10 Tips for Designing Multimedia Assignments

Today, I gave a presentation/workshop in Music 250, the Music department's practicum for first-year teaching fellows, on the intersection between the digital humanities, digital pedagogy, and multimedia assignments. I'll probably post more content from the workshop in the coming days, but for now, here's a handout I'm fairly proud of: a list of 10 pointers to keep in mind when designing a multimedia assignment. It was inspired by several sources, some of which I was involved in creating at the Bok Center; see bottom.

 

10 Tips for Designing Multimedia Assignments

Compiled by William O'Hara, Harvard University Department of Music

It’s debatable precisely what a multimedia assignment is. For the purposes of this list, a multimedia assignment is anything other than a written essay or an in-class oral presentation. While that can certainly mean digital media—video, animation, sound recording—it can just as easily mean analog media—drawing, art, object-making—or social media—blogging, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.

1. Don’t use multimedia purely for the sake of multimedia. Begin by asking yourself:

• What value does this add?
• Why this format?
• How does this format help my students to learn and communicate?

Any multimedia assignment should go above and beyond the affordances of a written essay or an oral presentation.

2.Think about all the options available to you – visual, aural, interactive, multimodal. Choose your medium carefully based on the lesson, or think about allowing students to choose the medium (or media) that appeal to them, and that will best express their ideas.

• This requires you, and your students, to think about what individual media are good at. Writing is well-suited to complex arguments that unfold over several pages, and it’s also good at analysing other writing: close-reading and unpacking an especially dense paragraph, for example. Video, on the other hand, might be good at showing many examples very quickly: you can easily show 20 examples of something in the space of a minute or two, while an academic essay is often structured around only three to five major examples. What other things might individual media accomplish? What does drawing do that video can’t? And how might different forms of media combine to allow students to think and work in new ways?

3.Beware the myth of the “digital native.” Introduce students to new software gradually; don’t assume that all them have a highly technical background, or even that all of them will have access to the hardware and software being used.

• As a corollary, make sure to ensure that students have open access to all necessary resources through your university

4. Don’t just teach tools; teach critical thinking. Help your students to see multimedia work as academic, not just a creative playground. Emphasize that an academic argument should form the core of their project, not simply aesthetic pursuits. (This reflects back on #2, however – keep in mind that what constitutes an “academic argument” might look different in various formats!)

5. Think about how your multimedia assignment fits into your course as a whole, and how it reflects your teaching philosophy. Does this use of multimedia reflect back on and cohere with other aspects of your teaching, or is this a one-off? (If it’s the latter, start to reflect on the rest of your syllabus, or go back to step 1!)

6. Set clear goals for each assignment; use a rubric if necessary, to help set expectations for students. Communicate your teaching goals to your students, and offer specific guidance about what you want them to get out of their work.

7. Use existing resources and exemplary models of multimedia practices to inspire your students and demonstrate the capacities of a given medium. Direct them to documentaries, artworks, podcasts, etc., that you enjoy and think are especially effective.

8. Helping your students to produce a polished piece of media that they can be proud of is a laudable goal, but keep in mind that a rough prototype or sketch can be just as useful as a thinking tool, and just as valid as an assessment. Throughout your instruction and assignment design, offer your students assistance and opportunities to revise as the project goes on.

9. Value the process as well as the product. Capturing the process of a multimedia assignment can be just as important as evaluating the end product. Think about ways to help students through their work, and ways in which they can demonstrate their mastery to you as they go along (such as submitting multiple drafts, with feedback and the chance to revise). Mistakes can be valuable learning experiences—allow students the room to experiment, to fail, and to learn from their frustrations.

• This goes for your assignment design as well! Think about breaking a large assignment up into several pieces, re-assessing and updating your own assignment design as the class moves through each phase.

10. Consider the issues of ownership that accompany any online or multimedia work. These issues include copyright and fair use, but also the proprietary or open-source status of the tools themselves. Who owns the tools that you’re asking your students to use (particularly in the case of online services or software-as-a-service), and who owns the content that they produce with those tools? Where is that content hosted? Is it private for your students or your class, or accessible to the public? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each situation?

Inspired by:

This list has been inspired by my work as a media fellow at the Derek Bok Center, my own classroom teaching, and conversations with colleagues including Marlon Kuzmick, Mike Heller, Alex Rehding, and Hayley Fenn. You might like to check out some of the following videos and blog posts, which inspired some of the individual points:

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. “So You Want to Design a Multimedia Assignment?” Vimeo, April 2013. https://vimeo.com/66251873.

The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. “DTF Tip: Mike Heller on Multimedia Assignments.” Vimeo, November 2013. https://vimeo.com/80478338.

