This joint presentation at the ATMI Convention in Toronto, November 1-5, explores collaborative models for exchanging, sharing, and developing projects in making, teaching, and learning music using video/audio and digital technologies, including uses of the internet as a means of establishing and maintaining communication as well as collaborative multimedia broadcasts of interactive performances from different locations. In addition to the presentation of materials described in this abstract, experiments involving interactive music collaboration and education utilizing the broad band advantages of Internet II will be conducted as feasible in terms of conference facilities.

Abstract

This session will feature two models of distance collaboration for music instruction. One is a web-based project that began in 1996, focusing on creative aspects of composition and performance that united musicians, actors and dancers in the US, Canada, and Romania. The other is a graduate music program (begun in 1993), that uses interactive televised instruction, web-based videoconferencing and electronic course management (WebCT), and other electronic technology to deliver instruction. After an overview of both projects, there will be a discussion of the benefits and problems that collaborating at a distance posed for the students, creative artists, and instructors.

Description

This paper will examine two models of collaboration in which several electronic media and continuing participation among colleagues and students are being used to facilitate musical production, teaching, and learning. The purpose of this session is to review the process of collaboration that led to creative and pedagogical enhancements in these models beyond that available in the traditional collegiate curriculum or classroom setting. Collaboration as a process for engaging in productive pursuits and educational activities is being applied with increasing frequency around the world. As the explosion of information afforded by the internet has overtaken the teacher as arbiter of information, so has the complexity and diversity of the human world outflanked traditionally held beliefs on what constitutes credible human production and knowledge. While creative genius that leads to innovation and revolutionary change still emanate from individual people, the realizations of their ideas and discoveries seem to be increasingly dependent upon the cooperation of others. Even for the most independently creative and pedagogically iconoclastic, the ever-changing expectations of peers and learners for what they wish to use and consume can impose pragmatic alliances that, two decades ago, would not have been considered. In its most blatant form, these alliances can be seen in corporate mergers of companies that, prior to their amalgamations, were mean competitors. In education, distance learning, which could reasonably be considered explosive in its growth in recent years, has generated partnerships between campus and continuing education academic units, school libraries, and computing services in response to institutional needs for program growth and student revenue.

Collaborations have not always been undertaken just for practical reasons. In the case of distance learning, cooperation between various school or campus units provided opportunity to utilize new and emerging technologies. These tools have affected the means by which courses are designed, taught, and knowledge acquired by the learner. The combination of expertise and resources from different campus services could provide more sophisticated environments for presenting information and enhancing learning. Electronic mail, videoconferencing, chat rooms, listservs, and threaded discussion groups made access to information from course instructors and fellow students more convenient than the traditional mode of trying to contact professors outside of their office hours. Many distance learning initiatives have been concerned with providing expertise as a service to students who would otherwise not have access to high quality faculty and institutions Still others have engaged in intriguing distance collaborations beyond teaching and learning, possibly to test the medium to see what it could do for them or to bring creative souls from geographical distant locations and dissimilar disciplines to conduct serious work. In music, distance collaborations do not abound. Excluding some exotic events where prominent musicians have performed continentally and internationally, prohibitive costs and lack of access to high quality video broadcasting facilities needed for this kind of activity have inhibited more of them from occurring. In recent years, there have been several semester long music courses offered over the Internet, including one at Illinois State University that incorporated all aspects of the course (including assessments) another at Duquesne University that was taught first using interactive televised instruction and then later over the Internet, and conducting classes taught ITVI at Austin Peay University.

However, there are two other initiatives that, because of their scope and longevity, have been providing insight to the process of distance collaboration. One involves a creative, interdisciplinary project between a group of musicians, actors, and dancers in the US and Canada that utilizes the technology of the internet. The other is a graduate music education program that uses a statewide ITVI system. Although the subject content of both efforts is different, there are several attributes which they share. They both possess some longevity, with strong student and faculty support, thus suggesting that they possess some ongoing, educationally redeemable value to student and teacher. The first initiative started in 1996 (with roots going back to 1993), and continues to build upon itself. The second program, which began broadcasting in the Fall of 1993, commenced its third three-year cycle of courses in August of 1999, averaging 24 student enrollments per course. Both efforts include components of student-generated tasks and projects that can build on the work of others, thus requiring collaboration between teachers and students, teachers and teachers, and students and students. Both pivotally rely on electronic technology, with one predominantly web-based and the other dependent on ITVI (making ancillary use of different electronic media). The first initiative fosters collaborations between creative people in several art forms. The second program's curriculum requires music faculty from the disciplines of music education, music theory, and music history to teach through the medium of ITVI. Maybe the most important common feature of both efforts is that they also incorporate new technological developments as they emerge in, in turn, press at the boundaries of electronic media to serve their interests creatively, musically, and pedagogically.

The Cassandra Project has been utilizing the internet as a collaborative medium in the planning stages as well as the actual performances since 1996. This project was an outgrowth of an earlier project entitled "Navigating Global Cultures" that served as an internet forum for artists, teachers, and students in China, South America and the United States. Emerging from this interdisciplinary forum was the Cassandra Project that began as an experiment in exchanging creative materials among three internet locations:

• a group of musicians at a loft in New York City
• a group of actors at a university in the U.S.
• a group of dancers at a university in Canada

The Cassandra Project resulted in an ongoing creative project in which the World Wide Web is used as a medium for collaboration and creation of artistic content for actors, dancers, and musicians. The project used CUSeeMe, iVisit, e-mail, listservs, and WWW as a means of exchanging and communicating ideas to promote the interactive creative process of distant collaborators. The Cassandra project continues to serve as the impetus for creative projects surrounding the theme of Cassandra, the prophetess of ancient mythology, in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Collaboration in the ITVI project occurred in a variety of ways.

There was, first and foremost, practical collaboration between the university's School of Music, College of Education, Department of Continuing Studies, and university library. There was curricular support provided by the Graduate College and technical support from the university's Center for Educational Technology. There was collaboration among selected members of the three music divisions within the School of Music to ensure that faculty would be available to teach at a distance, quality of course content, continuity within the curriculum, and conformance with the degree requirements of the on-campus graduate program. Students at their ITVI classroom sites undertake group projects and gave presentations to other sites in different courses. During the life of the ITVI program, there also were internet-based videoconferencing sessions between a student in one of the courses who took a class from her home and from two universities in the US and one in Australia, with instructors teaching interactively from their respective sites. Beginning in the Spring of 1999, an electronic course management system (WebCT) was used to further facilitate communication beyond existing, scheduled class meetings, electronic mail, and listserv discussions.

This session will present outcomes of how these collaborative models were effective in enhancing creativity and learning at a distance as well as some of the problems that surfaced during their implementations.

World Wide Web References

Complete ATMI Conference Proposal	http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gilbert/distance/toronto/atmiprop.html
Cassandra 2000	http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gilbert/cassandra
Technological Trends in Music Education	http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gilbert/musedtech/ (password required: contact John Gilbert)
Navigating Global Cultures	http://www.nyu.edu/pages/ngc/ (site being moved to new server)
NYU Music Courses for the Web	http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gilbert/
Toronto 2000 Mega Music Conference	http://www.utoronto.ca/conf2000/