Though I doubt any musician would devalue practice, the power that it holds for our students may not always be directly reflected in our pedagogy. Particularly in aural skills courses, class time is often structured as a series of guided practice exercises, but this typically means that all students will need to move through the material at approximately the same pace within the class period, which can produce uneven experiences (particularly in the early aural skills sequence). We may design homework or projects intended to aid our students in practice and application, provide substantial resources for the same purpose, or make use of some of the many practice tools (such as SmartMusic, or EarMaster, to name only two) that exist for the purpose. But, particularly for first-year students, the discipline of practicing in general—and understanding how to apply practice skills to an “academic” class specifically—are often skills that are not fully formed when students enter our classrooms.
The power of practice, even if only considered in terms of the “time-on-task” concept, which has been consistently shown to improve student learning (van Gog 2013, Landers and Landers 2014), is a generally acknowledged component for successful learning (Mayer 2018). This is not to say that there is always a direct correlation between time invested and success earned, as other factors will necessarily play into the efficacy of time spent on a task (Romero and Barberà 2011). And time that is engaged in mindful learning (Lang 2016, 113-26) or deliberate practice (Ericsson et al. 1993)—both of which require feedback as part of the learning process—will, of course, be much more powerful.
This essay describes three projects I designed and implemented in a first-year aural skills course (70 students, taught in a hybrid Zoom+room format due to the COVID-19 pandemic):
Planned practice sessions preceding assessments (required)
Weekly improvisation practice (required)
Weekly skill development practice (optional)
Though originally implemented in a hybrid classroom, these projects have much stronger roots in philosophical motivations than in pandemic practicalities. All three projects are motivated by asking students to “just do the thing,” and having some amount of faith that they would ultimately derive at least some benefit from just having done it. Each project operates at a different scale in terms of weighting, instructor feedback time, and levels of commitment from the students. In all cases, focusing on the act of practicing rather than the precise results yielded strong gains for students in terms of self-awareness, self-confidence, community building (particularly in the hybrid format), and the skills being practiced.
The design and implementation of these projects needs to first be contextualized as taking place within a standards-based approach to pedagogy and assessment. This approach (Duker et al. 2015) allows for students and instructors to focus on distinct and separable goals, and (when implemented with policies that allow for reassessment of skills throughout the semester) encourages focus on mastery rather than immediacy of skill development.
For the projects outlined below, this structure becomes particularly pertinent as students know they will be assessed separately on each skill in a given unit; lists of outcomes are presented to students in advance (see Fig. 1 for a sample outcome list), and lesson plans and homework assignments are structured as practice and skill development of each individual outcome. Each project interacts with this approach to pedagogy in a slightly different way, but all support the emphasis on mastery and focus on separable skills.
Figure 1: Outcome list for the second unit of an Aural Skills I course
Required activity, three times in the semester; worth approximately 2.3% of the final grade with potential for very small additional “extra credit”
The “plan-and-practice” assignment series was intended to help students practice intentionally towards one single skill during the week leading up to their initial assessment of that skill. With an instructor-provided list of all of the outcomes that they would be assessed on (see Fig. 1, above), students were asked to select one skill, submit a “plan” to practice it, do the practice, and then post the “results” to a small group discussion post through our LMS. (Though the projects differ in several ways, Allison Wente’s “Search-Solve-Sing” method offers similar benefits to students in terms of group collaboration and structured and deliberate practice.) As shown in Fig. 2, this project asks students to be particularly specific and strategic in creating their plan in order to help them think through good practice strategies and assessment of their progress. Students were given large amounts of latitude in the posting of “results,” particularly since the various skills they might choose to practice would vary widely in terms of what constituted a tangible result.
Figure 2: Project directions for the “Plan-and-practice” assignment
Grading was based purely on completion. Each assignment was worth two points—one point for submitting the original plan, and one point for following through with the plan, posting their results, and commenting on their peers’ results. Students completed one assignment for each of three units, resulting in a total of six possible points for the semester. This essentially results in a very small amount of potential bonus points, since students generally cannot earn higher than a “4” on any assignment. In order to emphasize that the plan-and-practice approach ideally should be something that is habitual for students to do on their own, students were awarded full points for the project at the beginning of the semester, and would retain full points throughout the semester so long as they completed all components. This approach has some potential interactions with study of researcher-provided stakes vs. earned stakes in research on gambling (Brandt et al. 2013), and is intended to serve as an incentive to students to “keep” their points.
Student responses to this project were strong, and indicated good engagement with the idea. In some cases, students who experienced upload issues with their practice “results” requested a late submission purely because they wanted peer feedback; students also mentioned the activity positively on anonymous evaluations. Those who found the class material fairly accessible opted to write plans that took the concepts of the course and stretched them beyond the material we were currently working on (i.e., doing harmonic listening exercises to musics that were far more complicated than our current examples), and in several instances students’ results postings resonated sufficiently with other students in their groups that the original post would inspire questions about methodologies—simply because the other group members could see the progress made by the original poster and wanted to know more details about how they were approaching the skill. In conjunction with the improvisation project described below, this produced the added benefit of building a stronger sense of community within the hybrid class setting, allowing students to engage in at least some form of the valuable social aspects of learning (Eyler 2018, 65-112).