Jesse Stommel. “12 Steps for Creating a Digital Assignment or Hybrid Class.” Personal blog, August, 2014. http://jessestommel.com/12-steps-for-creating-a-digital-assignment-or-hybrid-class/.

“Critically Evaluating Digital Tools: Morning Session: Assumptions.” Digital Pedagogy Lab, 2015. http://bit.ly/digpedpraxis.

Dream Courses

This year in the Harvard Music Department, we're undertaking a year-long process to examine and reimagine our undergraduate curriculum. We're holding meetings every couple of weeks, to brainstorm among faculty and graduate students, as well as host guest speakers from outside the department, who will share their thoughts on curriculum design, and on current issues in the field (today, for example, is Aniruddh Patel from Tufts, talking about cognitive science and the arts).

Last week, our meeting ended with a call to think up some "dream courses" that we might want to teach if time, resources, and curricular requirements were no object. I thought I'd share mine here before taking them into this afternoon's brainstorming session. The prompt was organized around three different constituencies: a course for non-majors, an introductory course for majors, and a course for advanced majors.

For non-majors, I would propose a course called "Adventurous Listening," which would have an open syllabus driven almost entirely by student input. The course would involve listening to music of many genres and time periods. The professor would provide guidance throughout the semester. Individual weeks or class periods (or multi-week units) would be organized around a specific theme. Each week, students (and the instructor, as an equal participant) would submit recordings, to be listened to outside of class, or occasionally in it. Some weeks might be organized around styles (jazz, rock, baroque, film scores, etc.), while others could be broadly conceptual/topical (musical responses to war, religious music, etc.), and still others autobiographical (music of your childhood/favorite songs/styles of music you've never listened to before). Under the guidance of the instructor, and with students sometimes as peer instructors, these selected recordings (which will obviously vary each semester) will serve as the jumping-off point for teaching the basic concepts of music theory and some current topics in musicology, using readings as necessary, and as driven by the class's collective listening.

For first-year majors, I would teach (or more ideally co-teach, perhaps with a rotating cast) a year-long course that would combine several elements from typical undergraduate courses in music history and music theory, and other disciplines. The course would teach the repertoire and theory of various styles of early music (chant and organum, moving into polyphony up to the 16th century or so) alongside both historical contexts (structure of the liturgy, systems of patronage, styles of notation, print culture, etc.) AND an emphasis on the physical objects and processes involved. This latter area would emphasize not only the study of manuscripts and early printed books (when available), but also their *creation*. Students would study relevant practices of inscription, copying, bookmaking, etc. by creating a class manuscript as a group, over the course of the year. Aided by consultations with relevant faculty from other departments, such as art, English, or history, the class would assemble a book (or books), and fill it with their counterpoint exercises and model compositions, using historical techniques of medieval scribes. The class would thus emphasize the materiality of the artifacts of early music, and more closely unify the study of music history and theory by bringing them together inside the same, comprehensive course, rather than distributing them across different classrooms, or even different semesters or years of a student's college career.

For more advanced majors, I would like to teach a course that would introduce students to the basics of digital recording, and basic techniques of computer-aided music analysis. Since these are only dream courses, I've not thought carefully about repertoire yet, but conceivably the course could encompass any of a number of styles, possibly varying across section, or determined by student interests and background. The class would integrate various styles of computer-aided music research, including corpus studies, the study of performance practice (using tools like Sonic Visualiser), and the analysis of audio files and studio techniques. The class would also emphasize the creation of multimedia art and scholarship; as many projects as possible would be in multimedia form, from digital texts that embed sound and video files, to podcasts, remixes, recordings of original music, and short form video documentaries. A selection of practical readings dealing with studio techniques, and theoretical readings (i.e. sound studies) would also be used.

Essay in Engaging Students

The third volume of the journal Engaging Students has recently been published. It contains my essay "Flipping the Flip: Responsive Video in the Music Classroom," in which I advocate for and demonstrate some ways of using online video to supplement instructional time.

My colleagues at the Derek Bok Center and I have been developing this model for the past year, as a way of quickly producing educational video. (I've featured this in past posts here, here, and here). It's part of an ongoing project we're engaged in, of carefully thinking through the costs and affordances of video instruction. It seems clear that MOOCs and online courses are starting to get past the "video for video's sake" phase, and that the time is right for a re-imagining of how video fits into both online instruction, and on-campus teaching, as a way of conveying information and connecting with students asynchronously. This essay is one early step in that process.

