Lessons Learned in a Decade of

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Lessons Learned in a Decade of Online Audio Education

By Brian Smithers, Program Director, Audio Production, Full Sail University

When the COVID-19 pandemic effectively course in Audio Fundamentals, a labor-intensive closed campuses across the country, our period experiment with rich rewards. All of our faculty of adjustment was about a nanosecond. I lead give their students personal feedback on their an entirely online bachelor’s program in audio work, and a number do it via individual videos, production, so our students do their schoolwork which, while time-consuming, are obviously a from home to begin with, and working from great way of bridging the miles. home has actually been pretty nice, all things We work to build feedback cycles into as many considered. assignments as possible, inducting students into

While my colleagues in Full Sail University’s the same “try/fail/analyze/repeat” workflow each immersive campus-based programs made of us turns to our advantage in our creative collaborative efforts to quickly—and as seamlessly lives—no easy feat in our accelerated programs, as possible—make the transition to delivering but, again, well worth it for the benefit of our quality instruction in a different forum, in Audio students. Modeling constructive analytical Production we quickly realized that we were the feedback is essential to building self-sufficient least-weird thing in our students’ lives. engineers, producers, sound designers, editors

As heavy a lift as it was to figure out what, say, a and mixers; making online students feel part Show Production final project looked like online, of a community of common practice is equally our campus educators had the benefit of an inBrian Smithers, Program Director, Audio essential. house Learning Management System (LMS) that Production, Full Sail University. Known as Project LaunchBox, all of our their students already used and their colleagues’ students purchase a standard technology package experience of ten years of teaching audio online. customized to their degree program, so they have At Full Sail, we started teaching Music Production online first, and then a worthy laptop, interface and mic(s), along with access to the same DAWs. about six years ago we added the online-only Audio Production program, This not only simplifies the process of creating and delivering online so we were fortunate to have all that experience with distance education curriculum and reviewing student work, it was critical to the success of our under our belts. pandemic response for campus programs, as we weren’t entirely dependent

It wasn’t easy when we first went online. We joined a field dominated on the gear and software in our studios and labs on campus. by other platforms and MOOCs, in which most content was delivered as Part of that package is a pair of Sennheiser HD-280 headphones, which recorded lectures that were indistinguishable from campus instruction. We our faculty also have, so we always know we have a common listening quickly realized that was not the way to create engaging online curriculum. reference. If a student submits something mixed on their bass-hyped

Obviously, there’s no single best way to teach online, but we approached popular-brand headphones, we can get them to listen to it on the 280s to it as its own medium with unique strengths and weaknesses. hear where they went wrong. In our Audio Production bachelor’s degree

Among its great strengths is the ability to engage with students program, students also get a pair of small studio monitors so they can learn asynchronously, allowing each of them to integrate school into their to hear the difference between mixing in the air and mixing in cans. own busy lives. Video lessons, readings, exercises and projects may still To extend the business day and to reach other time zones, a dedicated be sequential, but they are not scheduled. That turns into a disadvantage team of faculty devotes their time to staff two evening support lines—one when a student has a question 20 minutes before a Sunday midnight for technical issues and one for musical questions—that supplement deadline, but that disadvantage turns into another great strength—online our existing LMS technical support team in order to address our audio learning builds skills in project management and independent problemstudents’ specific needs. This is one of many ways we’ve responded to solving. student feedback over the past 10 years, as they told us the flexibility and

We do still include synchronous lessons, lectures, demonstrations and/ support they need to deal with time zones, work schedules and family life. or help sessions weekly in order to offer real-time interaction and a sense After 30 years of telling students where to be and when, working with of community for our students who are able to attend. All such sessions online students required us to reconsider our approach. After 10 years of are, of course, recorded for later viewing. doing it online, we’re still learning, growing and innovating to meet the

If your class sizes are reasonable—which they need to be—online needs of our students. instruction can become potentially more individualized than face-to-face instruction. Teaching on campus, I was almost always talking with groups Brian Smithers recently celebrated 20 years at Full Sail University, where he is of students, but online I instituted one-on-one, real-time oral exams in one the Program Director of Audio Production.