February 2003Virtual Schubert: the Teaching of Music from a Distance

Virtual Schubert:the Teaching of Music from a Distance

Sharon, A.1, Loya, S. 1,Epstein, A.2, Mermelshtein,B.2, Perl, B.1and Klemes,J.2

Department of Literature and the Arts1 and the Center of Technology in Distance Learning2

The Open University of Israel, Israel

E-mail:

Abstract:The teaching of academic music courses from a distance has unique limitations, mainly due to the lack of direct interaction between the student and the teacher. In order to overcome some of these limitations, novel instructional multimedia technologies can beimplementedin the learning process. Here we describe an educational CD-ROM on the subject of Schubert’sLieder,which was developed for students ofmusic at the Open University of Israel. The CD-ROM contains various multimedia components, such as text with hyperlinks, music scores, music sound and live performance on video. The CD-ROM enables the student to study the material in a non-linear way while being exposed to the multimedia instructional components.In addition, an instructional Internet site complements the CD-ROM. The advantages of integrating multimedia into music distance learning courses and the students' response to it are discussed.

Introduction

The Open University of Israel (OUI) offers its students 9 academic courses in music appreciation and music history. All are distance courses, based mainly on the traditional model of distance teaching at the OUI, e.g., learning from printed study-units or books, 3-6 face to face tutorials, and assignments which are mailed to an instructor who grades them. The music courses are accompanied by a set of analog cassette recordings of musical selectionsand sometimes also video programs. However, over many years of teaching, it became clear to the academic instruction staff that teaching topics in music from a distance involves major difficulties andlimitations, and thecommon model of distance teaching is inadequate for most music courses. The main difficulty stems from the fact that music instruction requires a high degree of interaction between the student, the teacher and the learning material, while traditional distance teaching enables only a limited degree of interaction and feedback. Moreover, the linear structure of a printed music course lacks the essential synchronizationbetween the various components of music instruction, such as notereading, music demonstrations and auralinterpretation. The student, whose knowledge of music theory may belimited, needs to read the text, locate the musical sample on the audio tape, view the scores, and in the case of vocal music -read thetranslation of the libretto or the text, while listening to the music. When the learning material is provided in a printed book, moving from one component to another can be confusing, and the student often loses the logical track that links them.These limitations raise the question of whether teaching academic courses in music from a distance is at all possible (Isaacson, 2001). The intensive integration of the Internet into distance learning courses in recent years has provided new options in music education (Brandon,1999;Isaacson, 2001;Clifford, 1999), although many multimedia components in a music course require Internet 2 or fiber-optic networks.

The new approach for music teaching through distance learning

The course "Music at First Sight" is one of the courses in the music program of the OUI (Music at First Sight, 1990). It is an introductory course, intended for students with a very basic background in music theory and practice or none at all. The major theme of the course is music appreciation, and one of the course topics is Schubert's Lieder. In a face-to-face series of lectures on this subject, the students listen to recordings selected by their instructor while following the Lieder score, interpret the musictogether with the instructor, and exchange views with the instructor and their classmates. Some of these activities require prior knowledge,which can be acquiredat the university library.

In order to provide these elements in a distance learning music course, we have developed a multimedia CD-ROM, in which the musical and instructional components are tightly combined.At the heart of this instructional software lies an in-depth look at four of Schubert's most famous Lieder, including digitized-videoperformances (fig.1), a synchronized display of musical notes (fig. 2), a number of interactive tasks, and numerous visual and audio examples. These features serve to place the four analyzed songs into their musical, aesthetic, generic, biographic, historic and cultural contexts. An interactive hyperlinked glossary is available throughout as a useful aid, as well as an informative and instructive section in its own right. For those wishing to broaden their horizons, there are numerous comments, references and further discussions throughout.

The contents of the software

The software includes the following components:

  • Scoreof the four Lieder:

- Die Forelle (The Trout)

- Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree)

- Gretchen am Spinnrade (Gretchen at the Spinning-wheel)

- Erlkönig (The Earl-King)

  • text in German and translation into Hebrew of the four Lieder
  • Performance of the four Lieder on video (music)
  • Musical analysis of the four Lieder (analysis)
  • History of the Lied (genre)
  • Schubert'sVienna (historical background)
  • The life and works of Franz Schubert and the poets (biography)
  • Glossary
  • Illustrations

Figure1:Performance of Schubert's LiedDie Forelleby Shosh Lagil (soprano) and Revital Hahamov (piano)

Students' use of the software

To navigate within the software, there are several entry options:

  • From the opening page (which includes chapter headings).
  • From the detailed menu (which opens at the corner of the screen upon mouse point).
  • From the partial menu (which is at the top of the screen and includes only the 5 main chapters).
  • From the software map (which shows the tree of all chapters and sections).

Music can be heard either through the main links located at the bottom of the screen, or through links which appear in the body of the text.

The students can listen to the songs in three different ways:

  • On video (featuring the actual performers) with subtitles of the translated text. The student can control the video by running it forward, backward, pausing or stopping the action.
  • While following the score, guided by a synchronized cursor.
  • While reading the text, in both the original language and in translation on the same page, guided by a cursor which follows the music.

