Backstage Pass: How Active Learning and User-Generated Content Immerse University Students in the Music Business

• In Event: 15.015 - The Knowledge Community and Inquiry Model: Synthesizing a Decade's Research for a Widening Audience

Abstract

Objectives
The purpose of this study was to bring the pedagogical methods of active learning and user/student-generated content into a post-secondary seminar to immerse students, by way of a KCI-designed curriculum (Slotta, J. D., & Najafi, 2010), in a real-life experience working with actual musical artists. The goal of this curricular design was to prepare media students for careers in the music industry.

Theoretical Framework
The need for students to obtain 21st century skills is a common refrain amongst educators, but pedagogical practices remain largely entrenched in a top-down instruction mode. In contrast, Ann Brown (e.g., Brown 1994) viewed students as “active constructors” of their knowledge within a community of learners (Bielaczyc & Collins, 1999). Active learning is an instructional method whereby students are engaged in (non-lecture) activities designed to promote collaboration, reflection, and problem solving, with the goal of improved learning outcomes, critical thinking and applications of course content (Bonwell and Eison, 1991; Felder and Brent, 2009; Prince, 2004).

Methods
Participants in this design-based research (DBR) study included two sections of a post secondary seminar (N=56). DBR provides certain affordances well suited for a study of “complex educational systems” (Bannan-Ritland, 2003). Built into the KCI design was authentic learning with real-life activities and artifacts. By situating themselves as instructors, the authors also conducted as action research, to improve their practice and ensuring student welfare is kept at the forefront of the design (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, 2014).

Data Sources and Results
During the seminar students co-constructed a community knowledge base by writing blog posts and working together to create other digital artifacts all of which are used as the basis for on-going in class discussion and individual reflection. The course goal was not to teach any particular topic but rather, was left open to students to pick areas of the music business of particular interest to them, then to share those interests by way of blogs and subsequent discussion. Students also worked with actual musical artists to create marketing plans, various artifacts, planning and executing of live ticketed event public concert. The data for this study includes student-generated blog posts, reflective writing, audio/visual artifacts and field notes. Content analysis was used to code student writing. 86.4% of students agreed that an active learning student-generated content teaching approach better suited their style of learning and was preferred over a lecture format. 90.9% agreed that they had participated in a real-life music industry activity with group situations that transcended the classroom and 68.2% agreed that in this class they experienced stress and pressure at the threshold or beyond their normal range.

Scholarly Significance
This study advances the implementation of KCI by enacting the curricular design in an advanced undergraduate seminar class. This approach allowed for a rich exploration of how technology, pedagogy and curriculum in higher education can support engagement by encouraging students to express themselves in relation to the subject domain and a wider cultural context and enriching individual experience through the process of collective sharing of knowledge.

Authors

• Steven Paul Ehrlick, Ryerson University

• Noah Schwartz