Using eCourseware

For college professors of music ensembles.

During the five years I spent as a gospel choir director of a university gospel choir, I tried to think of ways to utilize eCourseware in my classes. I used the site to provide students access to documents, engagements, grades, websites, and voice parts.

Documents. Teaching an undergraduate class, I always found myself furnishing lyrics to students who were absent or lost their lyrics. I found it helpful to provide the first sheet for students in the rehearsal and place the document on eCourseware site. I also used to site to give students access the the course syllabus and code of conduct I used to govern student behavior. Students had continual access to this information.

Engagements. Gospel choirs are often asked to sing on and off campus. In my initial syllabus, I put the dates, times, place, call time, and performance time on the syllabus. Some times, I knew of an engagement but didn't have any specifics and had to put TBA on the syllabus. At other times, people would ask you to perform after the semester had started. So in addition to sending email, I would place it on the eCourseware site so that students saw it when they first logged on to the page.

Posting Grades. Attendance, performances, and singing tests were the basis for the grading in my class. The eCourseware site made it easy to put the grades on the website. The time consuming part was putting the grades in weekly as the semester progressed.

Voice Parts. Because of copyright, I did not place songs on the website for students to access. I had every intention of recording vocal parts as I taught them in class and placing them on the website so students could review their parts at their leisure. I also had the intention of recording voice parts of a spiritual or difficult classical song using a digital recorder and placing them on the sits so students could listen to it before I introduced it in class. Even though I did not execute my original plan, the eCourseware site can easily handle this capability.

Websites. There are some websites that I used on a regular basis to aid me in my search for gospel lyrics and music. I placed these links on the website for students to access.

Teachers of music ensembles do not have to be neglect technology available to them. One simply needs to rethink the function of teachers and figure out how to do make their job easier and give students more access using technology.