One sample student “plan” is provided here; additional “plans” and “results” submissions are linked in this document. (All student submissions are shared with permission from the students who submitted them.)
Sample plan 1
I will practice the 4 note melody (ex- Do So Mi Re) this week. Right now, this is probably my weakest skill. I am most concerned about getting nervous during the exam and messing up, especially because I have never done the 4 note melody until I got to this class, and I regularly use the ghost tones. I will be working to be as prepared as possible so I can stay calm and think through the patterns during the exam!
I hope to be able to sing the 4 note melodies at slightly faster tempos, and to be able to minimize the length and volume of the ghost tones. While I will be using the ghost tones during the exam, I want to make sure that they are quieter than the main melody. Hopefully, as I continue to develop this skill, I will be able to drop the ghost tones all together.
In order to achieve this goal, I will be practicing each day leading up to my exam for at least 15 minutes on this specific skill (I will be practicing the others as well). I will be using Earmaster, which can give me instantaneous feedback. Additionally, I will be using the melodies on the Unit 1 study and practice guide. To do this, I will pick a note on the piano as my “Do.” I will then attempt to sing the melody, record it on my phone/computer, and then play it back on the piano to check to see if I sang the right intervals. “Do” will change so that I am prepared to sing the melody no matter what key it is in.
From an instructor point of view, the assignment was quick to grade, and I generally did not offer additional extensive feedback or comments to the students’ results unless they included a question, seemed discouraged or confused, or unless the group discussion had gone off track. I could, however, respond quickly to their “plan” submissions, redirecting or encouraging as needed before they completed the practice. By the end of the semester, in addition to the far more important pedagogical benefits achieved by the students, this series of assignments had produced two additional benefits that were (somewhat) unexpected:
Students had a much better sense of what skills they would be asked to assess, since they had to choose a specific skill from the list. They also often had a stronger self-assessment of where they needed to practice and improve, compared to past iterations of this course.
Students were much more aware of the extensive practice resources available through our LMS. Though I have always posted resources which include practice exercises and/or suggestions for every skill that students are working on, they’re not always utilized well. Due to this project, students often needed to have practice examples to use, and thus they were more likely to utilize the resources already available to them.
Required activity, completed weekly (for most of the semester); approximately 4.6% of the final grade
Our curriculum places value on improvisation activities in the aural skills classroom, and particularly in the earliest stages of our aural skills courses. We typically implement this using an ostinato format. Students divide into small groups and everyone sings a predetermined ostinato pattern in unison. Within each group, students then take turns improvising a “solo” on top of the ostinato, singing approximately 8-12 measures and then rotating the solo role to someone else. Though this format has worked well, it nevertheless has some potential drawbacks (which vary based on class size, student skills and inclinations, etc.):
Significant amounts of class time must be devoted to this skill, as it takes time to rotate the solos around the groups. Additionally, although students were provided with backing tracks to practice outside of class, few students seemed to do so regularly.
The format relies to some extent on students’ readiness (or willingness) to take risks and make mistakes, which is far more comfortable for some students than others. It is also dependent on good cohesion in the groups and the ability to sing a strong ostinato pattern, even when the pattern becomes more complex.
Peer interaction is the primary means of feedback. In addition to being careful when critiquing a student in front of other students, the time needed to give individual feedback to every single student is far too great. Thus, feedback often becomes limited to troubleshooting major issues rather than being able to comment on more subtle details or give more personalized feedback.
Assessment is also done in class, and typically consumes a full class period. Students are being assessed in front of their peers, even though they are given feedback individually at the assessment period. The small group singing is a normalized format by this point, but nonetheless can produce significant nerves for some students.
These potential drawbacks notwithstanding, the improvisation component of our curriculum has historically been fairly successful. However, when faced with teaching aural skills in a hybrid classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic, this format was no longer an option: socially distanced students would struggle with sound, and students on Zoom would not be able to sing together at all. Therefore, I transitioned this skill to exist entirely online, using videos recorded and posted to our LMS in small groups on a weekly basis, with the aforementioned backing tracks provided to students.
This format also allowed for better scaffolding and more measurable goals. Using ideas inspired by Lovell 2019, students were initially asked to sing basic patterns without accompaniment (Root 2021 and Michaelsen 2014 offer additional ideas for scaffolding approaches to improvisation), and we then progressed to creating longer melodies with the ostinato track. Students provided peer feedback and also received instructor feedback weekly.
The grading structure was also changed: students were assessed only on timely completion of the weekly assignment, including posting peer feedback. Similar to the philosophy of giving students full credit for “fooling around and trying things out” (Mariner and Schubert 2017), or giving some credit on an “aspirational basis” (Mariner and Schubert 2020), students earned full points even if they did not have a “perfect” improvisation—so long as the requirements for that week’s assignment were completed (see Fig. 3, which asks students to use a full octave range and to include at least one skip and one neighbor motion; Fig. 4 shows sample peer feedback instructions). Weekly scores were averaged together to create the improvisation grade for each unit, eliminating the one-and-done assessment.
