Congratulations to UNE’s Dr Alana Blackburn who, alongside University of Melbourne’s Dr Carol Johnson, was recently awarded an ASCILITE D2L research grant.
This grant will provide Dr Blackburn the opportunity to collaborate with Dr Johnson (Senior Lecturer in Music) at Melbourne Conservatorium to explore online teaching and assessment in tertiary music education.
Dr Blackburn has quite the passion for teaching and researching online music education. She has been teaching and researching in this field for some time and notes the importance of “keeping up with new trends, methodologies and approaches to teaching, learning and assessment in what is first thought of as a ‘challenging’ discipline to teach online".
This grant will assist Dr Blackburn’s research by providing the chance to receive feedback from music performance students about approaches to online assessment.
While music has been taught online at UNE since 2015, Dr Blackburn says that “we are constantly looking at improving ways to deliver learning material and assessing our students. We will investigate the use and impact of instructor video feedback for undergraduate and postgraduate performance students (rather than written/text feedback) and design a protocol for using this method of feedback delivery".
“This will provide more authenticity in music assessment in terms of providing visual (gestural) and aural exchanges between lecturer and student. This will help musicians develop and use a variety of communication skills and incorporate more real-life learning and teaching examples within the online environment.”
UNE’s Music staff have expertise working with educational technologies to help them teach music in online modes. Dr Blackburn noted that UNE staff have written numerous texts on online music theory, performance, collaboration, performance and assessment – in addition to developing successful pedagogical approaches to online learning in the musical discipline.
“At the heart of our pedagogical approach for applied disciplines is encouraging students to be creative; develop networks and relationships, and collaborate with other artists and practitioners in other disciplines within their own communities and beyond.”
Not only will this grant be a boon to Dr Blackburn’s research, but also a recognition of her fantastic abilities in the field of music education.
To be awarded a grant from organisations such as ASCILITE (Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education) and D2L is such a privilege; they are leading bodies in tertiary online learning.
“The networks and support ASCILITE provide to researchers around the world is incredibly valuable. I’m also excited to be working with Dr Johnson who is an extremely well-regarded academic in this field. The opportunity to collaborate with someone of her expertise on a project like this, particularly in the subject of music, is very exciting.”
