In an effort to be more in step with the times, I agreed to teach my university music appreciation course in an Interactive Television format. Our Department of Distance Learning required that I learn to use Powerpoint and develop a series of computer slide presentations to enhance the quality of the live broadcasts. The course, Music 110: Music in Society, was offered as an ITV course last semester … to mixed reviews. Using an exit survey, student comments, grade results, and my own observations as the basis for this analysis, my paper will (1) examine the benefits that resulted from the interactive format; (2) address several of the problems that also arose; and (3) demonstrate the variable use and effectiveness of the computer slide presentations designed for this course.

Emanating from a small studio classroom, the course was broadcast live to an overflow room on campus and was also sent by cable hook-up to the university residence halls. Total enrollment numbered about 200, with twenty-five students in the studio classroom and the balance registered for the overflow room. This remote classroom was linked with my small section by two-way audio, but only one-way video. That is, the students could see and hear me, and ask questions of me by a telephone hook-up, but I could not see the remote classroom.

At the outset, I believed that the success of the broadcast would depend in large part upon the active participation and faithful attendance of those students meeting with me in the small classroom. For this reason, I chose to make attendance mandatory for those students, but entirely optional for all others. Hoping to fill the small section with students seeking a more personal classroom setting, I gave all students the opportunity to switch sections, but only one such change was made. Although students who registered for the small classroom were required to be present for lectures, the other students could view the lecture in a variety of ways. They could watch the lecture on a large-screen monitor in the auditorium used as the overflow room, or view it on television from their residence hall rooms. Alternately, if the 8 a.m. class time was too early, students could videotape the lectures and watch them at a more convenient time. Because the university taped all lectures and placed copies in the media resources center, any student who missed a lecture still had access to a videotape of that lecture.

In general, students preferred the ITV setting over that of the traditional classroom, with scheduling flexibility being cited as the chief reason. An exit survey revealed that a narrow majority of students (53%), if presented with the choice of taking the course in the standard classroom format or the ITV format, would elect the latter. 15% of the students surveyed had no opinion, while 32% said that they would elect the traditional classroom format. The new ITV format certainly offered students far greater scheduling flexibility. They could "attend" the class in a variety of ways, and at their own leisure. Even if a student missed class due to illness or an emergency, he or she could view the videotaped lecture on reserve in our library. A number of students commented that the ITV format was especially valuable, because of the early hour at which the class was offered. One student, who said he had difficulty waking up for 8 a.m. classes, really appreciated the format. He told me that he regularly videotaped the class and looked forward to watching the lectures at 10 a.m., over his morning coffee. The ITV format offered students great flexibility in scheduling their days, and they enjoyed that flexibility.

ITV is also being applauded by university administrators, and some students, as a solution to closed class sections. Students have been frustrated by the increasing number of general education classes that fill up early during the registration period, thereby locking them out of lower-level courses required for their degree programs. With a single lecture, an instructor can reach multiple remote classrooms, and hundreds of students. In the fall of 1997, I helped to organize another music appreciation course, also offered in the ITV format. The class was simultaneously broadcast to two remote, but on-campus locations, each of which accommodated over 300 students. I wonder whether this design, however, is still "interactive" television. This strategy might ease registration problems and enable instructors to reach more students with fewer in-class hours, but these large classes effectively minimize any possible interaction with the instructor.

While the ITV design offers a variety of benefits, my own experience has suggested some serious problems as well. The most alarming of these was very low exam scores. While the grades of those in the studio classroom were quite respectable, the grades of students registered for the remote classroom were the worst that I have ever seen. A comparison of the final course grades for each section reveals a striking difference:

Whereas 68% of those in the studio classroom earned an "A" or a "B," only 31% of the students in the remote section received a comparable grade. Only 8% of the students in the small classroom earned a grade below a "C," while 32% of those registered in the remote classroom received a similar grade. The most surprising of these statistics, however, was the percentage of withdrawals: 19% in the remote classroom. Withdrawals were up significantly from the previous two semesters, when they accounted for only 4.3 percent of the total enrollment.

