I taught two graduate seminars this semester and that means a LOT of long final papers to grade. The papers displayed quite a variance in quality. I should also say that I allowed students to do PowerPoint presentations or websites in lieu of papers in my analysis and performance class, but I suggested that they tailor their project to the strengths of the medium they chose (i.e., don't just paste all 20 pages of your paper into 20 PowerPoint slides).
I think next year in an effort to ease everyone's anxiety (my own included!) about final projects I'm going to make my courses much more writing intensive then they have been previously.*
I want to give my students practice writing to different audiences. I think this is an important skill, too often overlooked. I intend to give them some kind of stimulus (short passage of music, journal article) and ask them to summarize it for their peers, their parents, and the Society for Music Theory.
One thing I noticed in my post-tonal theory class was that students' bibliographies included mainly works about a specific piece or a specific composer, but no general theory articles. I'm going to have them start a bibliography early by going into RILM (not JSTOR or Google Scholar or whatever; I'm going to ask them for the accession numbers, too) and locate three sources about the piece and summarize them. Then I'm going to ask them to locate three general theory articles that might contain useful approaches to their specific piece, and have them summarize them.
When I asked my class of 20 graduate students to write a thesis statement for a presentation they just saw, I was alarmed at how many of them were vague, off the mark, etc. I'm going to have students write thesis statements early according to the model given in The craft of research, a book that I only recently came to myself. They suggest starting this way:
Prior to submitting a draft, I think I'm going to require outlines of their papers.
I'm going to have them submit drafts early and subject them to peer review (it'll save me time grading!). I'll, of course, have the final say on changes that need to be made to the draft.
I think that I may require all of them to do PowerPoint presentations and papers so that they get practice translating one to the other.
My fear is that this will take time away from teaching them the subject matter (ideally, the course is about post-tonal theory, or theory pedagogy, or whatever, and not writing), but hopefully the ends--teaching them to think clearly and articulate their thoughts in a variety of ways--will justify the means. Even if they don't understand the finer points of Klumpenhouwer Networks...
So that's my plan. I intend to implement it (with necessary tweaking) in all of my graduate classes. Any other ideas or tactics?
*Our graduate students are all required to take a research methods class, but I suspect some haven't had it by the time they take my class, and others just presume that they can forget all of that now that that semester is over.
I think next year in an effort to ease everyone's anxiety (my own included!) about final projects I'm going to make my courses much more writing intensive then they have been previously.*
I want to give my students practice writing to different audiences. I think this is an important skill, too often overlooked. I intend to give them some kind of stimulus (short passage of music, journal article) and ask them to summarize it for their peers, their parents, and the Society for Music Theory.
One thing I noticed in my post-tonal theory class was that students' bibliographies included mainly works about a specific piece or a specific composer, but no general theory articles. I'm going to have them start a bibliography early by going into RILM (not JSTOR or Google Scholar or whatever; I'm going to ask them for the accession numbers, too) and locate three sources about the piece and summarize them. Then I'm going to ask them to locate three general theory articles that might contain useful approaches to their specific piece, and have them summarize them.
When I asked my class of 20 graduate students to write a thesis statement for a presentation they just saw, I was alarmed at how many of them were vague, off the mark, etc. I'm going to have students write thesis statements early according to the model given in The craft of research, a book that I only recently came to myself. They suggest starting this way:
I'm researching ________ in order to find out _________ because _________.
Prior to submitting a draft, I think I'm going to require outlines of their papers.
I'm going to have them submit drafts early and subject them to peer review (it'll save me time grading!). I'll, of course, have the final say on changes that need to be made to the draft.
I think that I may require all of them to do PowerPoint presentations and papers so that they get practice translating one to the other.
My fear is that this will take time away from teaching them the subject matter (ideally, the course is about post-tonal theory, or theory pedagogy, or whatever, and not writing), but hopefully the ends--teaching them to think clearly and articulate their thoughts in a variety of ways--will justify the means. Even if they don't understand the finer points of Klumpenhouwer Networks...
So that's my plan. I intend to implement it (with necessary tweaking) in all of my graduate classes. Any other ideas or tactics?
*Our graduate students are all required to take a research methods class, but I suspect some haven't had it by the time they take my class, and others just presume that they can forget all of that now that that semester is over.