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Music Learning and Teaching Online

In Process – Updated: 5/13/2020

Thinking about music learning and teaching online is important in general but possibly more so as we shift music programs from physical spaces to online learning and teaching. I’m compiling resources and some curricular considerations here to support people thinking through and engaging in music learning and teaching online. I started writing this post in March 2020 in response to schools canceling physical in-person classes and shifting to online learning and teaching in response to COVID-19.

In the rush to shift learning and teaching online, we also ought to keep people and their experiences, principles of learning, and ethics of how to be with one another at the core.

In the mix of all the resources and helpful advice we may also find people, companies, or organizations positioning themselves for entrepreneurial ventures or future monetization just as we are likely to find a reductive focus on tools, techniques, and activities. Consider this perspective on “What do we need to teach now” by Deborah J. Cohan.

So, let’s allow ourselves the space to breathe and figure out how to exist and thrive in these circumstances and permission to take it one step at a time while also applying a critical lens when necessary and remembering what is at the core of what we do.

Contents

How might I keep People Centered in Music Learning and Teaching at this Time?

Some Generative Questions to Consider as You Design and Plan

While we often look for resources in terms of tools, techniques, activities, and plans, it is important to pause and reflect on curricular and pedagogical issues to inform what we are doing and why. To shift from a focus on content or tools to a focus on people, consider:

  • Who are the people we are engaging with and how does that relate to what we are doing or planning on doing?
  • What are my values and how am I embodying them?
  • What are the values of students and our community and how are we embodying them?
  • What are the relationships between what I/We are doing in terms of music learning and teaching and our values and the values of students and our community?
  • What is most important in terms of what we are planning or doing?
  • How is this activity/lesson/project meaningful to students/learners?

What tools can be helpful in supporting music learning and engagement?

From my perspective, it is beneficial to think about tools and technology in the context of engagement and learning. From a curricular and pedagogical sense, this can help us situate tools such as DAWs or media creation platforms in ways that are generative rather than simply focusing on activities with tools. That being said, I also appreciate how curated lists of resources can be helpful. So, here are some curated resources for folks looking for technology and tools to support music learning and engagement as they teach online:

Curated resources for technology in music education (includes web-based tools and platforms)

Let’s say you end up having students engage with some of the web-based music tools and platforms included in the link above.

What might you do with these resources? Consider situating these tools and platforms as:

Musical play spaces for students to explore freely. Consider inviting students to engage with their friends or family. Perhaps they will try to accomplish something musically together? Perhaps they will simply enjoy the musical moments by themselves or with others.

Instruments to create or perform music. Invite students to use some of these web-apps as instruments to create and perform with others. Perhaps they might use technology to connect with their peers or friends virtually to form a web-app based ensemble. Perhaps they might use a web-based DAW such as SoundTrap to record a number of tracks using these instruments and then share their music with others or even have peers collaborate with them via SoundTrap.

Contexts to explore interesting aspects of music. When expanding from a purely exploratory approach, you might invite students to consider specific questions or engage in particular exercises that draw their attention to a musical principle, idea, or concept.

This can happen organically such as discussing as a class some of what emerges from their exploration or engagement. This can also happen in a planned manner by guiding or scaffolding with questions or activities.

For instance, you might invite students to use the same web-app such as Yume to create music and either record what they do or develop an improvised or planned “performance” that they can share with others, and then discuss how this might relate to any number of musical ideas such as how one can be creative even when provided with only few parameters they can change or a discussion about how the ways sound changed when moving an icon across the screen and how that impacted the feel of the music. You might even facilitate more philosophical discussions such as what constitutes creating or performing music in relation to an app or instrument such as Yume.

Turn “problems” or “issues” that arise into learning opportunities. At some point it is likely that students engaging musically with any of these web apps may experience challenges or ways that the apps limit their creative or expressive ideas or goals. As educators, we can often re-frame these moments as learning opportunities. In some cases, we might even plan for these “musical problems to solve” (see the work of Jackie Wiggins in the book Teaching for Musical Understanding). For instance, students trying to perform together with a web-app might experience challenges with latency or balancing their varied parts. We can then have these challenges serve as contexts to figure out solutions and discuss aspects of music.

