The Performamatics Model of Sharing and Networking: We’re All Connected

By now you must have realized that we do not shy away from using technology, whether directly in our teaching or in the administration of our Sound Thinking course. A great deal of time, thought, and effort goes into maintaining a very detailed course website where students can access the course syllabus, obtain contact information for each other, review class notes, retrieve assignment parameters, check their grades for each assignment, and find links to a host of resources to help them succeed in the course (please see our course website at soundthinking.uml.edu). Since we also wanted our course website to serve as an archival repository, until recently (more about this later) we linked it to a social networking site. The additional site provided opportunities for student input. The purposes of all the web support is to enable students to interact with us and their peers beyond the classroom and to facilitate their ability to post their reflections, respond to instructor-initiated questions, pose questions themselves and answer questions posed by other students, upload and share music and video links with the class, and post their completed projects so that everyone can see what everyone else did on a given project. In addition, each class is videotaped, archived, and linked to our course website. Our goal in making all of this information readily available is to ensure that everything a student needs to know regarding any aspect of the course can be accessed anytime, anywhere. If, for whatever reason, a student can’t be in class, the assignments, notes on what was covered in class, and an actual video of a particular day’s class are always available 24/7. We all know that on many levels, and for different people at various times in any course, there will be those moments when the learning curve will seem insurmountable. Those moments are most likely to occur at 2:00 AM. To that end, we encourage you to adopt some form of course website as an extension of your face-to-face meeting time.

Assessment: Making the Grade

All students know that different professors grade differently. We’d be willing to bet that your experiences in this area mirror ours, and that you’d agree that the differences go much deeper than we could have imagined. It’s not just a question of one professor being a tough grader while the other is easy, or one grading on established intervals (93–100 = A, 90–92 = A–, 87–89 = B–, 83– 86 = B, etc.) while the other grades “on the curve.” It’s more a question of style: how much feedback students receive on their work and in what form, how the various components in any individual assignment are evaluated to make up an overall grade for that assignment, and how final grades are computed, especially if the computing involves grades of differing weights. There also appear to be quite different “cultures” concerning grades in the sciences and the arts. While students in all disciplines are understandably concerned about their grades—if for no other reason than to maintain the grade point average (GPA) required to keep their financial aid or to avoid a clash with parents—those in the sciences seem to desire more precise accounting than those in the arts. Add to these factors that students in an interdisciplinary course are, by definition, constantly being put into situations outside their comfort zone, and it’s easy to see that the wave of students complaining about grading can be a tsunami waiting to happen. One can discuss grading philosophies forever, but we begin from the premise that if students put reasonable amounts of effort into the coursework, they should get “paid” with a decent grade, which we consider to be B– or better. In fact, one of us believes that all students walk in with an A and it’s the student’s responsibility to maintain that grade. This is especially true in an experimental course such as our Sound Thinking, where we know that some of the assignments and our expectations of students’ work may come across as a bit “fuzzy.”

Logistics: “Bit by Bit, Putting It Together”

The Sondheim and Lapine song “Putting It Together” refers to the many challenges facing an artist trying to produce an artistic product and overcome the myriad obstacles to getting funding and recognition. Most people involved in the arts as creators and performers can certainly identify with the many logistical issues highlighted by the song. As the lyric so aptly states, “The art of making art, is putting it together”. Creating or producing the “product” can result in a physical work of art, a performance piece, or, for the purposes of this book, a new software application. Although some may claim divine intervention or inspiration as the muse, it is generally the result of numerous fits and starts, multiple stages of development, attention to minute details, and more hours than one would care to think about. And that is just the beginning. Getting the work “out there” requires just as much attention. The goal of this chapter is to bring you into the process of “putting together” an interdisciplinary project or course, putting together a project team, and getting it and them off the ground. Logistics is one of the many challenges in this kind of collaborative endeavor. It becomes particularly problematic at the college level for both professors and students. Professors’ schedules are difficult to synchronize, but students’ schedules are, too, especially when students have different majors. Gena’s previous experiences with attempting interdisciplinary projects with colleagues from different disciplines, along with her experiences developing partnerships with local music teachers, informs much of how we structure our projects and negotiate our collaboration, both with each other and within the parameters of our individual departments. It is difficult enough to attempt a project with a colleague from your own disciplinary area, so it might seem even more daunting to attempt this with someone outside your department. Perhaps as you are reading this book you are formulating an idea for the type of interdisciplinary project or class you would like to create.

