Sounding the Teaching III: Facilitating Music Learning with Music Tec Sounding The Teaching III | Page 30

SOUNDING THE TEACHING III /
EXPOSITION
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DISCUSSION
Summary
EMPOWERMENT
More students in 1RSP than 1ITG seemed to view themselves as
better musicians and songwriters and have more confidence at the
end of the module.
JOY OF LEARNING More students in 1RSP than 1ITG seemed to have enjoyed the whole
process a lot more.
OWNERSHIP OF WORK More students in 1RSP than 1ITG seemed to have shown more
ownership of their work through the amount of time spent at various
junctures.
RIGOUR OF WORK The average grade obtained by students in 1RSP was higher than that
of students in 1ITG.
Additional Observations
• While most groups in 1RSP used
Google Docs, only one group used
the social wall, and even then, their
usage was due to novelty rather than
practicality; they were simply using it
to greet one another. My guess is that
students have more accessible means of
communicating with each other online,
i.e. WhatsApp, and therefore do not need
this additional social wall.
• Only two students from 1RSP compared
to five students from 1ITG gave feedback
in the questionnaire about not having
enough time to complete the work,
even though 1RSP had one less week
of lessons compared to 1ITG (due to a
music lesson falling on National Day). It
suggests that students in 1RSP were able
to better manage their time and project
with the support of Google Docs.
The findings represent a strong endorsement
of how the online social learning space,
in particular the Google Docs platform, is
a critical influence on students’ learning
experience and outcome in the songwriting
module. The use of the Google Docs, as it
facilitated students’ work in and outside
of music lessons, had provided greater
access and moderated the challenge of
the songwriting task for 1RSP. In contrast,
students in 1ITG might have had less
success in navigating the challenges of
the songwriting task over time without
such a tool. Such a social learning space
might have contributed to 1RSP students
achieving a state of flow (Csikszentmihalyi,
1997) since the activity provided support
to engage students in the challenge and
possibly moderate their level of anxiety. The
affordance of ICT tools to facilitate such flow
experiences would merit further study.
CONCLUSION
• While students do see the benefits in
online collaborative tools, most Sec 1
students would not use them on their
own. The class, although not facilitated
with such ICT tools, was not prevented
from using them; students could still
have used them on their own. However,
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FACILITATING MUSIC LEARNING WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
only one group was using Google Docs.
It could be because they are unaware
of such tools. Hence, while we assume
students to be more “IT savvy” than
their teachers, students might not have
thought of how they could use them to
make their work easier. The implication is
that teachers could have students learn
to use such tools to facilitate their work.
• The provision of the online learning
space would facilitate students’ learning
if they could be provided greater access.
Hence, sharing platforms such as Google
Docs, rather than the other aspects of
the social wall, have shown to positively
impact students’ learning and outcomes.
This can be seen when students
from 1RSP actually professed to enjoy
music lessons more. The implication
is that teachers could use ICT tools in
such a way as to provide collaborative
opportunity and greater access to
students’ work in and outside music
lessons to support challenging tasks.
• All in all, the study has suggested that
ICT tools may even be integral to student
success in more challenging projects
such as songwriting. Moving forward, we
could start harnessing different social
learning spaces to derive similar benefits
for our music students.
REFERENCES
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1997). Finding flow: The
psychology of engagement with everyday life.
New York, NY, US: Basic Books.
EXPOSITION