Allow for (and embrace) the unexpected. Yes, we can plan, design and develop very specific sequenced steps for instruction and activities. This can often be helpful. However, we can also embrace the unexpected and build on the emergent. We can acknowledge the importance of experiencing the joy, expressive potential, personal satisfaction, and community of doing music. So, yes, build serendipity and unexpected playful exploratory moments into your online (and all other) facilitation of engagement and learning.

Curated Interactive Web Design and Media Creation Tools and Platforms

These tools and platforms range in their ease of use. You might consider creating interactive media for students to engage with or perhaps you might collaborate with students to develop media as a class or in small groups.

Where can I gain support and learn more about facilitating engagement and learning online?

General Info Oriented to Higher Education Online

Music & Music Education Specific Resources for Online Learning/Teaching

Groups & Forums

Other Sites Compiling Resources, Information, and Approaches

What types of projects can students engage in independently or in small groups in connection with music classes?

Creative music educators are excellent at generating activities and projects for and with students to engage. As time goes on with teaching online, we might consider the degree to which these activities and projects are generative. For instance, does an activity lead to anything besides completing particular tasks? Do the projects spin off into new and exciting directions as students explore aspects of music and musicianship?

These Sound Explorations Music Learning Playlists, a project of the Arizona State University Consortium for Innovation and Transformation in Music Education with a number of partners, were designed as a set of learning experiences to emphasize creativity and self-expression while fostering musical inquiry, deepening musical skills and understandings, and strengthening participants’ sense of selves as musical people who make a difference in their communities and society.

The music learning playlists can function as stand alone activities but can also be situated by music teachers in ways that connect to other projects or aspects of classes or ensembles. I’ve seen them used in online and blended learning situations.

Ideally, music teachers can scaffold and facilitate reflection and discussion around the learning experiences and students’ engagement with the playlists.

Similarly the company Ableton has the following two websites that include numerous “lessons” that support active musical engagement. They can be treated as stand alone activities but creative music teachers can also add context by posing questions or related engagement:

Music teachers can also adapt these Curated Ideas for Classroom Musical Engagement by having students engage in the projects and activities, share what they do and learn, and then discuss asynchronously or synchronously.

See this list of music creation projects with SoundTrap.

Designing and Engaging in Projects Around Specific Music

Music learning communities who still want to focus primarily on music that they were engaging with in their ensembles or classes but who might have difficulty continuing to perform that music as a large ensemble online might consider working on related projects around that music that.

The facets model, promoted by Barrett, Veblen, and McCoy can be helpful here. The book Sound Ways of Knowing (out of print but available for free online) has numerous examples of interdisciplinary arts-based projects around specific music that are interesting in and of themselves but also serve as models for projects that teachers and students can design for music they wish to continue engaging with.

I worked with students in the Digital and Participatory Culture in Music Course that I teach at ASU to design prototypes of musical transmedia projects around John Cage’s ideas and music and music for St. Cecilia’s Day that might be of interest to ensembles looking to expand and deepen students’ engagement with music in ways that expand from performing and lead in new directions.

Principles of project based learning can be helpful in designing experiences with and for students that are generative and move beyond completing tasks or practicing specific skills.

Creating and Performing

When thinking about creating and performing while shifting music programs from physical in-person settings to online contexts, we might consider questions such as:

  • What are students’ home (or out of school) environments?
  • What do we hope for in terms of the relationship between students’ musical engagement and the realities of their home or out of school environments?
  • How are we accounting for the realities of students’ home or out of school environments, including what their caregivers
  • How might students create music individually or collaboratively in their own homes or other settings?
  • How might students create music individually or collaboratively in real time during an online session?
  • How might students share and engage with each other’s music asynchronously and synchronously for online classes and ensembles?

At this point, when reading about many of the wonderful ideas music educators have for students to continue engaging in a music program at home, I wonder how people are accounting for students’ home or out of school environment?