Platforms and Tools: Anything You Can Do, I Need to Do Cheaper

On their page intended to woo prospective graduate students, the Georgia Tech School of Music website says: . . . Successful design and development of music technology systems must be supported by knowledge of music theory, perception, composition, and performance, as well as digital media, computing, electrical and mechanical engineering, and design. . . . We don’t disagree, but that’s an awful lot to know! What’s more, requiring students to have even a subset of these skills before they can “get in the game” deprives a huge percentage of them the opportunity to learn valuable computing skills through the engaging power of music. There is no end to the money you can spend on technology to gain the ability to design and create. For certain types of projects, professional or “prosumer” software applications boasting the latest bells and whistles might in fact make total economic sense in terms of functionality and time. However, we don’t feel that it’s necessary to jump into the higher end of the market at the beginning stages of learning computational skills. In addition, such costs are prohibitive for most undergraduates and even graduate students. Of course, you could outfit a computer lab available to students with this level of software, but then they would have to do all their assignments in the lab. This is not a practical solution for our students because so many of them are commuters or work off campus and are unable to spend significant time in our labs outside of class time. We think it’s important that students can run the same software on their own systems that is demonstrated in class and with which they are expected to do their assignments. We therefore suggest that you adopt software platforms that you can download freely from the web, but that still allow you to explore broad computing and music concepts common to the higher end platforms. We don’t contend that such software is as sophisticated or as polished as its professional or “prosumer” cousins, but it is most likely fully sufficient for your teaching purposes.

Getting Them Started: I Didn’t Know You Could Do That with a Computer

“What’s an iPod?” “What’s an iPhone?” “What’s an Android?” Pose those questions to any gen-Xer or millennial and we guarantee you that there’s one answer you won’t get: “a small, handheld computer.” We’d also be shocked if their answers included anything like “a communication device capable of connecting to a wireless or cellular network.” You’re more likely to hear: “It’s like, a thing I use to chat with my friends, watch videos, and listen to music.” They can tell you what these devices are for, but they would have trouble telling you what they really are. Is this bad? No, not in and of itself. The computer has truly become an appliance, and some think about it no more deeply than they think about their toaster. Let’s credit the geeks in Silicon Valley for making complex devices so easy to use that, as they say about driving a car, “any fool can do it, and many do.” If your neighbor has a problem connecting to the Internet and comes to you for help and you ask what browser he or she uses, you just might get a blank stare. If you then try to break the ice by asking: “When you connect to the Internet (or World Wide Web) to look up something with Google or read your email, what program do you use?” An answer we commonly hear is: “I don’t know. I just click on the little picture that says ‘Connect to the Internet’ (or ‘Read Your Email,’ etc.).” This assumes, of course, that your neighbor knows what you mean by “program.” If not, it’s probably easiest to just ask: “Tell me the steps you follow to open your email so that you can read and send new messages.” Even though we feel that everyone should know a bit more about computers than this, we applaud the developments that have made computers everyday devices.

Notation and Representation: How We Get ’Em to Crack the Code

Music can and does exist without notation. In fact, its existence predates what we have come to accept as traditional music notation. Many musical traditions have thrived for centuries without any kind of formal codified symbol system to make musical replication easier. Music has existed, and often still exists, as an aurally transmitted art form. The same can’t be said for computers. Though the tongue-in-cheek Hart and Lieberman quote at the beginning of the chapter gets to the heart of the aural and intuitive nature of music’s origins, computer code relies on complex mathematics built, amazingly, on the seemingly simple 1s and 0s of binary arithmetic. Yet just as with music, there are tools and applications that your students can use to express themselves without even thinking about the underlying mathematics. For many of your students, the act of creating, whether it’s making music or developing web content, is accomplished intuitively, without formal training and knowledge of the “tools of the trade”: musical notation and computer code. Sherry Turkle asserts that “today’s children are growing up in the computer culture; all the rest of us are at best its naturalized citizens”. Following that line of reasoning a bit further, let’s assume for a moment that for your students music and computers are ingrained components of their culture. As is sometimes the case, however, the formal acquisition of these tools can often serve as a barrier to further understanding rather than the gateway this knowledge is meant to serve: impeding rather than enabling the creative process. Gardner feels that formal musical training can “be the beginning of the end of most children’s musical development” (p. 38). He believes “the challenge of musical education is to respect and build upon the young child’s own skills and understanding of music rather than impose a curriculum designed largely for adults” (p. 38). Bamberger’s research with college students suggests that students of any age possess musical instincts that, in the proper environment, can be developed and nurtured.

