Week one - Minicourse Features & LMS Declaration

Minicourse Features

• 1. Interactive listening quizzes - As a music course with a goal of educating student's toward repertory, interactive listening quizzes are a critical part of my assessment strategy. Each listening quiz will feature short excerpts from course repertory, as well as a variety of short-answer, multiple choice, and fill-in questions.

  2. Video "lecturettes" - During the COVID pandemic, my remote instruction strategy was centered around short, digestible "lecturette" videos that would intertextually reference and link to other videos. Each video would be no more than five minutes long, but could be viewed in a series to form a longer lecture. This kept the content distribution manageable for me, while providing students with more flexible and modular options for engaging course content. This has remained with me as a strategy in virtually all of my instruction.

  3. Playlists - I'll be hosting a variety of musical examples, generally separated by module, but at times playlisted on my LMS, and periodically linked to outside streaming services when necessary.

  4. Interactive group annotations - In the past, I've used Bongo as an integrated tool to allow students to annotate musical examples in small groups. It remains to be seen what options will be available to me in the LMS I choose, but I'm planning on doing something similar with this minicourse.

LMS Choice

I'll be using Canvas to support my minicourse. My extensive experience with it as both an instructor, and support staff means I'm very familiar with its functionality, and its hosting possibilities for music. My only real concern is how Canvas operates outside of an institutional framework, but I'm willing to explore it and see my options.

Support Resources

I have traditionally found Canvas's support resources (via Instructure) to be invaluable when trouble-shooting issues with Canvas. Though it seems obvious, I cannot fail to include this among my resources.

Secondly, integration of various tools in Canvas is one of the advantages of using it. Typically in the past, I've used Bongo, Kaltura, and Panopto to host videos and manage my lecturettes. I'm planning on doing the same with the minicourse, but am remaining open to which tool to use pending hosting possibilities. I've also used integrated Google Suite tools, and if those will allow me to host the request videos, I may simply use those again, as well. 

Week two - Kirkpatrick Level 1

The creation of my Kirkpatrick level 1 survey was entirely more laborious than I'd anticipated. This labor was mainly at the technical level rather than the content level. The actual design of the survey and its questions was quite easy and enjoyable. I simply thought about the experience I wanted my students to have in the course and what questions would allow me to best assess if they were able to have and enjoy that experience. However, getting the survey to function correctly in Canvas took hours of work. I realized that despite my extensive experience as a Canvas user from the position of instructor, doing work on the administrative end of the platform to ensure proper functionality was simply much more difficult than I'd anticipated. I completed my survey over a week ago, and needed nearly all of my available time to work on this course to simply ensure proper functionality by enlisting users, formatting questions correctly, using proper tools, and granting permissions. All seems to work well now, and I'm excited to get comments and feedback!

Week three - Kirkpatrick Level 2

This assessment aligns with the following CLO: Identify and distinguish among a variety of musics that have been part of popular culture in the United States since the mid-19th century.

This assessment aligns with a previously unstated Module/Lesson Learning Objective for Module 3 of my mini-course: By the end of this module, students will be able to identify a variety of recordings from the early twentieth century and discuss their commercial or technological significance, as well as recognize salient stylistic aspects that would affect future popular musics (CLOs 1, 2, and 4).

Prior to taking this assessment, students will have read two articles pertaining to early recording technologies, ragtime, and dance music, viewed two videos demonstrating the significance of film and visual imagery to popular music, listened to four musical examples, and viewed two online museum exhibits of Blackface minstrelsey and ragtime music respectively.

The assessment is located here: https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/11154014/quizzes/23335397?module_item_id=139620564 (IDT400xtest as username or jamesdo@mac.com if necessary, with password Testword1)

To be honest, I had much of this assessment created from a previous version of this course, but the work that I've done on Kirkpatrick Level 2 led me rethink a number of the aspects of the assessment, mainly in varying question type and considering what content was important for students to take away  instead of the trivial. Music history often favors the trivial over conceptual understanding, and though I'd prided myself on not being an instructor who does that, I saw in the earlier version of this knowledge check I did just that at points. So in replacing memorization-based answers with multiple choice and true/false questions, and then leaving the more conceptual questions as open-ended for more qualitative judgment, I feel as if I've developed a knowledge check that is more true to my course learning objectives.

Week four - Discussion and Assignment Prompts

These discussion and assignment prompts align with the following CLOs: Identify and distinguish among a variety of musics that have been part of popular culture in the United States since the mid-19th century and Interrogate the ways popular music has been evaluated, appraised, and charted through its history in the US.

The discussion prompts here align with module/lesson learning objectives 2 and 3 (By the end of this module, students will understand the ways music accrues meaning via cycles of production and reception. This will be assessed by students comparing and contrasting multiple examples of a song as it's been recorded over time. They'll do this in a group discussio, and upon completion of this module, students will have become familiar with prominent critical outlets for the discussion and scholarship of popular music. This will be assesed in the group discussion in which students will be given an list and suggestions for sources to cite).

The assignment prompt aligns with module/lesson learning obectives 1 and 4 (At the end of this module students will have mastered fundamental concepts in musical description and analysis. This will be assessed via collaborative comments on musical performances using a video annotation tool like Hypothesis, and upon completion of this module, students will have begun building listening skills to effectively analyze music for stylistic aspects and performance practice).

Prior to taking this assessment, students will have read multiple chapters from Switched on Pop descirbing musical materials in popular musics, as well as listening to related recordings. They will also have viewed two video lecture playlists mainly featuring videos I've created on musical materials, though it will be supplemented by available resources from other creators like Rick Beato and Adam Neely.

The discussions are located here: 

https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/11154014/discussion_topics/26704883?module_item_id=139620551

and here: 

https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/11154014/discussion_topics/26704885?module_item_id=139620554

The assignment is located here:

https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/11154014/assignments/58533104?module_item_id=139620555

 (IDT400xtest as username or jamesdo@mac.com if necessary, with password Testword1)

Creating the discussion prompts and assignments for this week's work required to rethink, very much, the way I'd drafted such prompts in the past. Much of the work I've done in this has been quite vague and open-ended, thinking that I was giving students an opportunity to demonstrate their thinking and learning by giving them so much latitude. This week's work, however, made me rethink that, in focusing more on the fact that by giving them so much latitude, and not enough guidance, student's may not have understood my expectations of them and would struggle to acquire the skills I'd like them to as a result.

Week five - Discussion & Assignment Prompt Rubrics

I find the creation of rubrics tedious and repetitive, but I love using them in evaluation. I generally rely on a template of fifteen points as demonstrated in each of these rubrics, and I then modify criteria and descriptors based on the particular assignment. The discussion one is quite general, though in the assignment I've tried to be much more specific, while still allowing flexibility to use it for similar assignments. Addtionally, I find myself often adding even more individualized comments beyond those on the rubrics. For that reason, I do like to make sure there's some possibility of reusing them.

Week seven - Minicourse syllabus