Sounding the Teaching III: Facilitating Music Learning with Music Tec Sounding The Teaching III | Page 28

SOUNDING THE TEACHING III /
EXPOSITION
I found that:
• More students in 1RSP as compared to 1ITG
revisit their work at least once a week.
25
20
15
10
5
Never
Once a week
Once a month
1RSP
Fig 8: An example of
how students’ work
was tracked on Excel
Group
Type of work Sessions over the weeks
Final Draft No use
Sketch Pad No use
Rough Work July 9th, NLT [5.50pm]
Added 6 lines of lyrics
Added notes for suggested mood of song
Added 6 lines of suggested themes and topics
of discussion
3
Others
1ITG
6
7
8
July 9th, NLT [9.26pm]
Added 1 line of yrics
Final Draft No use
Sketch Pad No use
Rough Work July 9th, NLT
Added Full Song Summary
Added Full Lyrics
Final Draft No use
Sketch Pad No use
Rough Work No use
Final Draft No use
Sketch Pad No use
Rough Work July 11th, LT
Added Song Summary
Final Draft No use
Sketch Pad No use
Rough Work July 11th, LT
Copy-pasted whole list of prescribed chord
progressions, added chord
Final Draft No use
Sketch Pad No use
Rough Work July 11th, LT
Copy-pasted whole list of prescribed chord
progressions, added some remarks (value
judgement) for some chord progressions
NLT: NON-LESSON TIME
• By tracking 1RSP’s changes on their
Google Docs, it was noted that students
who logged into their Google Docs
outside music lessons edited their
work heavily. This included: working out
their lyrics (six groups); re-organising
their whole document such as through
colour coding, font differences and
headings (seven groups); trying out new
instruments/chords (three groups).
FACILITATING MUSIC LEARNING WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Overall for ownership of work:
• The statistics showed that 1RSP seemed
to have put in more effort in their work
and gave themselves a higher expectation
on the quality of their work.
• A higher number of students in 1ITG
seemed to have relied more on direct
instructions given out during class time
and to work only during lesson time.
Rigour of Work
The rigour of work refers to the quality of
work measured against the benchmarks set
at the beginning of the class, in terms of how
well the song was organised, whether or not
the number of syllables in each line was not
too dissimilar, and whether or not the meter
was strictly followed and chords equally
spaced out.
July 11th, LT
Added 1 line of lyrics
Added Sectioning
Added Instrumentation
Added Chords
Edited notes for suggested mood of song July 17th, NLT
Added more instrumentation (6 instruments
+ added 2 more chord progressions) July 18th, LT
Added more instrumentation
(6 instruments + added 2
more chord progressions)
Added 8 lines of lyrics
July 11th, LT
Added Chords and Instrumentation for
1 and V1 July 15th, NLT
Added Chords and Instrumentation for the
rest of the song
Deleted the lyrics July 17th, NLT
Edited the Chords and
Instrumentation to fit the
prescribed chord progressions
BACKGROUND OF THE GROUP
Students E, W and X were put
together into a group by the
teacher as they could not find a
group on their own.
• Students E, W and X had
difficulties working with one
another. They were observed
to be quarrelling very often.
Student E threw tantrums
easily and was observed having
emotional breakdowns and
giving up by just doing his art
work in class. Student X was
known to disrupt the class
and group. Student W often
complained about both, and
Student E often complained
about Student W.
• There were also issues
with student discipline. For
example, Student X was found
misusing the iPads on various
occasions.
• However, these students were
able to put together a song
entitled Friends and recorded
the song by the end of the
module.
Average length of song
1ITG
Average length of
song (in minutes)
LT: LESSON TIME
July 18th, LT
Added Intro Section
July 25th, LT
No changes noted
August 1st, LT
Added 4 lines of lyrics
Added title
July 17th, NLT
Added whole lyrics (15+ lines)
Added more chords to chord structure July 18th, NLT
Added more lyrics (5+ lines of lyrics)
Changed chords of chord structure July 25th, LT
No changes noted
July 18th, LT
Added chord structure for whole song with
chord count July 24th (X2), both NLT
Deleted whole list of prescribed chords,
added title of songs, reorganised
chord structure and coloured text July 25th, LT
Added Instrumentation
Fig 9: Average length of song
• On average, if the student groups
followed the required song structure
(Intro, Verse 1, Chorus, Musical Interlude,
Verse 2, Chorus, Repeat Chorus, Outro),
their songs would be at least 2 minutes
long, or longer if the song were a slow
ballad. If the average duration dropped
below that, chances were that several
groups compromised on the song
EXPOSITION
structure, perhaps only delivering half of
what was expected. For 1RSP, the average
runtime of each song was 3.33 minutes,
significantly longer than that for 1ITG
which was 1.51 minutes.
1RSP
4
5
A mid-term survey done by 1RSP and 1ITG
revealed that:
• While 25 1RSP students revisited their
work at least once a week, only 15 1ITG
students revisited their work at least
once a week, with 4 (1RSP) and 14 (1ITG)
students confessing they never revisited
their work outside of lesson time.
/
0
different sections of their work according
to font and colours.
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Fig 7: Number of
students who revisit
their work outside of
music lessons
• Not only had many groups in 1RSP continued
working on their work after school, many
of them made substantial changes to the
contents of their Google Docs, i.e. changing
lyrics, rearranging the material, organising the
26
Assessment
• Grades were given based on a set of
rubrics that awarded marks for how well
the song was organised musically and
lyrically, i.e. whether the same chords
were played in timing, and whether
non-pitched percussion instruments kept
the same tempo as the chord-playing
instruments. 1RSP were awarded more A’s
and B’s than 1ITG.
Click or scan
QR code for a
song example
by the group
of students