学生帮助教授更新音乐课程
Through a summer project funded by a Hodson Collaborative Undergraduate Research Grant, 一个学生 worked with her professor to update the Fall ’23 offering of a course she 夺走了他的一切.
凯特林McCaffery ’24 has long known she wants to be a music teacher. 她来的时候 to 九州娱乐官网 and found her place as a music major with a minor in education, she hadn’t expected the opportunity to create content for a college-level course as 一个学生.
Following her successful completion of MUS 204: Western Music: Classical to Romantic, a core class for music majors focusing on musical style and individual composers, McCaffery was approached by the course’s instructor, Jon McCollum, chair of the music department, who was looking to re-imagine the course and teaching style.
McCollum felt that McCaffery, with her specific interest in music history and music education, would be perfect for a collaborative research project aiming to research and document diverse forms of artistic expression from the classical to the romantic era of music to help reframe the course and its content.
“We were keen to redevelop this course into one that delves more deeply into the cultural contexts for the development of classical and romantic aesthetics,” said McCollum. “The new course does not ignore the typical focus of Western music history (dates, 作曲家、乐谱分析等.)，但呈现给他们的是更具历史意义的， ethnomusicological方法. 音乐远不只是纸上的音符，也不只是声音 在录音中听到. Music is a product of time and place—of the people and institutions 这让它活了起来.”
With most students and instructors relying on online programs for course modules and resources, it was important to McCollum and McCaffery to bring a new method of instruction 让它与今天的课堂相关. 由此产生的在线资源 created and collected by McCaffery were available to the students who took MUS 204 今年秋天.
“He proposed me creating a kind of website resource where I could put links to some of the music and [topics] talked about in the books that could dive into more expanded information, or prompt further research in a fun manner…to make the content more interesting, but also to make things more connected and more related to nowadays,” McCaffery recalls. “我认为 generally in education, that’s something we should always look for—making connections to today and how it’s relevant and how we can compare what was to what is.”
McCaffery began by reading literature on 18th and 19th century culture and artistic expression, pairing her readings with musical pieces mentioned in the text and existing 课程材料. Then, she began creating an online platform for students to further explore the course material introduced in lecture and readings, noting that this type of resource is easily adaptable to a professor’s teaching style and intent, working 作为必需的资源或补充资产.
Working on this project was enlightening for both student and professor. McCollum spoke of his eagerness to learn from McCaffery’s unique perspective as 一个学生.
“A revitalization of MUS 204 had long been a goal of mine and I felt that involving 一个学生 like 凯特林McCaffery, who has taken the course and plans to teach music, was a wonderful opportunity for both of us to learn from each other,” McCollum said. "Kaitlyn had the opportunity to hone her abilities for assessing the content of both primary and secondary resources, further develop her capabilities for critically analyzing ethnographic situations and the data collected therein, and importantly, gain real-life 专业经验."
McCaffery agreed that this project enabled her to gain relevant experience in course planning, useful to her eventual goal of becoming a teacher, and gave her insight into the ever-evolving realm of education and the use of technology in the classroom 让学生参与进来.
“It was very interesting having meetings with [McCollum] and seeing this mindset of choosing the books, how [professors] deem content important from the books and what angles they always strive to go for, whereas I would read it and maybe look at something 不一样，”麦卡弗里说. “It was interesting seeing that teachers are also learning way down the line as well, and that in my profession I’ll still be learning down the 不管我对自己所做的事情有多熟悉.”
To this end, McCaffery firmly believes more professors could benefit from similar collaborative efforts, heralding student voices as essential for modernizing courses 让学生更充分地参与到课程材料中. 她鼓励教授们 利用学生的意见.
“Students are always changing, the times are always changing…and what we’re focusing on or how we’re learning in general is always changing,” McCaffery said. “我认为 by working with students, [professors] can get a good glimpse into the minds of this generation and how we learn and process information and what makes things more exciting and approachable and gives the best results or outcomes.”
——艾玛·普尔