With the latter we must be careful not to get too involved in the students personal problems. It is important to know when to escalate the issue to the right person.
Our job is as an educator and not as a social worker and we need to be careful that our students are clear on this point, good teacher/student boundaries are important for both sides and above all we must be observant & professional at all times.
Finding the right motivation and identifying our student’s needs is important within the teaching cycle. My students will vary greatly from each other in many ways, some will have a strong musical background, and others may have none but will have come from a DJ background; also due to their own personal musical tastes the output from each student will vary incredibly. However, their one uniting factor is the use of technology in writing music.
It is important to consider the differing learning styles of individuals when planning and designing lesson plans as this will greatly alter the effectiveness of the lesson. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle suggests there are four stages that follow each other in a cyclical mode: Concrete Experience (Feeling), Reflection (Watching), Abstract Conceptualisation (Thinking) and finally Active Experimentation (Doing); Honey and Mumford also suggest a similar theory based around the same sequence with the Activist, the Reflector, the Theorist and the Pragmatist. (Atherton, 2009)
Finding out how your students learn is essential to them assimilating the information you are giving them.
“Nearly all of what passes through our brain is promptly forgotten” (Petty 1998 p1)
When deciding how to deliver your lessons, it is important to take these learning cycles into consideration. One of the more commonly used systems is VAK (Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic); by ascertaining which of these categories your students are, you will be able to tailor the lesson to their specific needs. Due to the nature of Music Technology, 85% of lessons would cover all 3 categories. I would explain and demonstrate to my students the theory behind a particular piece of software, (moving from visual to auditory) they would then be able to hear the result (auditory) and finally in the practical section(kinaesthetic) the individual students would experiment and try the process out for themselves.
Making a formative assessment of my student’s progress, evaluating the outcome of the practical section and comparing it to the earlier demonstration will give me an invaluable insight to whether all aspects of the lesson have been understood, and if necessary address those that were not.
At the end of each module a further assessment would be set to make certain the information has been properly absorbed.
This form of continual formative assessment and evaluation is important when teaching the computer-based modules as each section is needed to be able to continue with other i.e. Drum – EQ – Compression
Like the teaching cycle, once the three are in place, the learner can find himself or herself constantly dropping into the cycle at different points.
It’s not just our students who are always learning, it is also important that we gain feedback to assess ourselves and thus evaluate the effectiveness of our own teaching.
Carl Rogers Biography - (1902–87), Freedom to Learn for the 80s[On-line]
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Accessed 21 January 2010
Atherton, J.S. (2009) Learning and Teaching; Experiential Learning [On-line] http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/experience.htm#Experiential Learning Styles
Accessed: 24 January 2010
Petty, G. (1998) Teaching Today, Stanley Thornes, Cheltenham.
Atherton, J.S. (2009) Learning and Teaching; Labelling students [On-line] http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/labelling.htm
Accessed: 25 January 2010
