Creating Authentic Assessments for Online Music Courses: Mapping a Learning Task

Creating Authentic Assessments for Online Music Courses: Mapping a Learning Task

Carol Johnson, Virginia Christy Lamothe
Copyright: © 2018 |Pages: 23
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-5109-6.ch013
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Abstract

The need for identifying authentic assessments, or learning tasks, in online music courses is becoming integral as the rate of online music course offerings has been exponentially increasing. Supportive research also suggests that instructors teaching in higher education may require a paradigm shift in their pedagogical approach as they develop social-constructivist based authentic assessments for music subjects taught in an online environment. To assist with the understanding of both why and how to generate authentic assessment for a Bachelor's-level online music course, the chapter explores the nature of authentic assessment for music and Koh's Criteria for Authenticity in Authentic Assessment. Finally, to provide a practical exemplar of how online discussions can be used as an authentic learning tool in the online music class, an online discussion task for a songwriting class is identified and examined through the lens of Koh's characteristics.
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Background

Understanding how students learn to read and perform music is fundamental to developing well-structured learning content and scaffolded learning activities. In the case of the online discussion explored here, students are completing activities that are scaffolded to teach them how to listen for musical features, identify them, and then explore how they relate to past styles of popular music. With the knowledge of how music learning occurs, instructors can become better equipped to develop objectives, course deliverables, and evaluations effective in meaningful music performance outcomes. The following sections on learning music at the post-secondary level explore the influences on how students learn music, the importance of addressing praxial music learning and constructivism when designing online music courses, and the bridging of classroom learning to practical skill.

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