Traces of David Lewin's Early Performances and Compositions in The Harvard Crimson

One of my little academic hobbies is tracking down and sifting through various pieces of David Lewin-related ephemera that can be found around Harvard (as well as elsewhere, such as in the Library of Congress). Lewin graduated from Harvard with a BA in mathematics in 1954, and returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow from 1958 to 1961, after doing his MFA at Princeton. Finally, he came once more back to Harvard in 1985, where he saw out his career as a Professor. While the later stages of Lewin's career are very well documented, I occasionally enjoy spending my time piecing together his early days.

One recent source I've uncovered is the archives of The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper. Their archives are mostly online, though not always sorted or categorized very well. The following are a few articles of interest that contain little bits of biographical information on Lewin, with a bit of my commentary.

First of all, I've learned that Lewin lived in Harvard's Lowell House, and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year. It's interesting to note that he was in the same year, and house, as the author John Updike, who joined PBK at the same time. They surely knew each other, though I wonder how well. Lewin was also apparently director of something called the "Music Choral Society" (about which I can find very little else, anywhere) and was involved in Lowell House Opera.

Lewin was active as a pianist in both solo and chamber concerts during his time at Harvard (and, what's more, such recitals actually received write-ups in the student newspaper!). In May of 1952, he appeared in the Dunster House common room with violinist Sandor Shapiro. Reviewer Lawrence R. Casler wasn't a fan of their programming choices; Lewin and Shapiro played the Brahms Sonata in G Major, Mozart's Violin Sonata in B-flat, K. 15, and Beethoven's Violin Sonata, Op. 12, No. 2; Casler only approved of the Brahms. Lewin is described as playing with "delicate simplicity."

There are also two reviews of solo recitals, both in Lowell House. The first, from October 1952, is again reviewed by Lawrence Casler, who takes Lewin to task for stiffness and sloppiness when playing Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, and criticizes him for choosing to play Schumann's Kreisleriana, which Casler finds "dull and reptitious." Lewin's interpretation of Schoenberg's Op. 19 piano pieces is praised, as is his rendition of Mozart's Piano Sonata in A Minor, K. 310. It's interesting to note here that, despite comments about Lewin's "light touch" and "delicate simplicity" in the last review, Casler here asserts that "Lewin is far removed from the 'tinkly' school of Mozart interpreters. His playing ... was bold and muscular. And though this, lacking grace and delicacy, may not be authentic Mozart, it impressed me as imaginative and original." We thus get two very different descriptions of Lewin's playing style, within the course of only a few months, and from the same (difficult to please) reviewer.

The other recital review, and the last one that I've unearthed, comes from roughly a year later, October of 1953 -- the fall of Lewin's senior year. A new critical voice, Alexander Gelley, brings us an account of Lewin's all-Mozart program, and praises the performer's "intelligent and careful musicianship, conscientious preparation, and highly competent technique." The highlight of the concert was apparently the D Minor Fantasia, with the K. 333 Sonata in B-flat coming a close second. Gelley is less enthusiastic about Lewin's rendition of the C Minor Fantasia, criticizing Lewin's slow tempo and imbalance between melody and accompaniment.

I'm not sure that there's anything new to be found about the circumstances of Lewin's graduation. Summa cum laude in Mathematics. Additionally, he won the Harry Russell Shaw Traveling Fellowship, which, according to his CV, allowed him to spend the 1954-55 school year studying composition with Josef Polnauer in Vienna. I also know from an inscription on one of the compositions held in Isham Library (about which more in a future blog) that Lewin spent some time in Copenhagen in February of 1955, finishing a piece there. [Note that Lewin's classmate John Updike, now president of the Harvard Lampoon, appears alongside him again, winning his own fellowship to the UK, on top of the university's prestigious Bowdoin Prize for English composition.] Finally, in a bit of new info, the article notes that Lewin also received the Wister Prize, which officially goes to a student who excels at both mathematics and music.

Finally, during his time in the Harvard Society of Fellows (1958-61), Lewin had a piece of his premiered by the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra. His "Essay on a Subject of Webern" was performed in March 1961, months before he decamped to Berkeley. Reviewer Anthony Hiss compares the piece (the titular 'subject' of which is derived from the second movement of Webern's String Quartet Op. 28) to Arnold Schoenberg, and describes it as "concise, clear, and pleasing."

More Music 2 Videos

I don't post nearly all the pedagogical videos that I make, but since this was a reasonably big project that took a few days of work, I thought I'd share it here. It's sort of a sequel to the "Snowstorm" videos, delivered in the same format, but the content is a bit more mixed: some is a review of the basics from earlier in the semester, while some of it is directly focused on the content of the final exam, summing up the entire semester. There are even one or two "enrichment" videos at the end, for students who want to extend what they've learned this semester just a little bit further.

Music 2: Final Exam Review on Vimeo.