For instance, in my digital and participatory culture in music course at ASU we discussed how students might feel uncomfortable performing around others in their home or that parents might feel that students making music during the day could be disruptive to their work at home. We also discussed the different types of expectations we might have for what students might do at home or the “asks” we might make of parents in relation to their children’s musical engagement and involvement in the music program.

It is important to think creatively and expansively about performing at this time given the health implications of in-person live performing. For instance, we ought to consider what science and data say about near term future of singing (from the National Association of Teachers of Singing NATS)

How might I continue teaching traditional classes or in-person lessons in an online setting?

The Best Services and Settings for Remote Music Lessons (with step-by-step instructions) – Eric HeidBreder

Comparing & Contrasting FREE Platforms & Procedures
For Online Music Instruction – Bradley Mariska, assisted by Scott Agster, Erin Holmes, and Heidi Stodola

Research and Resources on Creating and Performing Music Collaboratively Asynchronously

Music Video Projects and Engagement via YouTube and Other Video Platforms

There are a multitude of ways that people engage with music on and with YouTube.

Many music educators are curious about facilitating the types of virtual choirs made popular by Eric Whitacre. However, Katie Wardrobe cautions music teachers to think twice about working on a virtual choir while shifting from physical music programs to online music learning and teaching given the skill and time needed to create virtual choir videos.

You can also learn more about this approach to facilitating asynchronous ensemble performances with Emmett O’Leary’s research on a virtual Tuba quartet he facilitated while a doctoral student at ASU:

Interested in related engagement, see Chris Cayari on how to create a one person choir:

To generate some interesting ideas for engaging students in music and video, see some of the following research:

Cayari, C. (2019). Facilitating Music Video Projects in the Classroom: From YouTube to Musical Playground. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education: Perspectives and Practices, 219.

Cayari, C. (2018). Connecting music education and virtual performance practices from YouTube. Music Education Research, 20(3), 360-376.

Cayari, C. (2016). Music making on YouTube. The Oxford handbook of music making and leisure, 467-488.

Cayari, C. (2016). Virtual vocal ensembles and the mediation of performance on YouTube (Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).

Cayari, C. (2014). Using Informal Education Through Music Video Creation. General Music Today, 27(3), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1048371313492537

Cayari, C. (2011). The YouTube Effect: How YouTube Has Provided New Ways to Consume, Create, and Share Music. International Journal of Education & the Arts, 12(6), n6.

O’Leary, E. J. (2017, January). The Virtual Tuba Quartet: Facilitating Asynchronous Musical Collaboration in a Chamber Ensemble Setting. In College Music Symposium (Vol. 57). The College Music Society.

Hosting or participating in LiveStreamed Jams

Depending on what makes sense in your context and policies of your school, you might consider hosting or having students engage in live-streamed (or recorded) jams via YouTube or other platforms.

For example, see Cynthia Lin’s Community Uke Social

Asynchronous Music Engagement in and with the Large Ensemble

Although a bit of an over simplification, the key elements of asynchronous music engagement in and with the large ensemble are essentially:

  • Having a mechanism to keep the music synchronized or organized in some manner (in most cases a click track)
  • Having ensemble members record their individual parts on their own in their own locations
  • Having someone with audio and video editing experience take all of the submitted parts and then use a DAW or Video Editing Application to edit and combine the parts
  • Share the edited composite with others

While the typical approach that people use follows the highly public example of Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir, where students practice and submit recordings of pre-existing music, we can think even more creatively and expansively in terms of what ensembles might work on and submit.

For instance, check out this wonderful project with the ASU Wind Band facilitated by my colleague at ASU, Jason Caslor, that riffs on John Cage’s 4’33. Ensemble members submitted recordings of their surroundings and photos, which were then combined into this final piece.