What caused the low grades and the high percentage of withdrawals in the remote classroom? Poor attendance seems to be a distinct possibility. Although both sections received the same lectures and were given the same exams, students meeting with the instructor in the ITV classroom, where attendance was required, scored far better than their classmates who were bound by no such requirement. Of the 172 students registered in the remote classroom, only about 20-25% regularly chose to view the lecture from that venue. Because students in this section had several options for viewing lectures, however, it is quite difficult to gauge attendance patterns. One question on the exit survey asked, "How often did you miss class entirely (i.e., didn't watch it in-person, on TV, or on videotape)?" In response to this question, 86% of those in the remote classroom claimed that they missed class no more than four of the twenty-seven class periods. If students viewed the class as regularly as these statistics seem to indicate, then attendance may not have been the chief cause of the low grades. (It should be noted that the exit survey was only given to those who took the final exam, it was not given to the 19% who withdrew from the course.)

How, I wondered, did students who were doing below-average work answer that same question? Of the students who indicated that their grade going into the final was below a "C," only 71% reported that they missed class no more than four times. Even this percentage, though lower than the 84% reported by the class as a whole, was much higher than I would have expected. Were those students who had earned lower grades more disillusioned with the ITV format than the rest of the class? The answer is yes, but not seriously so. Whereas 53% of the entire class, if given the choice, would again choose to take this course in the ITV format, only 39% of those earning below-average grades would elect that format.

The statistics seem to indicate that poor attendance was at least partially responsible for the low grades. On the exit surveys, a number of students stated that they would have attended more lectures if the course had been offered in a traditional classroom setting. As the following student observations reveal, many felt that this technology was a mixed blessing. One student said, "The experience was rewarding, but watching from home perpetuates laziness." Another commented, "While the interactive setting was a good idea, I think that it encouraged more [students] to skip." Still other students felt that this technology had undermined the traditional relationship between the instructor and the students. As some of these comments suggest, motivation seems to be a critical issue. While the ITV format provides more freedom and flexibility for the student, it also requires added student responsibility. Along with the freedom to tape a lecture and watch it at a later date, comes a new kind of responsibility which requires greater self-motivation. A couple of students, who were forced to withdraw from the course because of very low grades, told me that they had taped all the lectures, but had procrastinated to such an extent that they were forced to watch four weeks of lectures in a single day. Even more disturbing are reports that some students, when viewing videotapes of my lectures, fast-forwarded through the musical examples, since they were interested only in the content of the computer slide show--namely, the material most likely to appear on exams.

While I have heard of some very successful ITV courses for more advanced students, usually in small, very interactive settings, I am concerned about whether ITV courses are well-suited for many of our freshmen and sophomores. Disinterest and lack of motivation are already problems in my traditional classrooms, and it appears that the ITV format may exacerbate those existing problems, especially when it entails very large and impersonal classes. There is an energy in a traditional classroom that seems difficult or impossible to achieve in an ITV setting. Even students in my studio classroom seemed distant and unresponsive, unwilling to ask questions or otherwise contribute to the class. There was little sense of community, the sort that is often established in small traditional classrooms. The students’ reticence was understandable, since our class was literally on display for the entire campus to see.

This lack of community, which I witnessed in both the studio and remote classrooms, seems clearly related to an issue of major import for many colleges and universities--namely, falling retention rates. Retention is a major concern among our administrators, one of whom recently observed that the solution to declining retention rates is to make students feel more "connected" to the university. Despite the fact that I regularly encouraged students to stop by my office, visit the small ITV classroom, send me e-mail, and bring their essays for my commentary, I feel that my course did very little to make students feel more connected to their academic environment. I believe that a small number of my students used distance learning to the best possible advantage, but I also fear that ITV served to distance students who were already quite distant from the learning process.

While I’ve grown rather disillusioned with Interactive Television, at least when employed on-campus with very large sections, I’ve become completely enamored of computer slide presentations. My experimentation with Powerpoint software has surely been the most successful facet of my introduction to current technology. My students, too, have been quite enthusiastic about this technology. When asked, in the exit survey, whether the computer slide presentations were "effective, appropriate, and helpful as a learning tool," 86% of the class responded that they were either helpful or very helpful. Only 1% felt that they were not helpful, while the remaining 13% had no opinion. Indeed, this was the only question on the survey that yielded such a strong consensus.

