ANALYSIS OF TEACHING ONLINE, CASE STUDY: THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC

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1 ANALYSIS OF TEACHING ONLINE, CASE STUDY: THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC Sanford Hinderlie Loyola University New Orleans New Orleans/USA Abstract This presentation demonstrates the pros and cons of an online course at a traditional university offering online classes to augment the regular curriculum of a course. This case study is a course entitled "The History of American Popular Music". Examples will be shown in the PowerPoint presentation and online. Quick Time movies and streaming examples will be shown and what software is available to create such movies for the Internet. The minimum speed and access of the Internet for viewing these movies and listening to music is discussed. There are several online management teaching systems including Blackboard, Angel Learning, and Scholar360, as well as online training software. Several systems will be briefly discussed, but Blackboard will be used to show examples of what capabilities exist for this presentation. One of the most important issues for online learning is to keep students on task and engaged in a timely matter. Materials are provided online for each chapter including downloadable files for an overview, important names, key terms and review questions. The review questions are answered by the students for each chapter with specific due dates to keep them on task. All questions are submitted online in the form of Word or pdf files. Effective ways to present materials online are provided, including Quick Time movies made of PowerPoint presentations with embedded music and commentary from the professor. Software to create this material is discussed, ranging from simple (Screenflow) to complex (Avid, Final Cut Pro and Pro Tools). Copyright discussion is also important when using music, utilizing streaming examples that are not downloadable. Examples of testing are shown and how and when to test. Social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace are discussed as tools for interaction, with comparisons to Blackboard discussion tools and how to use them effectively. 1 INTRODUCTION This presentation demonstrates the pros and cons of an online course at a traditional university offering online classes to augment the regular curriculum. Loyola University New Orleans is one of 28 Jesuit institutions in the United States that offers undergraduate liberal arts degrees. This case study is a course entitled "The History of American Popular Music", taught in the College of Music and Fine Arts as common curriculum to the non-music major. This online course supports the book American Popular Music, From Minstrelsy to MP3, Second Edition. Larry Starr and Christopher Waterman, New York: Oxford University Press. The presenter/professor is also a professional jazz pianist who has performed most types of popular music including rock, Latin, soul, jazz and experimental electronic music on several continents. There are several online management teaching systems as well as online training software. These systems are listed below, but Blackboard will be used to show examples of what capabilities exist for this presentation. This is the software system in use at Loyola University New Orleans. Both online and hybrid courses (a combination of in-class and online) are offered. 2 LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS Some learning management systems include Scholar360, Angel Learning (now a part of Blackboard since May 11), Claroline, efront, LAMS (the Learning Activity Management System), SharePointLMS (an LMS based on MS SharePoint and supported by Microsoft, and JoomiaLMS (an LMS based on Joomia platform). Proceedings of EDULEARN09 Conference. 6th-8th July 2009, Barcelona, Spain ISBN:

2 3 COURSE MANGAGEMENT SYSTEMS Course management systems include Dokesos, ILIAS, Moodle and Sakai (all free software and open source). 4 VIRTUAL LEARNING SYSTEMS Virtual learning environments include Blackboard, WebCT (now part of Blackboard), FirstClass (messaging and communications solution,), Desire2Learn, CyberExtension, It s Learning (Norwegian Closed Sourse System), Fronter, Saba Centra, WebTrain, Glow Learn (A VLE accessible through and designed for Glow, the Nationa School Intranet of Scotland, Frog (VLE in the IK designed to help organize, communicate and to access information), UniServity clc (Connected Learning Communities Learning Platform, UK based and used in 21 countries), Studywiz Learning Environment, and eclass (Hong Kong-based closed source system developed by BroadLearning Education Asia. Blackboard has the largest share of use in higher education with about two-thirds of the market, one of the important reasons Blackboard is the focus of this paper and will be the template for discussions [1]. 5 STANDARDS As a note about platforms and standards for these programs, Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM), IMS and Common Cartridge are organizations that set technical standards for distributing learning content. The Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative develops and implements learning technologies across the U.S. Department of Defense and federal government, a collaboration with government, industry, and academia to promote international specifications and standards for designing and delivering learning content. SCORM is a set of technical standards for e- learning software products, governing how online learning content and Learning Management Systems (LMSs) communicate with each other [2]. SCORM does not speak to instructional design or any other pedagogical concern, but is purely a technical standard. IMS Global Learning Consortium (usually known as IMS or IMS GLC) creates standards for the development and adoption of technology-enabled learning. IMS GLC is a non-profit collaboration among the world s leading educational technology suppliers, educational institutions, school districts, and government organizations. Their main activity is to develop interoperability standards and adoption practice standards for distributed learning [3]. 6 BLACKBOARD Blackboard, a company of more than 1,000 people, provides software to over 5000 institutions and universities, allowing students to register for classes, do coursework and view lectures online. It has been expanding into the markets for high schools, middle schools and elementary schools as well as corporations. It had about 57 percent of the higher education market, according to the 2008 Campus Connect survey. Angel Learning was acquired by Blackboard on May 11, which had about seven percent share of the market. With this acquisition Blackboard now controls almost two-thirds of the market share. [4] In 1997, Stephen Gilfus and Dan Cane started a company called CourseInfo LLC and were developing a software product that would power online education and be scalable for wider institutional application. At the same time, Matthew Pittinsky and Michael Chasen formed Blackboard LLC and were contracted to help lead the formation of the Educause IMS standards group for online education technology. Recognizing the high demand for a sophisticated, easy-to-use, and affordable online education software platform, the two groups merged to form Blackboard Inc., which then developed the Blackboard Learning System. The Blackboard Learning System is a Web-based server software platform. Features include course management, a customizable open architecture, and a scalable design that allows for integration with student information systems and authentication protocols. It may be installed on local servers or hosted by Blackboard ASP Solutions. Its main purposes are to add online elements to courses traditionally delivered face-to-face and to develop completely online courses with few or no face-toface meetings. [5]

3 7 INTERNET ACCESS Because the course The History of American Popular Music is media rich including the streaming of QuickTime movies and music, high-speed Internet access for viewing these movies and listening to music is required. Before students can register for this class they must read a statement regarding their accessibility to high-speed Internet and then agree to the terms set forth by the university that the student will be able to work within the parameters of working online. The issue of high-speed Internet is becoming a mute issue as more access is available throughout the world. 8 COPYRIGHT ISSUES Copyright discussion is also important when using music. This course has over one hundred examples of music from the public domain of the 19 th Century to the latest copyrighted hip-hop music from the past decade. The Loyola University policy requires that the university library purchase all music used in online courses. Furthermore, the music cannot be put online is such a fashion that it could be downloaded. All music examples are streamed from a server, including assessment testing for listening. This apparently satisfies the potential copyright issues involving the use of music for educational purposes, at least in the United States at this time. 9 SOCIAL NETWORKING Social networking is a useful way to communicate with students. The use of Wordpress, Facebook, MySpace, Last.fm, Twitter and Twiturm are a few of the Websites that are used often by students. Since they are very comfortable with these sites, they can be useful in communicating with each other regarding topics (some sites especially related to music) that might need discussions by the group. I present a topic later in the course that asks the question: What musical group or performer that is popular now or since 2000 will be in the history books 50 years from now? I ask this question because history books have a difficult time objectively observing the present, especially in music. These social sites, especially the ones that easily incorporate music into their sites, work well to discuss this question with each other and share the music for listening on the site. Discussion Group in Blackboard is a way to achieve this communications in a more limited fashion. This will be discussed at a later place in this paper. A brief description of a few social network sites: Wordpress A very powerful and flexible blog tool that can be customized to look very much like a professional Website. Simple tools available for embedding and streaming media. See and Facebook: A social networking site with powerful connection tools and add-ons. Great for communicatin with friends and fans on both a casual and professional level. Easy to incorporate into Blackboard. MySpace The original blockbuster social network. Often maligned, but still very relevant. Offers one of the simplest ways to stream music, with options to sell downloads. Last.fm A music-focused social networking site. Allows mp3 uploads and pays royalties for online streaming. Communicates with a user s music library (i.e., itunes) to Calculate that user s musical taste and create relevant links between artists and songs. Twitter