Extending in New Directions

For additional extended engagement with 4″33 (and John Cage’s music and ideas, check out the #WhenIsMusic transmedia project prototype that students in the ASU Digital and Participatory Culture in Music Course and I designed with the music and ideas of John Cage. In other words, be creative with large ensembles and think of ways that students can create, perform, and engage with music that includes AND extends from rehearsing and performing existing music.

For additional ensemble resources, see below in the “How might I facilitate classes or ensembles online?” section.

Collaborating on Music Creation and Production Online

It is possible for students to collaborate on creating and producing music online with digital platforms that were designed with this purpose in mind. Before using these platforms, it is helpful to develop an ethic of collaboration and perhaps some groundrules. Students can be upset when someone changes what they worked on without any prior dicussion or agreement. This is also an opportunity to discuss how we might collaborate musically in relation to place and time.

Soundtrap Soundtrap is a web-based DAW designed to facilitate synchronous or asynchronous collaboration. It features integrated text and video chat. The synchronization is not immediate as you have to manually sync changes by clicking a button when you or your collaborator(s) update the music.

Start here to integrate SoundTrap in your program with a free edu account trial. The the site also has numerous resources for getting started.

Splice – Whereas SoundTrap is a web-based DAW, Splice supports collaboration by syncing projects in DAWs across multiple people via the Internet regardless of their physical location. I’ve personally used it asynchronously with Ableton to collaborate and it works fairly seamlessly as long as you follow the directions for saving files. Splice also allows people to rent plugins, download samples, participate in competitions, and share music with others. Splice works with:

  • FL Studio
  • Logic Pro X
  • GarageBand
  • Studio One

Ableton is not a web-based DAW but people collaborate with this fantastic music application.

Here are best practices for collaborating on Ableton remotely.

Here are some resources for getting started with Ableton by the Consortium for Innovation and Transformation in Music Education.

Research and Resources on Creating and Performing Music Synchronously (Live) Online

People use different terms to discuss music creation and performance online when people are creating or performing music live collaboratively via the Internet while they are in different physical places. Networked music and telematics, are common and established terms for this type of engagement, however, terms can be specific to particular communities.

Splice has a list of platforms for hosting digital music experiences and related tutorials (scroll down mid-page).

The iOS app Endless is intriguing in terms of its facilitation of live jamming, though it raises a number of privacy and FERPA issues. Worth exploring!

Telematics

Telematics is fairly involved and uses open source software that requires some time and patience. It’s not likely to be the best solution for large K12 ensembles, given the logistics needed. However, for older students and smaller ensembles, telematics could be an interesting approach to continue collaborative performing outside of a physical school setting. We can also learn much from about doing music collaboratively online from people with experience in telematics.

Explanation and Examples of Telematics – Michael Dessen

Notes on Telematic Music Production (Google Doc) – Michael Dessen – This excellent resource provides detailed information on tools, procedures, and roles involved in live collaborative music making.

NowNet Arts is a not-for-profit organization for network arts performance, technology, education, and research. The NowNet Arts Forum is an excellent supportive community for people interested in networked music. To join the forum send a message to info at nownetarts dot org.

The “NowNet Arts Lab Ensemble: Home Internet: continues to run daily at 12pmEDT and 10pmEDT for the foreseeable future. We are testing technologies and artistic work for network arts. This has also become a place to connect with people for mutual support during these times. Please feel free to join us any day via this Zoom link and spread the word to anyone interested. ” – Sarah Weaver

JackTrip Users Google Group

ArtsMesh – “The Artsmesh software is a network music and performance management tool. Content creators run the Artsmesh client which streams live media P2P; audiences run a lite Artsmesh client to watch the shows. Functions include user, group and profile profiles, audio, video and open sound control (OSC) routing and mixing, chat, microblog, world map to see participants locations and live broadcasts, network testing tools, graphic scrolling score panel and more.”

NINJAM – “NINJAM is open source (GPL) software to allow people to make real music together via the Internet. Every participant can hear every other participant. Each user can also tweak their personal mix to his or her liking. NINJAM is cross-platform, with clients available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. REAPER (our digital audio workstation software for Windows and OS X) also includes NINJAM support (ReaNINJAM plug-in)”

Jamtaba “A free (and open source) software to connect in ninjam servers and play music jam sessions with people around the world.