Figure 3. Sample set of directions for an improvisation assignment
Figure 4. Sample directions for peer feedback
Although this structure significantly increased grading time, it also produced dramatically better results in terms of the skills students developed compared to the previous in-class format. Students’ improvisations were longer, more confident, and far more adventurous, and students even seemed to be more willing to make mistakes and allow others to see those mistakes. (For instance, on several occasions, students posted videos with a comment that they knew they made certain mistakes, but that they posted anyway because they were proud of some other portion of the improvisation.) As with the plan-and-practice assignments, most groups tended to bond into a fairly cohesive unit, noting each other’s growth and improvement over the long term and commenting on ideas that they planned to use from one another’s improvisations.
This significant change in students’ responses can only be credited to the online video format, since the availability of backing tracks was not a new innovation. When all practice was moved outside of class, students seemed to devote more time and energy to the skill even though they were specifically instructed not to spend large amounts of time practicing before posting. For many students, the regular peer feedback cycle also served to improve their skills, as they needed to be more intentional about listening to their peers’ results. As a final benefit, removing the improvisation from in-class practice allowed significantly more time to spend practicing other skills in class, which also served to benefit students.
The instructor workload in this scenario does see a significant increase, but the change in student results was sufficient to justify the increased workload, at least on a temporary basis. Of course, other methods could be used to better manage instructor workload. For instance, peer feedback could be relied on more heavily, and instructors could give comments to students on a bi-weekly basis (alternating groups of students to keep the grading load even across weeks).
Optional activity, available weekly for most of the semester; “extra credit” opportunity
With an eye towards fostering consistent practice, but not wishing to add any further required assignments to my students’ homework load, I designed a series of optional weekly “quizzes” to encourage (but not require) regular practice. The quizzes provided an opportunity to practice six key skills, and students earned “skill development” points for completing the exercise and posting an audio/video file of their results. Students could complete any combination of questions that they wished from week to week or skip the quiz entirely. The selected skills typically included:
Reading solfege in rhythm (developing ability to read pitch/interval relationships, without attempting to sing the actual pitches)
Improvisation
Singing scales and/or sequential patterns
Singing arpeggiations
Completing a harmonic hearing exercise (Stevens et al. 2021)
Rhythm reading
A sample set of quiz questions is available here.
Students earned one point for each question answered, and these points were summed throughout the semester for extra credit. Feedback was always provided for harmonic hearing exercises, and was provided for singing-oriented exercises when students asked for it. This system thus prioritizes the act of practicing consistently without students being concerned about any form of assessment or feeling that they had to practice every skill every week. It also had a low time commitment from the instructor standpoint since there was no need to give detailed feedback where students might not be interested in it.
The program had good participation throughout the semester, with 50% of students participating at some point throughout the term and earning an average boost of ⅙ of a letter grade (i.e., half the points to move from B+ to A-). Students who chose to participate ranged from intensely dedicated students who were inclined to complete the entire quiz every week even though their skills were already strong, to students who were less strong initially but experienced significant growth throughout the semester. Due to other changes in the course structure (particularly those changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic), reliable comparison of grades from previous versions of the course on the specific skills included in this project is not possible. However, based on results for all students, students’ improvement across the course of the semester was notable at least as much in terms of self-confidence as in their actual skills—and this benefit is one that encompassed both weaker and stronger students.
If students completed virtually all exercises throughout the semester, they could earn as much as ⅔ of a letter grade (i.e., B+ to A). Though this is a generous amount of extra credit (possibly more than I would allow in future), it also required a significant amount of consistent work from students if they were going to earn the maximum possible “reward.” In order to avoid a situation where a student failed the core course material and passed the class based only on these completion grades (thus likely setting the student up for significant difficulties in future courses), I also instituted a policy that prevented students from passing the class based only on extra credit. In other words, each student had to earn a passing grade in the class based on normal grading procedures in order for their skill development points to count towards their final grade.
The projects described above are all motivated by a philosophy that regular practice will lead to improved results, even if the time involved is short, and even if students are assessed on completion of the task rather than on the skill level demonstrated within the task. This philosophy can be scaled to different degrees within a single course and can offer flexibility to instructors in terms of grading load considerations and other similar concerns.
Particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the uncertainties that faced both students and instructors as a direct result, these changes in orientation around the concept of practice seemed particularly timely. However, the philosophy at the heart of these curricular decisions—that intentional and thoughtful practice will eventually lead to desirable results—preceded the pandemic and certainly outlasts it. In fact, though these projects were all originally implemented in a hybrid class setting, all projects would run equally well in a “normal” classroom, or in a fully online classroom. With the possible exception of including some amount of practice for improvisation within the classroom if all students were physically present, no other alterations would be required, and I plan to continue use of the projects outlined above (or others similarly designed) in the future.
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