and objectives.

Final student-instructor sessions focused on the usefulness of the online webcourse materials from both the students’ and instructors’ point of view. Interestingly, more and more student-led discussions centered on the importance of content, pacing, and sequencing of content materials rather than on delivery issues. Questions regarding the suitability of technology in specific situations and for particular tasks were discussed at length. These discussions were among the course highlights, as students and instructor critically examined the pros and cons of technology within future music teaching and learning situations. Plans were developed to upgrade and improve portions of these materials as deemed necessary. The process, as well as some of the products of this collaborative project, were a very realistic way to empower students as they determine ways that technology can truly enhance the teaching and learning process.

Claris HomePage (Mac)

FrontPage (PC)

PageMill (Mac or PC)

Netscape Gold 3.x or Communicator 4.x (Mac or PC)

Visual Web (PC)

WebAuthor (PC)

ILINC: (available at http://www.ilinc.com ) currently used by SUNY and many others, works as a companion to TopClass. Distance learning application that combines desktop videoconferencing, synchronized web browsing, application sharing, scaleable class size, multimedia authoring tools, and resource management tools.

Web Course In A Box: an easy to use, inexpensive set of templates and organizer.

Ball State University: currently uses inQsit, Web File Manager, and Course Wizard. Excellent information on publishing web pages is available at: http://www.bsu.edu/ucs/epubs/tut/webtitle.html and at http://www.bsu.edu/ucs/epubs/bl/

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1. Methods Course URL: http://www.edt.bsu.edu/topclass/ (password controlled); Dr. McAllister¹s Home Page: http://www.bsu.edu/cfa/music/faculty/pmcallister.html

2. visit http://members.iquest.net/~pds/personal/353/index.html for undergraduate student example