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Noviembre-Diciembre de 2006, No.10 Publicación bimestral
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An introduction to MUSICWEB
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AEC |
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NÚMERO ACTUAL |
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The aim of MusicWeb is to develop pedagogical materials for music teaching and learning, which can be accessed through the Internet. The flexible and multi-functional resource material that MusicWeb offers and its placement in a web-based environment means that MusicWeb can be used in various learning situations: in the classroom, in audio and computer labs, at home, in libraries or centres for study and within a distance learning context. The use of the MusicWeb system is available anywhere in the world where access to the Internet is provided. Furthermore, it is not the objective of MusicWeb to produce ready made on-line education materials in music only: a vital added value of MusicWeb is the availability of the MusicWeb Authoring Tools, which give teachers and students the possibility to create their own educational materials in a web-based environment and add these to the MusicWeb on-line infrastructure. MusicWeb was created in 1995 as a multi-national consortium coordinated by the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Over the past 19 months (November 2002-June 2004), the European Union has given financial support to MusicWeb in the framework of its eLearning Programme. During the eLearning project period, MusicWeb realised two distinct phases in its development: n In the first phase, the inner circle of the multi-national MusicWeb consortium (7 project partners in 6 European countries responsible for the technological framework and the development of education materials) was actively involved in a closely coordinated effort to further develop the existing MusicWeb technological infrastructure, to create several new educational modules and to prepare the information seminars planned in the second project phase. n In the second phase, 7 MusicWeb information seminars were organised in 7 European countries in collaboration with member institutions of the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC).
The MusicWeb partner institutions In the project supported by the eLearning Programme, the following organisations were partner institutions in MusicWeb: n A core group has been responsible for technological and content development, consisting of the following institutions: Koninklijk Conservatorium The Hague, University of Glasgow-Department of Music, Technische Universität Darmstadt, The Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris, Kingston University-School of Music and Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover, n A group of professional music training institutions has been responsible for the organisation of the dissemination seminars: Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, Noord Nederlands Conservatorium in Groningen, Norges Musikhogskole in Oslo, Sibelius Akatemia in Helsinki, Musikhögskolan in Malmö, Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover. n The Association Européenne des Conservatoires, Académies de Musique et Musikhochschulen (AEC) has been responsible for the project coordination and for the dissemination of the project results.
The MusicWeb on-line educational materials The currently available MusicWeb educational materials can be reached from the home page of the MusicWeb website (http://MusicWeb.koncon.nl) via the demo courses button. So far, the following educational and technological materials have been developed in the framework of MusicWeb: n The Koninklijk Conservatorium (lead partner) in The Hague has contributed 2 modules in the field of music theory teaching: n The ‘Introduction to musical analysis’ module provides introductory material to the basic concepts of music analysis. It has been designed as a basic guide to analysis for first year students of a typical institution for professional music training. n The ‘Eartraining’ module provides listening exercises on several aspects of Western tonal music with different levels of proficiency; it contains a training of monophonic and two-part dictations, tonal cadence forms and harmonic hearing. n The Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover has been developing 4 modules, making use of Flash-technology: n ‘Clausulae’ is an exploration of renaissance cadence formulas with examples from the music literature. The course includes a quiz for aural recognition of the various cadences. The module may be used as a standalone source of information on the subject matter, but can also be used in conjunction with, for example, classes on sixteenth century repertoire or counterpoint. n The module ‘Cadences’ is an interactive exploration of tonal cadence forms with illustrative score fragments from the literature. A piano reduction of each fragment assists in drafting the harmonic structure. n ‘Introduction to score reading’ is an interactive exploration of the orchestra and its instruments. This course is very suitable for elementary education, but can as well be used in secondary education and courses that prepare for professional music training. n ‘Skalenbestimmung’ offers ear-training exercises on medieval scales. A collection of various tasks can be loaded and it can be enlarged by any teacher with self developed tasks. n The School of Music at Kingston University in London and the Department of Music of Glasgow University have been crucial to the overall technical development of the MusicWeb system. In addition, Kingston University has done research into issues relating to the integration of MusicWeb in other eLearning systems, such as Blackboard. n The Institut Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris has developed 2 modules: n ‘The marriage of voice and electronics’ focuses on 26 compositions of the twentieth century electro-acoustical repertoire in which the voice plays an important role. It describes the trends in the use of computers to create vocal music, and helps the user to understand the role of various technologies in compositional processes. n The ‘OASIS’ annotation tool has been developed by an expert group of musicologists and engineers. These are music annotation tools that support on-line professional analysis, annotation of scores and performances. n The Technische Universität Darmstadt has been responsible for the development of the GUIDO technology, a music-representation language for creating music scores. It is a plain-text format capable of representing all information of conventional musical scores. As the code is based on plain text, the GUIDO language is human-readable, it can be easily read and created in a wide variety of packages, it is platform-independent and the file size is small. The GUIDO NoteServer (http://www.noteserver.org/) converts GUIDO Music Notation (ASCII/plain text) into conventional music notation images (GIF or Postscript) that can be displayed with any Web browser and embedded in web pages.
The MusicWeb Authoring Tools During previous months substantial progress has been made with several technical developments on the MusicWeb website server. Although the general information pages have remained mostly the same, the MusicWeb Authors Editing Suite has been changed drastically as the basic functions of the MusicWeb authoring environment have been implemented. The Authors Editing Suite is meant to give any teacher the possibility to create, edit and publish web-based material and reuse existing material. It contains an editor to create simple HTML-based pages and ways to add music specific and MusicWeb specific elements like audio files, sticky-like annotations, additional resources, GUIDO-based scores and midi files. Authors Editing Suite will need further exploration and development, but already a good impression is given of what the final authoring environment should look like. The Courses Overview (http://musicweb.koncon.nl/overview/), which can be reached from the MusicWeb website home page, has also been activated. For each available course a short description, overview and screenshot have been made. Furthermore, a first version of the help pages has been made, which can be reached from the top-menu on most pages in the website.