4 A lightweight but powerful communications tool. Allows short posts ( Status updates ) that can be followed by any number of other Twitter users. Can be easily imported into Facebook, MySpace, Wordpress, etc. Can be updated via text message from any cell phone. Twiturm Twitter users can upload mp3 files for streaming directly from their Twitter status. 10 INTERNET VIDEO CONFERENCING Conferencing can be achieved while teaching an online course to make connections with the students and teacher, a great communicating tool for one-on-one and for conferencing with several students at one time. Some sites are free and others charge. You can set up a link for all to participate. There are many commercial conference call/video sites to choose from, some quite costly. A few inexpensive or free sites include oovoo that can have up to six on a video call at once or Skype, a free call for Skypeto-Skype customers, but sometimes unreliable. oovoo: Skype: 11 HISTORY OF AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC USING BLACKBOARD I present below an overview of some Blackboard windows I use with my course. There are several dozen windows that are beneficial to any online course, but I have kept my presentation limited to the scope of this paper. And, like many programs, there are windows within windows, so looks can be deceiving. When the student opens my course the window in Fig. 1 appears. The appearance is consistent throughout the course. Since Blackboard allows for the input of HTML in individual items, it also permits certain other web design protocols. Essentially, a CSS file is created that defines the look and feel of the module and then linked that CSS to all online courses which defines the graphic presentation of each module/week/class within our university. When you see an item in the course materials of this course that says "History of American Popular Music", that is where we are hiding the link to the CSS file that defines all the rest of the modules. Fig. 1. The opening page of the course

5 On the left side of the title of the opening page there are several links that allow the student to enter the specific areas of topics. In Fig. 2 the yellow listings are for the students to see. A teacher has the opportunity to add materials to most of these areas to enhance the course in the white area. Each topic below is self-explanatory. I have developed my course by focusing on the title Course Materials. (This will be discussed in detail below). Fig. 2. Links in yellow for the students to obtain the necessary materials for the course. Links in white for the professor to access all aspects of Blackboard. Course Materials is where the majority of my material for the students is located. Fig. 3 is an example of a specific day s topic, downloads for the students, review questions for submission, video streams of PowerPoint presentations, and audio files of music typical of the time period. Fig. 3. A typical set of materials for a specific day in the course

6 Links to files that are available to students to download are shown in Fig. 4. I provide study materials for them to organize each chapter of the book, including downloadable files for an overview, important names, key terms and review questions. Fig. 4. Links for downloads for the different files provided for each chapter of the book. One of the most important issues for online learning is to keep students on task and engaged in a timely matter. The review questions in Fig. 5 are answered by the students for each chapter with specific due dates to keep them on task. All questions are submitted online in the form of Word or pdf files. One problem that I have with reading assignments on Blackboard is the time involved in downloading each file. Once I have the file on my screen to read, the grading is quite easy. Each student has their own window that I can provide comments regarding the assignment, and I can provide a grade that is directly linked to the grade book of Blackboard for the specific student. Again, time to wait for the grading submission can be frustrating even with a fast Internet connection. Also, there are redundant windows to verify your submissions that are not necessary and extremely timeconsuming. Fig. 5. Review Questions link for students to download the Word file By clicking the link provided as seen in Fig. 6, QuickTime movies of PowerPoint presentations for each chapter are streamed. Included in the presentations that I normally use in a classroom setting are music examples and commentary from the professor that are embedded in PowerPoint to support the content, whether it is text or an example of lyrics to correspond with music. A streaming movie of the PowerPoint presentation is used in Blackboard to provide synchronization of the music to the text that cannot be achieved with a download. To make a movie Windows users can use PowerPoint, but it is better for Mac users to create a movie with an inexpensive and easy-to-use program such as ScreenFlow. Final Cut Pro and Avid are complex and expensive professional programs that will work well. After the movie is finished it needs to be compressed for streaming purposes to keep the size within the limitations of Blackboard s storage capacity. I create QuickTime Movies for this purpose. Streaming is accomplished by posting materials (video, audio, etc) on a server separate from the central blackboard service and then embedding a player that calls the appropriate file from the server to play the media. In the case of many of these audio files, an XML 'manifest' is used to call multiple files into the same player, allowing the user to select which clip they want to listen to. This allows for the playing of media without the ability to download it, potentially causing copyright infringement if not streamed. Fig. 6. Link to video streams