I have used transparencies for a number of years, and have always been frustrated when students proceed to copy the entire page, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I’m still elaborating upon the first bulleted item. Of course, I have learned to use slips of paper to conceal those items not yet under discussion, but this has always struck me as a very calculated and sometimes even confrontational tactic. For these reasons, I welcome a technology that enables me to build a slide one line at a time, satisfying not only my need for control but also subtly directing students’ attention to the topic currently under discussion.

Slides that build, thereby adding successive bits of information, are very well-suited for outlining musical form. Pedagogically, this type of slide has been my most successful new tool in teaching musical organization. I have adapted many of the outlines in our textbook, Kamien’s Music: An Appreciation, to the slide format. By using slides that build, a presentation can guide students through both simple and complex musical forms, silently commenting upon what the students are hearing at any particular moment, without the instructor having to talk over the music. Although I prefer talking about musical form from left to right, rather than from top to bottom, the slide format generally predisposes one to address form in a vertical, rather than horizontal manner. As I will demonstrate, though, listening road maps, as I like to call them, can be either horizontal or vertical in conception, though some pieces almost seem to demand a horizontal analysis. Perhaps the best way to illustrate this point is to show several of my road map designs.

Works like Joplin’s "Maple Leaf Rag" and Sousa’s "Stars and Stripes Forever," with their multiple strains, lend themselves well to a vertical map, with each successive bullet identifying new or repeated strains, and perhaps elaborating on the character, volume, or timbre of those strains. Some works, like the first movement of Vivaldi’s La Primavera, can be a composite of vertical and horizontal analysis. For example, the alternation between Ritornello and Solo sections can be listed vertically in a series of bullets, while the binary form of the opening ritornello can be shown horizontally, using the mouse to point to successive musical ideas. Sometimes only a horizontal road map will enable the instructor to convey the subtleties of the music. In teaching Bach’s "Little" Organ Fugue in G minor, for example, I want students to comprehend not only the horizontal aspect of the work, but also the vertical aspect--the fact that there are four voices in different registers, sometimes related by imitation. My listening map consists of three successive slides, each read from left to right, and each featuring both a horizontal and vertical component. The first slide, for example, depicts only the fugue’s exposition; it shows each entry of the subject and indicates whether a voice is active or resting. The other slides map out the balance of the fugue, showing the remaining subject entries, the placement of episodes, and activity or inactivity on the part of each voice. In diagramming the first movement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, I again elected to use a horizontal outline, with each of four successive slides describing the exposition, development, recapitulation, and coda.

The foregoing examples suggest a variety of ways to organize listening road maps. Outlines such as these not only serve to explicate formal organization, but also help to increase student attentiveness. In my experience, one other application of computer slides has proved pedagogically especially helpful. In teaching art songs with foreign texts, as for example, Schubert’s "Erlk"nig," slides can be used to give students a line-by-line translation. Because an understanding of the relationship between the text, on the one hand, and the melody and accompaniment, on the other, is critical to an appreciation of art songs, line-by-line translations help students to better comprehend the emotional import of a song.

Within a span of only two months, I became a very enthusiastic proponent of computer slide presentations, convinced that they can be a very useful pedagogical tool in teaching music appreciation. Whether delineating musical organization, providing a running translation of the text, or simply outlining topics, slide presentations not only facilitate the students’ understanding of the material, but also seem to keep the students more actively engaged during the lecture. My experiment with current technology entailed a second component, Interactive Television. As implemented in my course, the ITV format provided students a variety of benefits, the most important of which was greater flexibility in scheduling. For me, however, this benefit was outweighed by its adverse effects … an unprecedented number of withdrawals, extremely low grades, as well as an erosion of a sense of classroom community. Despite these problems, my experiment with ITV and Powerpoint has been both edifying and rewarding.