ing using Skype and Internet2 capabilities, or Massive Open Online Courses—known as “MOOCs”—distance learning is altering traditional teaching models and opening up access to music education to vast new audiences. If there’s one unifying factor to making these ventures successful, it’s that the online-learning initiatives themselves are natural extensions of the organizations’ overall missions. “The wonderful thing about MOOCs is they kind of flip the learning model on its head,” says Doug McLennan, founder and editor of the arts-and-culture digest ArtsJournal and driving force behind several recent online courses, including ones at the Ojai and Spring for Music festivals. “The goal isn’t to get exposure to a great teacher so much as it is that a great teacher frames the issue or topic in an interesting way and puts a road map together. Then by virtue of the fact that you can have 100,000 people in the class, you start to identify all this hidden expertise in a mass number of people.” E-Classroom as Teaching Adjunct
Traditional institutions of higher learning like four-year colleges, universities, and even conservatories might be expected to have the most interest in distance learning, as well as the most to fear. Yet the Curtis Institute of Music, Eastman School of Music, and the Juilliard School are all using distance-learning to supplement, not supplant, their core missions. According to Eastman’s Ricker, the first e-Theory course, in 2009—Music Theory Fundamentals, taught by Professor Steve Laitz—was i ntended to help incoming students shore up fundamentals. “We wanted to create something that would help
For musical institutions, online learning raises unique challenges, from achieving adequate audio fidelity on live-streamed lessons to evaluating thousands of students with vastly different levels of musical knowledge. “Education is changing and you can’t be afraid of technology,” says Ramon Ricker, professor emeritus of saxophone at the Eastman School of Music. In his role as director of Eastman’s Institute for Music Leadership, Ricker is also instigator of many of the school’s americanorchestras.org
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Bob McClenahan
Pete Checchia
Below, left to right: ArtistWorks co-founder and president David Butler; David Bilger, principal trumpet in the Philadelphia Orchestra and a teacher at ArtistWorks; and cofounder Patricia Butler
Courtesy of the Curtis Institute of Music
David Ludwig—dean of artistic programs and a member of the composition faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music—co-teaches From the Repertoire: Western Music History through Performance through the school’s partnership with Coursera.
distance-learning offerings. “Students want these courses and they want to be able to take them in their bathrobes if they can.” “The opportunities for e-learning are clearly boundless,” says Polly Kahn, vice president for learning and leadership development at the League of American Orchestras. “It seems to me that this is a revolution, ultimately around access, that we should celebrate. If we approach the everexploding technologies as an opportunity to meet people where they are, provide entry points, and widen our communities—as defined through a 21st-century, not 20thcentury, lens—then there’s so much room for us to grow as contributors to an expanding world of consumers, interested in everything, but on their own terms.” Online learning trends hold significant potential for shaking up the education world, and raising questions about potential downsides. Will online courses and lessons negatively impact local teaching jobs? Can students learn as effectively through online materials? Does peer reviewing actually work? And what about those thousands of students—a majority, in many cases—who will never finish the course? While answers to some of these questions are still up for debate, one thing is clear: distance learning is here to stay. From storied conservatories like Curtis, Juilliard, and the Eastman School of Music to summer festivals like California’s Ojai, to multidisciplinary institutions like the National Arts Centre in Ottawa to nimble entrepreneurial ventures such as ArtistWorks—all are all getting in on the action. And whether it’s one-on-one video exchange, live-stream-