This week I visited the Open Yale Courses site at http://oyc.yale.edu. This is an asynchronous class where the learner can access the class at any time. Because my course focus is on an IB music course, I focused on the Listening to Music course offered by Dr. Craig Wright. The course that is offered is a recording of the lectures that Dr. Wright gives in his classroom setting.
This class is not necessarily developed with the distance learner in mind. Like I stated it is a recording of lectures given on campus. The actual course is a general music class for non-music majors, so it is developed for people with an interest in music, but not an in depth knowledge of music. Learners are expected to have a copy of the book, Listening to Music, by Craig Wright, and access to NAXOS Music Library, which is a subscription music service, and only available with a log-in and password. According to Simonson, Smaldano, Albright & Zvacek (2009) in an internet environment, the instructor need to be concerned with the layout of the courseware and the types of resources available to the students at the distance site (p.135). Many students will not have access to either the book, nor to the NAXOS Music Library.
The technological aspect of the class is set up so that the instructor can teach and not worry about and technological glitches. In fact, the first video shows a tech hooking up the computer to the data projector and returning to the camera, so the technology aspect of recording the lecture was ensured to work smooth. The camera was set up so that the viewer could see the professor, the data screen, the chalk board, and the instrumentalist who were in the room. A nice and unexpected aspect was that the videos were closed captioned for the hearing impaired, I’m not sure how they would hear the music, but they can at least be a part of the lecture.
The visuals in this course were not adapted for distance learning, but were developed for a large lecture hall, so things were easy to see when your attention was directed towards them. The font was large enough, the colors were appropriate, dark background light text and vice versa (Simonson, et. Al., 2009), there were few words per line of text, and the screen wasn’t too cluttered.
This course offers no course activities outside of the required readings and listening assignments for the regular face-to-face course. This is more suited as a podcast than an interactive online course. What I did find out, is that it can not be offered on iTunes U, because of copyright issues, so even Yale acknowledges that this is more of a podcast than an online course. This is admirable and conforms to copyright law. “No matter what technologies are incorporated in the distance environment, the instructor needs to respect copyright restrictions that might apply” (Simonson, et. Al.,2009).
I enjoyed visiting this site, and will use some of the lectures for my class, but some of them are above their heads, as it is designed for college students. It is designed for non—music majors, which makes it easier for everyone to understand, but it is still pretty intense and a lot to take in. The site is not interactive at all and you really have to be willing to watch a video of that length with that much information to fully understand the lesson.
Resources
Open Yale Courses. Retrieved from http://oyc.yale.edu
Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson
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