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.

A virtual ensemble is a digital musical product that uses multiple recordings edited together to form a musical ensemble. Creating virtual ensembles can be a way for music educators to engage students through online music-making. This article presents eight steps for creating virtual ensembles in music education courses and classrooms. The steps are (1) identifying objectives and desired outcomes, (2) selecting repertoire, (3) developing learning resources, (4) creating an anchor for synchronizing, (5) choosing a recording method, (6) set- ting up a collection platform, (7) editing in postproduction, and (8) distributing the product. As online music production becomes more prevalent, projects like virtual ensembles can pro- vide creative and exciting experiences for music teachers and students, whether produced in the classroom or through remote means on the Internet.

The emergency situation due to the spread of COVID-19 has brought new requirements to Higher Education to continue the learning process. In musical ensemble class, performance practice is mandatory and plays a crucial role in musical education. The pandemic has forced all classes online, but for performance practice, it was mandatory to implement a new type of student-teacher interaction, such as e-tivity. It is a dynamic and interactive learning process led by a teacher online. The investigation of the efficiency of e-tivity for training musical ensemble skills was carried out in this paper. The research was tested through experimental work that took place at Kazan Federal University (Russian Federation). Due to a complete shift in the education process to distanced learning, all disciplines were studied online, including the specific musical courses that required collective work with face-to-face interaction. The curriculum of future music teachers includes an ensemble basic course to train students‘ musical performance skills in groups. For the study, 114 students from classes with instrumental and vocal ensembles were gathered and were organized by means of e-tivity based on several online tools, including Aiseesoft Video Converter Ultimate. This tool creates a video with a split-screen effect. By using such a tool, students created the video by following the teacher‘s instructions separately, and afterward they united their musical records in one video with a split-screen effect. At the end of the research work, musical artworks belonging to certain art styles, namely classical, Tatar and Russian folk music, and jazz, were collected. The analysis of the obtained data exhibited a high level of results in each criterion scale and effectiveness of the online work with musical ensembles. Students saw improvement in self-education by the means of creativity and critical self-assessment. The increasing frequency of students‘ listening of their own performance during the ensemble music-making by e-tivity brought advantages for the involuntary repetition process.

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.

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 purpose of this research is to assess the effectiveness of using cloud storage services as a means to facilitate the rehearsal process in online choral vocal education. Third-year students from three Chinese educational institutions participated in this study. Thus, this research involved a total number of 336 people (320 students and 16 teachers). Accordingly, students were divided into two groups based on the training approach. The first one, Group A, consisted of students who received choral vocal training under the conventional program without the application of online platforms and cloud storage services. The second one, Group B, included students who received education using technology-enabled training methods. They participated in choral rehearsals on Zoom using multimedia materials from Google Drive. According to the results of the final assessment, Group B performed better than Group A; the difference in the average performance score was 5% between the two groups.

With the abrupt onset of the global lockdown in spring 2020, teachers had to adjust their teaching mode by using videoconferencing platforms for several months. In the academic year 2020–2021, instruction shifted to a mode of blended learning where face-to-face lessons were prioritized, and remote learning was employed in specific contexts. This study examined the experiences of conservatory and music schoolteachers with videoconferencing software, their preferences, difficulties faced, and conclusions drawn after having taught online. A survey was sent to all conservatories and some music schools in Spain for data collection, eliciting 485 responses. As per the study’s findings, most participants preferred face-to-face lessons before and after the lockdown. Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, and WhatsApp were the most frequently used platforms, of which Zoom and Skype were correlated with better student performance and satisfaction. Video calls were generally combined with other asynchronous methods to enhance learning.

The global pandemic caused by the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in spring 2020 resulted in schools moving to remote learning (RL) models for the remainder of the academic year. The purpose of this study was to examine the practices, experiences, and perspectives of elementary and secondary school band directors in relation to RL during this period. Directors (N = 462) responded to survey questions related to several aspects of RL, including (a) technologies and materials, (b) activities and assessments, (c) student participation, (d) the challenges of teaching remotely, and (e) the extent to which experiences varied among participants in low-poverty versus high-poverty schools and at the elementary/middle school level versus high school level. I also examined (f) the conditions and practices of programs that experienced both high and consistent levels of student participation. Data indicated that the COVID-19 shutdown created many challenges for directors, particularly in schools with higher poverty levels and/or in rural locations. However, RL also created opportunities for instrumental teachers to incorporate into curricula (a) a wider range of technology; (b) more of a focus on individual musicianship; (c) lessons in music theory, history, and culture; and to a lesser extent, (d) student creativity through composition and arranging.