OnlineCourseEvalYale

= Open Yale Course: Listening to Music =

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MUSI 112: Listening to Music is an introductory music course, taught by Dr. Craig Wright. The course is taught as a traditional lecture course with two 50 minute class meetings per week and a weekly section with a Teacher’s Assistant. In the Fall 2008 semester, Dr. Wright’s lectures were recorded for inclusion in the Open Yale Courses. Sections with the TA’s were not recorded.

Listening to Music focuses on “the development of aural skills that lead to an understanding of Western music” (course syllabus, available online). As can be expected from course with ‘listening’ in the title, musical excerpts are vitally important to the content. There is a companion textbook which includes an audio CD and an additional set of CDs specified as required materials. In addition to attending class lectures and sections, a student is expected listen to these CDs outside of class. Assessment includes written exams, listening exercises, a review of a concert, and a 5-page paper.

The entire Open Yale Course site is well-designed, clean, and streamlined. They use an understated, high contrast graphic design that is easy on the eyes. A large light grey box is used to separate the specific course material (and links) from the global Open Yale course links. There are no extraneous images or ads that distract from the content.
 * Design and Aesthetics **

Navigation is clear and intuitive for the most part. The top of each page has the same navigation bar under the course title, however, it is not immediately clear that the course title is also a link back to the home page. Exam study guides are provided, but these are simply pdfs of the handouts. As such, they are not hyperlinked back to the material. One nice touch is that long videos (approx. 50 min. each) have chapter links with descriptions, so it is easy to find material within a longer lecture.

The syllabus provided online is woefully short and incomplete, especially for an online course. The course description hints at objections, but none are explicitly stated. The Sessions page (which links to each lecture) provides a list of lecture titles, but the student must visit each page to find the associated assignments. Much of the course structure, including listening assignments and teaching assistant sections is covered casually in the first lecture video. This should be outlined in the online syllabus.
 * Course Design/Assignments **

The assessments are not available for viewing online, so they are difficult to gauge. The exam guides say that the exams are a combination of defining musical terms and recognizing musical forms. Listening examples are played and questions are asked about them. There is a variety of types of assignments (listening exercises, concert reviews, and papers), but students do not have much leeway to adapt assignments to their particular field.

The course does a good job of providing the content in multiple forms for accessibility. Each video lecture is available in high and low bandwidth video, as an audio-only MP3, and as a text transcript. The videos are also close-captioned.

The Listening to Music course contains strong content, as can be expected when the professor also wrote the book. In the lectures, Dr. Wright pushes the students to higher cognitive levels. The video delivery serves this course well, as it is not simply a talking head. He uses slides, plays musical examples, writes on the white board, sings, and has expressive body language.
 * Content **

However, even with the rich content in the video, the course is not interactive. Taking this course online, there is no way to ask questions. The face-to-face students can ask questions during the lecture, and have a weekly meeting with teaching assistants to ask questions and review the listening assignments. No provision is made for this in the online version. In fact, there is no community or interaction at all.
 * Community & Interaction **

Listening to Music is essentially an ‘old-school’ face-to-face lecture course that has been video recorded and placed on a website. While it does contain a wealth of material, it is obvious that this course was not rethought or redesigned with online distribution in mind.
 * Conclusion **

Our Grading Rubric media type="custom" key="19675766"

Course evaluation by Jeff Francis, Jennifer Greene, & Reginald China. Summary written by Jeff Francis.