JamKazam “JamKazam is an innovative live music platform and social network, enabling musicians to play music together in real time from different locations over the internet as if they are sitting in the same room. The core platform is free to use. . .”

Writing and Research Related to Telematics

Journal of Network Music and Arts – “JONMA is a peer-reviewed open access digital research journal published by Stony Brook University. Network Music and Arts utilize the Internet and related technologies as an artistic medium for works created for this platform.”

Mills, R. (2019). Telematics, Art and the Evolution of Networked Music Performance. In Tele-Improvisation: Intercultural Interaction in the Online Global Music Jam Session (pp. 21-57). Springer, Cham.

“This chapter explores the evolution of practices and research in the fields of networked music performance (NMP) and telematic art with a focus on tele-improvisation. It outlines the development of telecommunications technologies in tandem to the creative projects and systems devised by artists and musicians. The emphasis here is on the innovations of the practitioner, adapting and developing approaches and technologies for creative purpose.”

Streaming Presentational Performances or Direct Instruction

Sharing presentational performances, where people perform music to others who serve as an audience, is certainly possible online.

Having issues when sharing audio from your computer while using Zoom? Make sure you are aware of the audio settings and how you can share the audio directly from your computer (as opposed to your microphone) when screen sharing.

Restream supports streaming across multiple platforms and social media.

The Audiomovers Listento plugin is “designed to stream audio signal from DAW to web-browser session or to Listento Receiver. Listento allows real-time stream several lossless and compressed formats. Plug-in available in VST, VST3, AU and AAX formats.” I haven’t used this personally yet, but folks online speak to how the Listento plugin is helpful for very low latency streaming in combination with other streaming tech such as Zoom. In this scenario the Audiomovers Listento plugin would handle the audio streaming and Zoom would handle the video streaming.

Here’s a video describing how ListenTo can be used for remote audio collaboration:

Connecting Music to COVID-19 and Life During a Pandemic

11 Meaningful Writing Assignments Connected to the Pandemic – These Edutopia writing prompts can be tweaked to serve as prompts for music making or related musical engagement in response to students’ experiences of COVID-19 and life during a pandemic.

Considering Learning and Teaching

How might I facilitate classes or ensembles online?

Start with questions. Before focusing on tools or lessons when shifting to online learning and teaching we might consider the people – who we are engaging with and the communities of learning- and aspects of curriculum. We also ought to consider the varied ways we could facilitate music engagement and learning. For instance, the idea of “delivering” instruction or a class, starts with a particular set of assumptions about teaching and learning. Likewise, the idea of facilitating learning, offers a different set of assumptions of how we might engage with students online.

Transitioning to facilitating engagement and learning online calls for us to consider aspects of curriculum and pedagogy.

Consider some of the following questions:

  • Who are the people in this class/ensemble and what are their goals, interests, and needs?
  • How are the people in the learning community feeling?
  • What are the principles and ethics we will live out as we engage with one another in a dispersed online setting?
  • What might we address in classes and ensembles?
    • How might affordances and constraints of learning and teaching online and off line when we are located in different physical places relate to or impact what we might address in classes and ensembles?
  • What approaches might I take to facilitate learning?
    • Am I considering direct instruction or lecturing?
    • Am I considering modeling?
    • Am I considering facilitating one-on-one, small group, or large group discussions?
    • Am I facilitating musical engagement?
    • Am I facilitating project-based learning?
  • When are people engaging in or with the class / ensemble?
    • Will people be meeting live online from their varied locations?
    • Will people engage with the course asynchronously but with specific timeframes or deadlines?
    • Will people engage with the course asynchronously at their own pace?
  • What resources can people in the class access?
  • When transitioning from teaching in one physical place to facilitating learning across time and places, what aspects of the intended curriculum should we maintain and how might we adapt to a new context?

How might students engage in a large ensemble when separated physically?

