Week 5 - Reading Reflection

This week’s readings focused on assessment and curriculum design.  Assessment in music, both psychomotor (performance skill) and cognitive (knowledge) certainly resonates with me.  In the district where I work, the music department is always concerned with the importance of assessments, but not all teachers share the same practice or assessment tools. For instance, not all band teachers use SmartMusic, and even then, those using SmartMusic assess only the psychomotor skills, but never assess cognitive skills. These teachers appear more concerned with the performance outcomes (sound).

According to Bauer (2014), assessment serves as an indicator that shows if students are learning and if teachers are teaching effectively. In addition, Bauer points out that assessing music knowledge (cognitive) is a complicated process because “a cognitive understanding of something doesn’t necessarily translate to the ability to do that thing (of course the opposite is also true)” (p. 134).

When it comes to music learning, and especially the psychomotor aspect, technology has made assessment easier than ever before. The available technology focused on the development of performance skills can help teachers keep records of progress by actually keeping track of practice and individual recorded performances. In my fourth grade instrumental classes, I use SmartMusic and performance rubrics to regularly assess students.  In general, my students respond favorably to this program, and parents have indicated that students seem to practice more often since they have been using SmartMusic.  Many of my students volunteer to perform individually in the classroom, and don’t seem to feel the pressure that they are being evaluated.

Although this kind of technology has been helpful, it is not without limitations.  SmartMusic only assesses the psychomotor part of music learning. I find that when I use tests designed in Microsoft Word, these assessments seem to be unappealing to my students, who are digital natives. Google forms and Flubaroo.com provide great tools, but when using these, students may feel like they are taking just another standardized test. In order for the 21^st century music teachers to assess music students thoroughly, these teachers must have access to technology that is designed to assess cognitive understanding.  The technology must also be as engaging as the technology used for performance assessment.  For example, it would be helpful if a site existed that allowed teachers to pull interactive materials into a single assessment or game. 

To conclude, Chapter 6 is a great resource for instructional design and assessment, but I would have preferred more specific and attractive cognitive interactive assessment tools that match the level of sophistication of the technology used for assessing the psychomotor (performance skill) aspect of music.   

References

Bauer, W. I. (2014). A conceptual framework for technology - Assisted music learning. In Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music (p. 134). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.