Reported by Maria Souliotis, Northeastern State University
To lecture or not to lecture? Kristina Shanton (Ithaca College) addressed this question head-on with her music bibliography classes to increase student engagement while covering essential course concepts. In her MLA 2022 conference session “Reimagining the Music Bibliography Class,” Shanton showed how she redesigned her pedagogical approaches, upgrading class sessions to best accommodate the learning styles of contemporary students. I thought the results of this daring approach were remarkable.
Shanton overhauled her music bibliography courses by shifting from a lecture format to a group learning setup. Students used class time to meet in small groups (typically 4-5 per group) and work on course projects and presentations. The new arrangement emphasized “learning by doing” and encouraged creative expression in both learning processes and finished products. The final course project, an annotated bibliography, was eliminated and replaced with a “research-based bibliographic project.” The format for the final project was open-ended; students could choose any form of expression for their culminating presentations. In stark contrast to previous iterations of the course, Shanton replaced traditional grades with a system in which students graded their own work as well as that of their peers. Shanton assured her students that only she would see the grades and comments students submit for each other, thereby encouraging thorough and honest feedback.
Shanton explained that the reimagined course was governed by the principle of democratic pedagogy and the practice of “ungrading.” She described democratic pedagogy as “learner-centered student agency” in the sense that students are responsible for their own learning and seeking out opportunities to learn from others. The instructor’s role is to facilitate learning, acting as a guide or mentor instead of directing all classroom activities single-handedly. Students are responsible for generating feedback on their peers’ learning progress as well as assessing their own learning. By shifting assessment to the students, these processes enable “ungrading.” The emphasis on formative feedback lays the foundation for assessment as a conversation between the students and instructor.
In viewing samples of her students’ work, I was impressed by the variety of topics covered and creativity shown in expressing key concepts and ideas. Final projects manifested themselves in the form of thematic catalogs of underrepresented composers and musics, mock Wikipedia pages about notable figures in musicology, and new entries for Slonimsky’s Lexicon of Musical Invective. Multimedia included podcasts, in which students interviewed real practitioners in the field of music education and technology, and a YouTube video of a skit where students “time-traveled” through different eras of music criticism. The plethora of project formats and the resulting quality of the final products shows that the students were truly engaged in their own learning and took pride in presenting their best work.
The strategies conveyed in “Reimagining the Music Bibliography Class” have inspired me to reflect on my own current pedagogical practices so I can implement new approaches to teaching and learning in future instructional sessions. Looking ahead, I know I will encounter students who are already accustomed to learning online in a post-COVID-19 world. My teaching must accommodate that reality through the use of multimedia and the flipped classroom.
I also anticipate adapting what I source from Shanton’s methods to the unique needs of my university and its students. The session did not address how to reconfigure “one-shot” instruction sessions or strategies for fostering engagement with non-music majors in music appreciation classes, for whom music is a foreign language. However, these activities constitute the bulk of my formal teaching and outreach for my university’s music department, and I suspect this may also be the case for others. It would be beneficial to revisit and address these topics in a future session.
Image credit: “chair circle” by Apocalypse Center is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.