Abstract
Use of Self-Paced Computer Assisted Learning Modules
in Music Appreciation
Method
Results
Discussion
References
Modules addressing aural objectives were constructed using multimedia software,
and made available to students through a LAN. Aural information was organized
into self-paced modules set in five units. Modules included: (a) tutorial
information, providing instruction and recorded examples; (b) tests which
checked students' mastery of objectives, offering immediate feedback; and
(c) opportunities for students to evaluate the results of their tests. Comparison
of test scores of students completing a predetermined number of the modules
with those of students not completing the modules indicates that the modules
offer some students a greater level of conceptual understanding.
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An important goal in a music appreciation course is the development of musical responsiveness. The musical experience itself involves both the perception of relationships among musical elements and the ability to react to their expressiveness. While study of the printed score and learning the history of composers and their works are valuable activities for young musicians, the experiences that most often develop musical and aesthetic understanding center upon either listening to a performance or participating in a performance. Responsiveness is enhanced to the extent that students are provided guided experiences in listening to music. These experiences develop deeper understandings which in turn permit a continually greater level of interaction with the music.
This emphasis upon the musical interaction emanates from the realization that much of the human experience may be symbolized only through the arts. Susanne Langer, in her groundbreaking work Philosophy in a New Key posited the need for humans to symbolize experience, and further defined two types of such symbols: discursive symbolism, based upon an understanding of the meaning of each portion of an experience and an amalgamation of their meanings; and presentational symbolism, in which the totality of the experience is considered, with no particular discernment of the individual parts of the experience. The former type she likened to mathematics and language, the latter to music and the arts.
Bennett Reimer further underscored the need for development of responsiveness through music, declaring that music along with the other arts educate feeling in the same manner that reading and writing educate reasoning. In this educative process, the musical work remains the central aspect of the experience, but the level of experience, education and understanding of the listener aid in development of the musical experience. Thus the musical experience becomes an interaction rooted in the structure and quality of the composition, but heavily affected by both the context of the performance and the preparation and ability of the listener to interpret that context.
A music appreciation course is then obliged to help students identify musical elements such as melody and harmony, and based upon that identification, to understand the use of these elements in a musical context. Instructors wishing to help students experience music instead of simply teaching students about music realize the importance of continual opportunities to experience musical elements previously identified. Musical growth requires a focus on auditory discrimination and analysis, not merely musical gymnastics or organizations. Music is sound, and the utilization of sound is the unique quality that separates music from other disciplines, even from other art forms.
Musical responsiveness develops at widely varying rates among students in a general education course such as that involved in the present study due to the fact that the level of ability and the amount of previous experience with music varies extensively. Development of responsiveness may certainly be aided by broad availability of musical experience, and even further assisted when these experiences are mediated in some manner. These factors, along with the previously cited importance of continual listening opportunities, suggest that students who need more time acquiring listening skills must have access to some form of instruction outside class time.
Computer-assisted instruction has long been used for supplementary instruction. In music education, CAI has found its greatest success to this point in development of skills in the areas of theory, sight-singing and ear-training. While these uses are both valid and extremely valuable, they tend to remove from music its context as a performance medium, leading more nearly to the discursive symbolism cited by Langer than to the presentational symbolism that is thought to be the appropriate realm of the musical experience.
One means of incorporating computer-assisted instruction is presentation
of modules which students may complete at their own rates and away from the
traditional classroom. In this context, modules may be defined as small bits
of information that, taken as a whole, provide greater understanding of a
specific concept. The present study developed and used interactive modules
which provided information in a multimedia fashion, then tested students'
comprehension of the concepts outlined. Rather than supplanting classroom
instruction, it was believed that such modules would offer these students
additional opportunities to gain musical understanding, thereby making them
more capable of responsive interactions with music. This ability, in turn
was expected to lead to a greater level of student success in the music
classroom.
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Subjects
Subjects for the study were students attending Northwest Missouri State University and enrolled in a music appreciation section during the fall semester, 1997. The music appreciation course is a general studies option in various degrees at Northwest Missouri State; students, therefore, came from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. The course is not designed for music majors. Students were unaware of the availability of modular instruction in the course prior to their enrollment.
Design
The data generated by this study were analyzed using an experimental and control group design. Students who did not pass a given unit listening exam at 85% were considered to be a part of the control group while those students who did pass a given unit listening exam at 85% formed the experimental group.
All students were offered extra credit as an incentive to complete the unit listening exams. In addition, they were informed that their performance on the unit tests taken in class would benefit from this activity. Five computer-administered tutorial modules were provided for each unit to help the students gain the necessary skills to pass the tests. The effectiveness of the learning modules was measured by comparing scores on the listening portion of the unit exams taken in class. The mean scores of the control and experimental groups were compared through the use of a t-test.
Materials
The course content was divided into five units, which were then divided into five smaller segments called modules. The primary focus of the modules was to develop the aural concepts discussed in the course text, The Enjoyment of Music by Machlis and Forney. The capability of today's computers to present graphics and sound in an interactive setting provides an ideal environment to create tutorials that address aural concepts.
The tutorials were designed using PODIUM software developed by Fred Hofstetter at the University of Delaware. This software facilitated the creation of hyperlinks much in the way that HTML functions in World-Wide-Web documents. Multimedia objects such as pictures, music, movies, and audio clips were embedded in tutorial screens or linked to buttons and text. In addition, the software provided the opportunity to generate and score tests. Finally, it provided the networking capability that is required to administer this project.