In the body of the text students are directed to additional sources of information:

  • Musical terms are linked to the glossary
  • The icon opens a small window with notes or additional information
  • The icon plays short musical examples
  • The icon plays short musical examples while showing a cursor-guided or otherwise marked score
  • The icon plays short musical examples from the songs while showing acursor-guided bi-lingual text.
  • The icon opens the video performance of a song
  • The icon (or a specially marked text) links to another section related to the topic
  • The icon directs the student to perform some sort of activity
  • The icon gives information about the source of pictures in the software
  • The icon enlarges the fonts of the text, for more convenient reading
  • The icon enables to print the texts of the software

Students can navigate freely between the different topics and explore the course material, according to theirindividual learning styles. As a result, each student can determine the order of the instructional material and the pace at which it is learned. For example, some students will prefer first to be acquainted with the historical background of Schubert's period. Others will choose to begin with a video performance of one of the Lieder, while following the text of the song, in the original Germanand intranslation.An important advantage of the software is the possibility of listening to a Liedwhile following a cursor which"runs" over the notes, synchronized with the music. This enables students who lack basic background in music theory and practice, mainly in reading music, to follow the score without difficulty, as shown in fig 2.

Figure 2:A screen from the software demonstrating notes witha moving cursor.

A common problem faced by music teachers in colleges and universities, mainly in introductory courses, is the diversity of basic music theory knowledge of the student population (Clifford, 1999). The detailed glossary of musical terms provided in the software enables the students to become familiar with musical terms which were previously not known to them. Moreover, many of the terms in the glossary also include musical demonstrations, which are assumed by a lecturer in a face-to-face lecture to be known to the students.

Students' evaluation of the CD-ROM

During the Fall 2002 semester, the CD-Rom was given to 17 students for a preliminary trial. They were asked to respond to a short questionnaireevaluating their learning process using the educational software. The results were as follows:

  • Most of the students (11) needed to invest less time in learning the materialwhen using the educational software than they usually needed to investwhen using the combination of book and cassettes.
  • Most of the students (16) did not have any technical problems when activating the CD-ROM once their PC was adapted to its requirements.
  • Most of the students (14) felt comfortable reading the texts from the screen.
  • Most of the students (14) used the glossary, mainly through the hyperlinks in the text, and found it very helpful.
  • Most of the students (13) said they would be glad to have more units on CR-ROM than on books and cassettes, or as a combination of educational software and printed material.
  • The students used diversity of ways for navigating in the software.
  • Some students expressed the wish to be able to work with several screens simultaneously.
  • Most of the students appreciated the combined text, musical notes and music, the live performance, the quality of sound and the richness of the information included.
  • Some students saw the need to study at the computer as a fault, others viewed it as an advantage which enabled them to study from afar.

Next semester, a more thorough and scientific survey will be performed by the Department of Evaluation and Instruction at the OUI.

Additional instructional technologies- An internet site

Another device for the distance teaching of academic courses used at the Open University of Israel is an internet site created for each course, including "Music at First Sight". From the home-page of the site, students can link to pages developed according to the specific needs of the course. In teaching music from a distance, the internet site is extremely helpful, especially to those students who have little or no previous musical knowledge. On the site they can find:

  • A forum where they can ask questions, discuss problems they encountered during the learning process, share ideas, discuss topics related to the course material, recommend an article or an internet site, etc.
  • A glossary which includes all the musical terms mentioned in the written material of the course, with demonstrations through musical notes and sound (see Figure 3).
  • Additional materials which include pictures, musical notes and recordings, with all musical terms linked to the glossary (see Figure 4).
  • Links to recommended internet sites.
  • A students’ guide, to help students cope with the unique problems of learning music from a distance.

Figure 3: A glossary item which includes hypertext, music notes and midi sound.

Figure 4: A segment from an internet page which includes text, hypertext, music notes and sound recording.

The interaction between the tutor and the students takes place mainly through the internet site. Students submit their assignments through the site, and receive feedback and corrections from the tutor in the same way; grades are automatically entered into their records.

Summary - comparison of music teaching methods

Face-to-Face / Distance learning: based on printed books / Distance learning:
Multimedia based
Method of learning / Synchronous / Asynchronous / Asynchronous
Venue of learning / Lecture hall / Any place / Any place (equipped with a computer)
Interaction with other students and the instructor / Direct / Indirect / Indirect
Synchronization of textual and musical components / High / Low / High
Linearity of learning / Linear / Mostly linear / Non-linear
Availability of learning material / Only during lectures and from lecture notes / permanently available / permanently available
Enrichment resources / Students need to find additional resources independently (e.g., in the library or on the Internet) / Students need to find more resources independently (e.g., in the library or on the Internet) / Easy to access - web and other resources may be accessed directly from the CD ROM or are included on the CD ROM itself
Previous knowledge / Assumes that all students have similar prior knowledge / Assumes that all students have similar prior knowledge / Directed to students with different prior knowledge
Number of tutorials / All face-to-face meetings / High number of tutorials (6-15) / Limited number of tutorials

References

1. "Music at First Sight" (1990), a course written at the Open University of Israel (in Hebrew).

2. Brandon, S. (1999) Pedagogical Solutions for Web-Based Music History Courses Technological directions in Music Learning.Proceedings of the Sixth International Technological Directions in Music Learning Conference 1999, Also on-line, Accessed April 2003

3. Clifford, R.(1999) Web-Based Instruction for Fundamental Musical ConceptsTechnological directions in Music Learning Proceedings of the Sixth International Technological Directions in Music Learning Conference 1999 Accessed May 2002, also on-line, accessed April 2003

4. Isaacson, E.J. (2001) Music Learning Online: Evaluating the Promise. National Association of Schools of Music Annual Meeting, Dallas, TX, November 17-20, 2001. Also on-line, , accessed April 2003

The CD-ROM was created by the collaborated work of:

Shay Loya - writer

Dr. Benjamin Perl - academic supervisor and writer of "Schubert Lieder" book, OUI course "Music at First Sight" (1990).

Anat Sharon - co-writer and editor

Daniel Alcheh- design and execution of the musical examples

Boaz Mermelshtein- producer

Alit Epstein- project manager

Joel Klemes- head of the Unit of Multimedia, the Center of Technology in Distance Learning

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