The theme of this topic was to explore the benefits and challenges of openness in education and learning. In this post I focus on the challenges regarding my field.
I’ll start of by saying that I’ve never had a problem with the thought of sharing my created recourses (recorded seminars, playalongs, instruction-videos, written material) openly or with students and other teachers (others than the types of inconveniences which I will shortly mention). Watching the Ted Talks with Dr. David Wiley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M) I agree with what he said about expertise being non rivalrous, that I can share knowledge without losing it and I also think Dr. Wiley makes a good point about not having to compete for access to digital media which is not the case for e.g. a book in a library. …but. Sometimes I might get a new student that has already had my material handed to them from other teachers for other purposes than what the material was intended for. For example a teacher who used to be a student of mine handed out material as a practice-playalong to his students before they came to University. The material was meant to be used by me as a prima vista- task (sightreading new material). This meant that I could no longer use my material for the intended purposes – I now had to construct new material for the same purpose.
Since I’m teaching various courses and subjects in music, most of which in groups/ensembles in which for learning to take place demand the students to make mistakes and try new things in the moment, recording and later sharing these kinds of ensemble-classes demand that the students can feel safe in their environment. We talked about this in our PBL-group and in these types of situations it is paramount that the teacher clarifies how and what parts of the material is going to be used e.g. maybe only the starting material, teacher feedback and end result will be openly shared. ….And talking about feedback, when sharing recourses you seldom share the most important recourse and aspect of teaching the arts which is feedback, both the feedback that the students get and give in class and the feedback they receive after the song/project/task is done.
Lastly I wanted to know what my collogues think about this so I interviewed two of them to get their views on sharing material/recourses as well as sharing classes/lectures/labs. This is how they (hopefully with nothing lost in translation) answered:
Sharing material/recourses
Teacher #1: “Online tutorials are great in some aspects but you lose the possibility of personal feedback. Certain material can mean different things to different students in where they are in their own development and here diverse feedback is crucial. There are reasons we have 1 to 1 classes in some courses. We often have to focus on the individual, then again certain material can work well in a shared masterclass format such as instrument-clinics”
Teacher #2: “Sharing material and recourses in itself is good thing but sometimes sharing material might feel like “shooting yourself in the foot”. For e.g. my course in synthprogramming, if I would share all material in the form of videos and online lectures some presumptive students might not feel the need to take the course, not seeing the value of the feedback given within the course.”
Sharing classes/lectures/labs:
Teacher #1: I think it can be quite different depending on the type of course, e.g. a lecture that is usually very ”one-way” it can definitely work. One has to consider the “silent knowledge” that is probably lost by not being in the room. In an ensemble class the material and the introduction to the material can be open and shared, as can the end result but the path to achieve the results where the students need to push themselves (and make mistakes in the process) is a very personal experience. Sharing e.g. an ensemble-class, certain parameters could be useful for the “third party onlooker” like technical and terminological elements, but I expect the “losses” for the people in the room participating would be considerable.”
Teacher #2: Sharing lectures and recourses is a good thing e.g. a lecture on a specific era in music can and maybe should be shared. An online ensemble-class where the students need to actively participate would be difficult and recording and documenting a class could hamper the students. On the other hand if the recording of an ensemble-class is edited and segments of the important feedback is shown, that could be beneficial for an onlooker. A recording could also benefit other teachers in seeing how you approach different subjects/situations.
Reference list:
Dr. David Wiley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb0syrgsH6M
