Teaching with Technology

Crossing borders: issues in music technology education

Teddy’s Reading Log 05.03.2010

For class session 05.05.2010

This paper discloses the results of the course creation team responsible for the development and planning of the UK Open University course TA225 (The Technology of Music) and its advanced version TA212. In this effort, members of the faculty attempted to create new music technology courses that contained attributes that were applicable within an interdisciplinary context. It is evident after reading the article, that great difficulties existed in methodologies and pedagogies to determine the critical aspects of each course. Instead of producing educational opportunities for students of diverse backgrounds, these educators became entrapped by the quick sands of their own special areas of discipline.

TA225 was a level-2, 30 CAT-points course, corresponding to approximately 300 hours of part-time study spread over 9 months as a quarter of the yearly study load in a full-time system. The course was based on a tripartite block structure. The first block covered the basics in acoustics, psychoacoustics and music theory. The second block examined musical instruments including voice and electronic instruments, and the third dealing with sound recording and processing with particular focus on desktop sound processing and MIDI. Also, it included some coverage of topical issues such as intellectual property. TA212, on the other hand, is a full-blown 60-point course (600 hours of part-time study over 9 months) and incorporates the core materials developed for TA225 into a five-block structure. Production issues were group in three categories: (1) background knowledge, (2) repertoire of technologies and (3) repertoire of music.

 In conclusion, this article suggests many ways in which several disciplines can be presented for course development and in course materials. The crucial factor that influences the need to carefully map out and refine the contents of music technology courses may depend more on professional and institutional allegiances than on our desire to increase student learning. If this be the case, integrated course development will surely be slow to becoming the norm and our students the victims of educated stupidity!  

 Retrieved from: http://web.ebscohost.com.mutex.gmu.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&hid=12&sid=064f76df-fa1e-473c-9769-f865d4a53859%40sessionmgr4