The integration of MusicWeb in other eLearning systems The central MusicWeb server holds a number of educational materials, as well as general help information and publicly viewable content. In order to protect this intellectual property with copyright or licensing issues and to prevent theft, a good access policy is needed with the possibility to identify all users. Materials without any copyright or licensing issues do not require user identification; this is as well the case for materials that are freely available via the Internet. Some materials are however authored in a particular manner in which they cannot reasonably be re-authored to exist in the MusicWeb system. There are as well compelling reasons why we should not duplicate effort by transferring materials onto a centralised server. Therefore the MusicWeb team agreed to seek a means of keeping some materials on individual institutions’ servers and allow authenticated access to users from other institutions. To ascertain the readiness of the MusicWeb partner institutions for a MusicWeb-wide authentication structure, a questionnaire was circulated during the winter of 2003. The results of this questionnaire show different situations, going from institutions with no authentication whatsoever (where students do not have to log into lab computers, they simply sit down at a machine and start to use it), to institutions with their own eLearning system, fire walled to all outside addresses and institutions with advanced security systems often appearing in one country only. For these kinds of institutions the MusicWeb team hopes that the use of shared group accounts will be sufficient to satisfy both security concerns and any licensing issues on their educational materials that might otherwise require strong authentication. It remains an issue to be further investigated by the MusicWeb team.
The MusicWeb Information and Training Seminars After a successful completion of the first phase of the project, in which the technical and content modules were further developed, MusicWeb entered the dissemination phase in February 2004. 7 MusicWeb information and training seminars were organised with the assistance of the European Association of Conservatoires (AEC). They took place in AEC member institutions for professional music training in Groningen, Oslo, Paris, London, Hannover, Helsinki and Malmö. The seminars were prepared and given by two experts from the MusicWeb consortium, in close collaboration with the host institutions. During these seminars the MusicWeb concept was presented to teachers and conservatoire staff members on a national and regional basis. The seminars were opened with a general presentation of the project, outlining the history and the basic concept. This was followed by more detailed information on the existing on-line educational materials. The presentation on the MusicWeb educational materials received many positive comments and in some seminars this presentation resulted in a discussion on certain pedagogical approaches of the modules. Although many fascinating discussions developed, it must be stressed that the actual purpose of MusicWeb is to create a technological framework for music educational materials, which, although several educational modules are provided as examples to show the technological capabilities of MusicWeb, does not take pedagogical sides. After lunch, the seminars continued with a hands-on session, which aimed at learning how to access MusicWeb and how to add own customised music educational materials within the MusicWeb technological framework with the help of the MusicWeb Authoring Tools. The seminars were closed with a roundtable discussion with the participants on the implementation of the MusicWeb system in institutions for professional music training, its use by students and teachers, the pedagogical aims, the future of the project and the role of eLearning in music education. After the seminars, all seminar participants received a login name and password to enter the ‘Study Room’ of the MusicWeb website. All participants can as well subscribe to a mailing list to receive information on MusicWeb activities and future plans of the project.
Evaluation of the MusicWeb project The MusicWeb project has given a strong emphasis on external evaluation and monitoring of the project in the framework of the eLearning Programme. It has sought the advice of the AEC Council, a group of 12 experts in professional music training from 12 European countries that has the task to monitor and evaluate European projects in which the AEC is involved; the Council met twice specifically to discuss progress of the MusicWeb project. It also circulated questionnaires to the participants in the MusicWeb seminars. This questionnaire evaluated the seminars as such and several aspects of the MusicWeb project. It provided the MusicWeb consortium with a clear vision on the participants’ opinions and the future target audience of MusicWeb. The main questionnaire replies can be summarised as follows: n The MusicWeb seminars attracted people with experienced Internet skills: 73% of the seminar participants noted to be frequent Internet users. This result is in contradiction with the use of electronic learning materials in the classroom: although the majority of the seminar participants (57,5%) already has experience with ‘weblications’, CD-ROMS, websites or other electronic teaching materials, 84,8% stated not to incorporate them in their lessons. However, all participants, except for one, would like to enhance the use of electronic learning packages in the classroom. n The interactive, flexible character of MusicWeb, creating the possibility to upload own material and to adapt materials from all over the world to a specific teaching and learning situation, has generally been remarked as the strongest point of the project. Suggestions have been given on the accessibility of MusicWeb, the language policy, assessment tools and the authoring procedure. Generally, the seminar participants stressed the importance of developing MusicWeb as user friendly as possible. This should include the development of an easy help desk. n The concept has been accepted enthusiastically: 82.5 % finds it very suitable for a wide variety of users and 55% would recommend it to other teachers. However, only 37,5% would use it in a teaching situation. Apparently this attitude is caused, as explained in the comment sections and during the round table discussions, by a fear for technological development. Most of the participants would like to be kept informed about the future developments of MusicWeb.
For more information on MusicWeb, please contact Karst de Jong (MusicWeb coordinator) at karst@koncon.nl or Sofie Truwant (AEC project administrator) at aecinfo@aecinfo.org, Or visit the MusicWeb website: http://musicweb.koncon.nl
Sofie Truwant, AEC October 2004
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