Computational Thinking in Music Courses: How to Get Artsy Types to Start Thinking like Geeks and Vice Versa

When we began to develop our interdisciplinary course in computing+ music, which we call Sound Thinking, we made the deliberate decision that computational thinking would be the foundation upon which all of our projects would be based. But what exactly do we mean when we refer to “computational thinking” (CT) and what might it look like in practice? Jeannette Wing coined this term in 2006 to characterize analytical thought processes that are subject-matter independent. She wrote: . . . Computational thinking involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science. Computational thinking includes a range of mental tools that reflect the breadth of the field of computer science. While the “mental tools” of which Wing speaks may originate in—or at least be most visible in—computer science, she stresses that “computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists.” We wholeheartedly agree. Too often we see students attack problems in a hodgepodge manner, devoid of planning, hoping that trial and error will eventually lead them to a solution. When they are lucky enough to arrive at a desired result through random processes, students too often fail to understand or appreciate why a particular approach worked. This makes it impossible for them to generalize the approach and apply it to related problems. Analytical skills are the essence of computational thinking. What’s more, we feel that these skills are just as important to music and other arts majors as they are to computer science majors. Both groups are hampered by habit, which limits their abilities to imagine alternative possibilities. By getting students from disparate disciplines to work together, or at least by getting students to look at things from the perspective of someone whose discipline is different from their own, we aim to break the bonds of those habits and help students learn to think analytically.

Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning: Two Heads Might Actually Be Better than One

In this interconnected, socially networked, 24/7, multidimensional, media-centric culture, your students are doing just fine creating, performing, and making things without your help. Thanks to the proliferation of user-friendly, intuitive software applications to create, capture, and perform music, as well as websites that allow easy showing and sharing of these creations, your students can lead very productive, creative, and expressive lives without the baggage of learning traditional music notation and computer code. This realization sends shudders through some of our fellow professors, but nonetheless it is a reality of our times. You can choose to fight these trends and hold fast to the traditions of an educational system designed for another era and different priorities, or you can meet your students where they are. Much of education has been about the transmission of subject-specific content with a focus on the individual. This fosters competition for the teacher’s attention and top grades. Hierarchical classrooms perpetuate the notion of teachers as authority figures and decision makers while supplicant students wait for the teacher’s knowledge to be bestowed upon them. Socialization is rarely encouraged inside the classroom. On the other hand, the modern workplace is flattening its hierarchical structure and becoming ever more dependent upon critical thinking skills, collaboration, teamwork, and shared decision making. In fact, many corporate offices are being designed physically to foster collaboration through shared offices and informal small lounges where workers can gather to brainstorm. Learning to work with others is a lifelong endeavor. These skill sets don’t develop in a vacuum. They need to be nurtured through modeling and experience. As suggested by John-Steiner, students need to be socialized into the culture of collaborative work and the kinds of creative and critical thinking the new workplace requires. As you will discover, collaborative work yields processes and results that are far richer than any that a single person’s expertise can produce.

Imagination and Creativity: The School Based Paradox

People who are considered “creative”are generally respected and sought after in our society, both in the professional and social realms. Yet among the many paradoxes of our educational system is the strange fact that it does little to encourage a child’s imaginative and subsequent creative potential. As discussed by Judith Groch in her book The Right to Create, one reason might be a strongly held belief that creativity is innate and something one is born with. You either have it or you don’t. Another reason might be the difficulty in assessing creativity objectively. Unlike questions and problems with only one right answer, how can you make an objective value judgment on a student’s creative output? But imagine a young Pablo Picasso growing up in 21st-century America and attending a public school dominated by high-stakes testing. According to a case study by Howard Gardner in Creating Minds, our young Picasso had great difficulty mastering his numbers. Other than his artistic inclinations, which were nurtured by his family, he was an unremarkable student. In most of today’s public schools, Picasso would be force-fed a fairly prescribed curriculum that would ensure mastery of test-taking techniques but would be mostly devoid of opportunities for personal self-expression. In fact, in a climate focused on high-stakes testing, little attention would even be given to the arts. Picasso’s unique and imaginative vision of the world would probably be squelched for not conforming to the accepted adult views of how one draws the sun, trees, or sky. According to Feldman, Csikszentmihlayi, and Gardner, in Changing the World: A Framework for the Study of Creativity, creative people are shaped as much by their early experiences as by the natural abilities they are born with. Absent a home life where artistic insights are valued and nurtured, how many future Picassos are walking around America’s schools right now who will never know their potential because they will never come into contact with those experiences? Consider the following scenario. If Gena and Jesse walked into a cocktail party, who would be considered the more “creative” of the two? Why, certainly you would pick Gena.