Week one - Minicourse Features & LMS Declaration

Minicourse Features

• 1. Interactive listening quizzes - As a music course with a goal of educating student's toward repertory, interactive listening quizzes are a critical part of my assessment strategy. Each listening quiz will feature short excerpts from course repertory, as well as a variety of short-answer, multiple choice, and fill-in questions.

  2. Video "lecturettes" - During the COVID pandemic, my remote instruction strategy was centered around short, digestible "lecturette" videos that would intertextually reference and link to other videos. Each video would be no more than five minutes long, but could be viewed in a series to form a longer lecture. This kept the content distribution manageable for me, while providing students with more flexible and modular options for engaging course content. This has remained with me as a strategy in virtually all of my instruction.

  3. Playlists - I'll be hosting a variety of musical examples, generally separated by module, but at times playlisted on my LMS, and periodically linked to outside streaming services when necessary.

  4. Interactive group annotations - In the past, I've used Bongo as an integrated tool to allow students to annotate musical examples in small groups. It remains to be seen what options will be available to me in the LMS I choose, but I'm planning on doing something similar with this minicourse.

LMS Choice

I'll be using Canvas to support my minicourse. My extensive experience with it as both an instructor, and support staff means I'm very familiar with its functionality, and its hosting possibilities for music. My only real concern is how Canvas operates outside of an institutional framework, but I'm willing to explore it and see my options.

Support Resources

I have traditionally found Canvas's support resources (via Instructure) to be invaluable when trouble-shooting issues with Canvas. Though it seems obvious, I cannot fail to include this among my resources.

Secondly, integration of various tools in Canvas is one of the advantages of using it. Typically in the past, I've used Bongo, Kaltura, and Panopto to host videos and manage my lecturettes. I'm planning on doing the same with the minicourse, but am remaining open to which tool to use pending hosting possibilities. I've also used integrated Google Suite tools, and if those will allow me to host the request videos, I may simply use those again, as well.