When considering how you might facilitate a large ensemble online with students located in different physical locations, first consider students’ and your own aims and goals.

Rehearsing a large ensemble online exists. At this point due to technology, sound quality, latency, and issues of access, rehearsing a large ensemble online is not a direct parallel to rehearsing in the same physical place. Here are some approaches to facilitating ensembles online that people are exploring:

Synchronous Live Rehearsals Via Zoom

Asynchronous Rehearsals Via Web-Based Collaborative DAWs

Another approach, shared by Jake Sandakly, is facilitating an asynchronous ensemble rehearsal via SoundTrap by recording a track and then inviting students to add their tracks to the “rehearsal.”

How might I create interactive assignments or projects for students to engage with asynchronously?

Hyperdocs are Google docs full of hyperlinks that educators design for students to interact with. You can think of hyperdocs as assignments if you like but they can work nicely for sharing sequenced activities or project or even less-linear engagement by providing students with multiple options or pathways to explore around themes, topics, or ideas that you might have engaged with in a physical classroom. Given the collaborative nature of google docs, also consider co-designing hyperdocs with students!

A lot of what occurs in hyperdocs can also be done within varied learning management systems, but you can also link from an LMS to a hyperdoc.

Many of the tools and platforms in this curated list can support the design of interactive media for students to engage with.

How might students reflect on and share their processes, perspectives, thinking or learning?

Students and the learning community can benefit from reflecting on and sharing their process at varied points throughout their creating and performing. Reflecting on one’s process and learning can occur over time, formatively, or at the very end after sharing their music. For instance, students might explain the decisions they are making and why they are making particular decisions. Digital media and technology support varied ways of sharing process and learning over time or as a culminating form of engagement. Examples include:

  • Creating podcasts
  • Screensharing/screencasting with narration
  • Audio excerpts with annotated comments
  • Vlogs or short video clips
  • Text-based posts

Creating Podcasts

At its most basic, a podcast is an audio recording. More typically, podcasts are a series of recordings that a host releases on a regular basis, but educators often use the term podcasts loosely to include even one-off stylized recordings.

In the context of music learning and teaching, we might consider how students can create podcasts individually or collaboratively for any number of purposes ranging from expressing their own perspectives about music to sharing music analysis or the process of rehearsing or creating music.

There are countless resources online for engaging students in creating and sharing podcasts, here are some to get you started:

As far as DAWs go for creating podcasts, many educators like SoundTrap, since it allows for collaboration and has the option of integrating with a web-based education platform. While there is a charge for using the SoundTrap educational platform, the SoundTrap Basic Personal Account is free (Scroll to the bottom of the Pricing – Personal page.

Screensharing / Screencasting with narration

People tend to think about screensharing or screencasting in terms of instruction or creating tutorials, but there’s so much potential here in terms of sharing one’s process. For instance as students create music, they can record their process for several minutes, watch the recording, and then comment on their process as a narrated additional audio track. Or, students might turn on the screenrecording and think aloud as they engage in a demonstration of their process. Alternatively, students or teachers can create resources and tutorials by sharing audio and video of their computers while discussing concepts or processes.

  • Loom – Chrome extension that allows for multiple options of video and audio input for screen recording.
  • Screen-cast-o-matic
  • Screencastify – Chrome extension with fewer audio options
  • ScreenFlow – This is a somewhat expensive screen recording and editing application but the free demo version allows people to record their screens and save with a watermark. However, the demo version file can be shared with someone who has a licensed version, which can then be edited without the watermark.

Asynchronous Engagement with Readings, Projects, or Media

While some online learning and teaching might occur live synchronously through video conferencing, other situations might involve asynchronous engagement. In these cases, students might engage in activities or projects or engage with some type of media or reading.

Some classes might simply post assignments in a learning management system for students to respond to via text in a comment section or a forum. However, a number of digital platforms allow for multimodal responses such as in the form of video or audio.