The hardware required for the presentation of these modules included an IBM-compatible computer with a CD-ROM drive running Windows 95. The tutorials were designed to use the campus local area network (LAN). The students living on campus had computers in their residence hall rooms that were connected to the LAN; other students could simply use one of many computers in the library or computer labs on campus. The students were required to have a copy of the run-time version of PODIUM on their computer or on a floppy disk in order to access the modules and tests. During the spring semester versions of the tutorial modules and tests were made available on the campus web server for students who were commuters and who had Internet access. A set of compact discs containing the musical compositions studied was issued to each student.
The modular learning project provided the student with two options. The first was to access tutorial modules to facilitate the acquisition of listening skills, and the second was to take unit tests over listening objectives. Generally, each unit test combined questions from all five tutorial modules found in that unit.
Each module contained three parts. The first was a set of tutorials which provided information and musical examples appropriate to selected concepts. The second was a short quiz which tested students' comprehension of that module, and the third was a screen which provided the results of the module quiz. In addition to a record of scores, this screen provided access to the data generated when quiz items were missed.
The mean scores for the control and experimental groups on the listening portion of all five unitexams are reported in Table 1. The results of the t-tests comparing the test means were all significant (p < .05).
Table 1 Summary of t-test Results Comparing Mean Scores of the Experimental Group (1) and Control Group (2) on Five Exams |
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* There was a significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups (p < .01)
Analysis of the data offers clear indication that student test performance is substantially enhanced by the completion of the modules. While it is noted that some students were capable of achieving high test scores without completion of the modules, many students who did not complete the modules scored very poorly on the unit exam. As a result, the standard deviation in test scores among those students failing to complete the modules was higher than the deviation found among the scores of those students who had completed the modules. Conversely, among those students who completed the modules, few failed the listening portion of the related unit exams, and the spread of scores on this portion of the exam was extremely small for this group of students.
Numerous benefits of the use of such computer assisted modules were identified through this study, and appear to have been validated in the results of the study, at least to the extent that an improvement in test scores may be accepted as validation. The modules permit students to complete listening and study activities at any convenient time, and away from the confines of the classroom. Self-pacing of the modules is an important aspect of the study as well; students who gained an understanding of a particular concept more quickly were free to move on to other units. Those who needed more time and additional trials to grasp the concepts were provided an opportunity to master them. This mastery-level approach to the musical concepts found in the modules, along with the mediation offered in each module, is thought to be one major reason for the improvement in test scores among those students who had successfully completed the modules.
An additional benefit identified through the study is the opportunity to incorporate many styles of presentation of the material in the modules. The extensive and increasing capabilities of Computer Assisted Instruction, especially as seen through the use of Podium authoring software, provide an active, dynamic learning environment. While the present study made use of interactive screens, and incorporated gif, midi and even mpeg files, the potential for further development in this line is extensive. The ability to link learning modules directly to specific web sites offers unlimited possibilities in structuring learning modules for students.
Several questions may also be raised as a result of these findings. The issue of mediation in learning has considerable currency. In this study, it is difficult to determine whether the mediation offered in the modules was directly responsible for the improvement in test scores. It is conceivable that repeated exposure to musical examples, without mediation, may produce an improvement in test scores as well. The level of improvement directly attributable to mediation is uncertain.
There is also a question of self-fulfilling prophecy. Since no measure of students' incoming ability levels was available, the possibility cannot be ignored that those students with a greater musical aptitude and background may have comprised the bulk of those completing the modules. Student motivation to complete the modules is also an important consideration in evaluation of the study. It is legitimate to ask whether those students motivated to complete the modular units may not have also been those to score more highly on the unit exams without the benefit of the modules.
If we may consider student selection of specific sections of the course a form of randomization, this question of motivation may be addressed to an extent. With the presumption that motivation level among specific groups of students remains fairly constant, it may be expected that the number of students with high scores among the different sections of the course would be similar. The study makes plain the fact that modularized instruction led to stronger test scores for a significantly greater number of students; the solid implication is that this tool is a valuable aid to classroom instruction.
It should be noted that one issue to be addressed in development of this type of instructional program is the large investment of time and effort on the part of the instructor. Development of the modules is a time-intensive task. Having once completed development, the maintenance, trouble-shooting and scoring of the modules requires somewhat less oversight by the instructor. While the results of the study provide a strong indication of the value of modular instruction in this setting, one cost of this improvement is a greater time commitment on the part of an instructor.
Finally, there is an issue of what portions or aspects of a course may be amenable to this sort of modular instruction. Some types of information may not be as appropriate for modularization as are the listening examples included in this study. Additionally, mediation offered through modules will always be more limited than that available in personal interaction with an instructor. For these reasons, it is not suggested as a result of this work that the modules replace classroom instruction, but that they be used to enhance that instruction and increase the potential for student success in the course.
Langer, Susanne K., Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Mentor Books, 1942
Machlis, Joseph and Kristine Forney, The Enjoyment of Music. (Seventh Edition,
Shorter)
New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1995
Presseisen, Barbara and Alex Kozulin, "Mediated Learning: The Contributions of Vygotsky and Feuerstein in Theory and Practice" On Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment.
Meir Ben-Hur, Ed., Palatine, Illinois: IRI/Skylight Publishing, Inc., 1994
Reimer, Bennett, A Philosophy of Music Education. (Second Edition) Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1989