7 Examples of links to stream audio are shown in Fig. 7. Again, these are links to a server to play the media and cannot be downloaded. When I create a listening examination I also use only streaming. The students cannot refer back to a file while taking the exam because there is no file that they have been able to download. Fig. 7. Links to audio streams. The faculty member is able to access the areas of Blackboard to submit materials, communicate, grade, create tests, and basically manage all aspects of the course as seen in Fig. 8. The link Control Panel takes you to the guts of Blackboard as seen in Fig. 9. Fig. 8. Control Panel Link Fig. 9. Control Panel

8 The content areas are where I provide the materials for the students to download or stream. I basically keep these within the link Course Material and do not use the other links as seen in Fig. 10. This allows for everything to be seen by the student on a single page and the due dates for assignments are in one place to keep the student focused. Fig. 10. Content Areas of the Control Panel The Course Tools window in Fig. 11 has many tools available to the professor for basic communications. I wish to focus on the Discussion Board link. This is where I have the students blog, for use of a better term. I present a topic such as what is the makeup of a newspaper critique. I have the students list their ideas and then have others write feedback, creating a dialog among all of them. Fig. 11. Course Tools of the Control Panel The window in Fig. 12 allows the managing of the course, an example being the archiving of a past course for future use. Fig. 12. Course Options of the Control Panel As seen in Fig. 13 User Management allows the professor to add and subtract users from the course. Users can also be support personnel, important in maintaining the site. Fig. 13. User Management tools in the Control Panel

9 The Assessment window in Fig. 14 is a powerful tool to maintain the progress of each student. I will demonstrate more windows later in the presentation about the gradebook in particular. Fig. 14. Assessment tools in the Control Panel The support for direct contact with Blackboard support is sketchy at times. But the window in Fig. 15 allows the user great help in navigating Blackboard, especially the tutorials. Fig. 15. Help tools in the Control Panel The Gradebook is a powerful tool to assess the progress of students. Each assignment, exam, paper, and any other imaginable criteria for student work that is assessed by the professor can be linked to the Gradebook as seen in Fig. 16. A list of users and their grades are shown after the professor reads individual assignments in the section where they are posted. The grades can also be manually overridden if the professor is teaching a hybrid class and wants to input grades that were not submitted via Blackboard. A percentage appears at the end of the term that will be automatically calculated. Fig. 16. Grade View Spreadsheet Moreover, each grade can be assigned a weight. There are two choices for weighting, by category and by item. As seen in Fig. 17 I have chosen to weight by item. You can also include extra credit points and weight if desired

10 Fig. 17. Weighting of the various assignments Tests can be created easily in twenty configurations and with varying weights, ranging from multiple choice and true/false to essays and matching. Fig. 18 is an example of what a professor would see as a matching section is created. Fig. 19 shows what the students would see. Fig. 18. Example of matching questions for an exam as seen by the faculty

11 Fig. 19. Example of matching questions for an exam as seen by the student. An example is seen in Fig. 20 of what a professor would see as a multiple choice section is created. Fig. 21 shows what the students would see. Notice that in Fig. 20 the professor has the option to modify the question or remove it with the links to the right Fig. 20. Example of multiple-choice question for an exam as seen by the faculty. Fig. 21. Example of multiple-choice question for an exam as seen by the student. 12 SUMMARY Traditional classroom courses have many advantages over online courses, including the face-to-face communications of the professor and students. However, with Blackboard, the online system of teaching in higher education is becoming effective, less expensive and easier to present. Hybrid courses are benefited by the use of online materials, combining the advantages of classroom and Internet. Media rich content is possible with high-speed Internet and computing power. Communications between faculty and student has several avenues to utilize, including the use of social networks. More higher education institutions use Blackboard as the format for online courses than any other program. In its decade of existence it has been expanding and acquiring other companies to become the leader in higher education online courses. It is a powerful tool to present materials to students in a simple manner

12 REFERENCES [1] Google the various Websites of online programs [2] [3] [4] [5]