As teachers shift classes and ensembles online they might consider the important role of process and the interesting possibilities of students sharing their process over time. For instance, students might practice or work on creating original music and share where they are at a given point in time with their peers for feedback or discussion. By shifting emphasis from sharing the culmination of work or end points to sharing an unfolding process, students might draw upon their learning community to support one another as they grow and develop over time.

VoiceThread is a platform where a teacher or students can post content that the learning community responds to around the perimeter of the content. People can then respond to each comment, creating an ongoing thread. With imagination and thoughtfulness, technology such as VoiceThread can support creative narratives, responding to performances, sharing perspectives or analyses of music or other forms of engagement.

FlipGrid is a platform that supports asynchronous video posts, that people can also respond to with audio, text, or video. The focus of the videos is up to the creatvity of students and teachers. For instance students could post music they are practicing for feedback, examples of the music they are creating, discussions about music they are listening to or analyzing, their feelings and perspectives about living in the age of COVID 19, or anything else. Flipgrid also makes it easy for teachers or students to generate prompts or people to respond to.

I’m still a fan of how Soundcloud supports comments embedded at exact moments in a waveform and the possibilities for reflecting on one’s own music, providing feedback, or sharing perspectives.

Other platforms allow for collaborative annotation such as highlighting text and adding comments and related dialogue. The following tools allow for collaborative annotation of texts:

Considering Curricular Issues

Reflecting on aspects of curriculum can be helpful in guiding what we might focus on as we transition from physical places to more dispersed contexts. For instance, in an instrumental context such as a large ensemble that typically meets in a room at a school, the status quo often defaults to focusing on rehearsing music to prepare for a presentational performance. Shifting a large ensemble to continue rehearsing music to prepare for a presentational performance in a physical concert hall may or may not be the most important or viable focus when learning and teaching online.

The power of generative questions

Shifting to learning and teaching online provides challenges but also provides opportunities to think imaginatively about what we might address. Here, generative questions and project-based learning can be powerful in guiding what we do. While one approach might be to find the closest way to parallel online what normally occurs in a physical setting of a school, another approach might be to adapt the original course or ensemble to the new context we are experiencing. Consider, how we might expand the original focus of the ensemble (rehearsing music for a presentational performance in a physical setting) by addressing a set of generative questions as an ensemble or learning community.

For instance, we might consider issues of performing collaboratively online as a focus of exploration as an ensemble. In this case we might pose a set of generative questions to spark dialogue, exploration, and projects that occur asynchronously or synchronously and in varied structures such as individually, in small groups, or as a large ensemble. It is important to invite students to pose generative questions, but here are some examples that might lead to different forms of engagement:

  • How might we perform existing music that was created for our large ensemble to play in a shared physical setting, while we are now located in multiple different physical locations?
  • How might we engage with latency and delay as performers?
  • What does it mean to perform together when we are physically separated?
  • Who are we performing for or with and why?
  • How might my role in an ensemble shift when we are located in different physical locations but are together online?

These generative questions shift the focus or emphasis of the ensemble from focusing on rehearsing music to perform in a physical setting to exploring the experiences, challenges, and possibilities of performing as an ensemble in a new dispersed and online context. Alternatively, we might decide to maintain the existing intended curriculum of focusing on rehearsing music to perform in a presentational performance and shift the structure of the ensemble to adapt to a new dispersed and online context. For instance, we might have different sets of students meet in varied formations of instrumentation online and collaborate on the existing music and then work to build together. However, we might consider the extent to which all members of the ensemble have access to resources and technology and how that might impact a desire to continue functioning as a large ensemble that rehearses music to prepare for presentational performances.

Deciding on the focus of the learning community is closely related to the aims and goals of all people involved. I’m suggesting here that reflecting on curriculum is a key aspect of pivoting from a course or ensemble that typically meets in a shared physical setting to meeting online while located in dispersed physical settings. This means that while we can work to identify the tools, platforms, and processes to continue what we were doing in as seamless a way as possible, it may also be beneficial to reconsider what we were doing and hope to do in light of the new context. I think that reflecting on aims and goals and considering generative questions can help in making decisions about how to proceed.

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