The Impact of Open Source

The course I chose was "Listening to Music" (http://oyc.yale.edu/music/listening-to-music/)
from Yale's open course library. This course was taught by Dr. Craig Wright on Yale’s campus during 2008's fall semester: twice a week at 50 minutes each class. Just like the other courses that are available via Open Yale Courses, this course is there to help expand educational materials to all who wish to learn (Open Yale Courses, 2008). The course's focus is to introduce the musical novice to the ways in which music is put together and how to listen to a wide variety of musical styles.

Overall, the course does appear to be pre-planned for the distant learning environment it is being shared with. This is an open course that one takes by choice and is not receiving credit for; therefore, it seems like a whole lot of effort was not put into to giving it a lot of bells and whistles. Learners are provided a copy of the course syllabus so that they have the basics that are needed to understand the purpose of the course. They are given the lessons titles (in order) that will be covered to accomplish that purpose. And they are also given the title of the textbook and other music resources that are used during instruction.

Because this course is about the fundamentals of listening to music, audio is used quite a bit. As a result, the lessons of the course have an audio format option. These lessons are also available in transcript and video format to accommodate the different learning styles. After all, varying the presentation of materials to match different learning styles can also ensure the greatest potential for reaching all learners (Simonson, Albright, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2009).

This course does seem to follow the recommendations for online instruction. I only wish that some type of reference list that provided links or information to external sources on the different concepts and songs that were used during the lessons, was made available. I say this because not everyone who takes this open course will purchase the book and CD set that was used with it. Although, one could do the online research him or herself, it would be convenient to the learner to have it outlined and available. This correlates to the suggestion to “Integrate the Power of the Web into the Course” when it comes to online instruction ((Simonson, Albright, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2009).

The designer of this course did implement course activities that maximized active learning for the student. To explain some of the different concepts, popular musical pieces were often used. This was a good strategy because learners are more inclined to pay attention to things they are familiar with or have an interest for. The instructor also, had the class to actively participate in the lessons (where such concepts such as tempo, for example, were being explained) by using certain hand clapping and feet tapping methods. The emphasis on keeping the learners engaged in learning ensures that students will be in tune with the class (Simonson, Albright, Smaldino, & Zvacek, 2009).


References

Open Yale Courses. (2008). Listening to Music. Retrieved December 5, 2010 from http://oyc.yale.edu/music/listening-to-music/

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson.