This article details online education design at an Australian university undergraduate music program. The author reviews the rapid development of online learning activities relating to music performance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic enforced lockdown. The lockdown imposed serious challenges for music educators, the overarching one being how to engage students via a screen rather than in a rehearsal room. As the unit designer/assessor, the author utilized specific cloud-based audio software networking tools that are accessible to students (Audiomovers, Splice Studio) to devise learning activities that encouraged creative interactive learning. The author details the advantages and disadvantages of each learning activity. As a substitute for face-to-face interaction, online learning has substantial limitations in relation to music education. Student engagement with accessible online audio tools can enhance skills and knowledge development and interactive learning, thus maximizing student satisfaction and collaborative learning outcomes.

In musical instrument training, researchers have gradually started exploring the potential of interactive technologies supporting learning processes and teaching methods. Although numerous technological tools have been proposed to enhance instrument learning and teaching, these methods rarely find their way into daily practice and teaching routines. In this study, we report data from an online survey study administered to violin and drum kit teachers. Results reveal distinct learning profiles of novice violin and drum kit students and exhibit a variety of teaching approaches toward adults and children. Furthermore, they provide more insight into teachers’ opinions on the use of virtual reality (VR) and smart wearable technologies in early instrumental training, as well as their attitudes regarding technology design. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of involving teachers in the initial stages of technology design to facilitate technology acceptance and adoption, prevent potential mismatches between requirements regarding technological functionality and actual user needs, and promote musical growth and skill acquisition.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many schools temporarily moving to online learning. For some general music teachers, this involves prerecording lessons. This column discusses how general music teachers can create prerecorded lessons using Microsoft PowerPoint.

This article considers the supporting technologies and practices for effective semi- anonymous peer review in traditional music theory and composition-related courses: orchestration, arranging, and composition. A coordinated approach probes two questions nested within one broad case study: (1) does the use of peer review in music theory and composition-related courses create meaningful, constructivist-inspired learning experiences, and (2) what web technologies can efficiently and effectively accomplish its activities? The article first provides a constructivist theoretical framework; next, it explains the methodologies, technologies, and resulting feedback from using peer review in a three-course study; and finally it provides concluding remarks on the many benefits and manageable problems that can arise in the social constructivist peer review music classroom.

For performing arts education, Sage on the stage and Learn from the Masters were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and so did everything else. All lectures, tutorials and other face-to-face skill-based training sections were cancelled and were replaced by the online model. Such a model was only seen as one of the supplementary components for performing arts education in the past. From January 2020, this online pedagogy was inevitably placed to surmount the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The social distancing measures demanded the blended pedagogy into a new online approach, in which the traditional face-to-face teaching to be replaced by synchronous online learning (facilitated by technologies such as Zoom, Cisco Webex, Google Class, Panopto etc.). Meanwhile, to offer opportunities for cognitive participation which allows students to process the learning and be reflective, webinar and innovative performance projects were launched from the concept of ‘flipped classroom and outcome-based education.’ This mixed approach (blended learning, flipped classroom, and outcome-based education) is described as ‘hybrid learning’ in this study.

The COVID-19 public health crisis forced all educators to explore technology in the largest test of online teaching during the spring of 2020. Included in the population of educators were the studio music faculty steeped in a tradition of side by- side teaching. This research study explored the application of lighting and sound technology adapted to enhance the experiences in a 10-week, fully online course of one-to-one private lessons with a music studio faculty member and his students during summer 2020. The students received condenser microphones, headphones, and webcams with instructions for hardwiring into their home internet connection. The faculty member used the same materials plus a speaking microphone overhead on a boom along with three-point lighting: key, fill, and backlights. The lighting was used to ensure a bright studio, much like a television anchor employs. Students noticed the microphone use by instructor and commented his adaptation to the virtual lessons were more flexible while one participant exclaimed he grew more as a musician and covered more material in virtual lessons than in previous face-to-face lessons with the same instructor. The faculty member noticed better sounds from students when using the condenser microphones and less feedback because of the closed back headphones.