Abstract
Recent research indicates several areas in which traditional music courses
fail, blaming lack of proper assessment tools and an apparent reluctance to
using multimedia. It is argued that multimedia instructional materials and
systematic and well-designed assessments are necessary to, rather than
simply enhance instruction, especially as the time devoted to individual
courses shrinks and the amount of material to be covered grows. The
presentation examines evidence of the failure of traditional courses to
support learning, addresses possible reasons for this failure, and argues
that appropriate incorporation of a) multimedia instructional materials and
b) frequent assessment of learning throughout the duration of a course can
help combat this failure.
Course examples presented incorporate multiple instructional modes and media
in order to tap into students' learning-style strengths, use
multi-sensory/multimodal stimulation to facilitate understanding of
concepts, and present information in a multitude of relevant contexts. Such
design affords opportunities for students to develop intuition on the
subject at hand, using analogies, interactive demonstrations, games, etc.
In addition, the proposed course design fosters an active learning
environment, where students a) take responsibility for the success of a
course by supporting the work of their peers (individually graded
collaborative assignments; peer review) and receive immediate, constructive,
and detailed feedback (pretests; online communication; suggestions for
further study), b) have opportunities to learn through trial and error
(frequent practice assessments) and be rewarded (frequent graded
assessments), and c) can get motivated by being able to easily monitor their
progress and compare it to that of their fellow students. |
