Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies for Remote Instruction
Something that most music teachers have had to reckon with in 2020 is the transition to remote instruction. While many other fields have been able to use remote instruction effectively for years, COVID-19 has forced music teachers to adapt quickly and effectively. In many cases, the livelihood of independent studio teachers has depended on their ability to make this transition. Understandably, this has led to much confusion and even feelings of helplessness in many studios – both for the teachers and the students. In this article, I provide a breakdown of the necessary technological tools for effective remote instruction and how to implement them successfully in your studio. I also address some common instructional dilemmas and ways to work around them.
The Bare Necessities
All you need to get started with remote instruction is the following:
A laptop, smartphone, or tablet with a webcam
Videoconferencing software
A stable internet connection
Any device with a web-camera is going to provide sufficient video quality for instructional purposes. Many teachers and other working professionals have been quick to purchase expensive webcams, but in most cases the built-in webcams on most devices will provide clear enough video for instructional purposes. More important than the quality of your video is the hardware in your device – if your device is more than 5 years old you may run into any number of issues including software compatibility and a general inability for your computer to handle the workload due to older hardware.
What videoconferencing software you decide to use is largely a function of what technology platforms are available to you and your students. As of this writing, “Zoom” remains the most popular for its compatibility and ease of use, though there are several alternatives, some of which are free. Here are some other popular platforms (in no particular order):
Microsoft Teams
Google Hangouts
Facetime (Apple only)
Skype
Jitsi
Regardless of which platform you use, you will need a stable internet connection with sufficiently high speeds to ensure that call quality stays consistent throughout a lesson and to prevent any drops in service. To maximize your connection’s stability and speed, some platforms recommend that you are directly connected to your wireless router via ethernet cable. In some situations maintaining a wired connection may be impractical, but if you have a sufficiently fast wireless connection the difference may be negligible.
While these elements are the bare minimum tools necessary to provide reliable remote video-instruction, there are a few upgrades that will significantly improve the learning experience for your students.
Cost-worthy Upgrades
Since the early days of the pandemic when teachers had just made their initial forays into remote lessons, one issue continues to be the most problematic: audio quality. The number one contributing factor to poor audio is the quality of the built-in microphones in most devices. Whether you are on a laptop, smartphone, or tablet, these microphones are designed to capture the voice at a relatively close distance for use in phone calls and video conferences. They are not designed to capture the amount of detail or the wide range of dynamics encountered in music lessons, leading to metallic or distorted sounding audio. The easiest way to improve your outgoing sound is to purchase an external microphone. Luckily, there are several user-friendly options available for both you and your students.
For most users on laptops, the easiest solution is to purchase a USB microphone. This type of microphone requires little to no technical knowledge beyond how to plug it into your laptop’s USB port, and how to select it in your sound settings. Typically, most models range from $50 to $200 and are compatible with most computers regardless of whether you use a Mac or a PC. Here are a few examples from least to most expensive:
If you are using a smartphone or tablet, your options are more limited but here are a couple of popular options available:
Any of the above microphones will provide dramatically improved outgoing sound. Regardless of which option you choose, be sure to check the manufacturer specifications to ensure that it is compatible with your device, though it should not be an issue in most cases. Additionally, Zoom’s newly introduced “High Fidelity Music Mode” boasts increased audio quality allowing you to make the most of your microphone, though this feature is limited to those using a computer rather than a phone or tablet (for a short video on how to enable this setting, click here). With an improved microphone and this setting enabled, you may notice more issues with echo or reverb during your calls – to prevent this, ensure that both you and your students are using headphones to eliminate the dreaded feedback loop.
Note that this new setting will not yield dramatically improved audio unless you are using a higher quality microphone than what is built into your device. Why? Simply put, sound is data and Zoom’s new mode allows you to transfer larger amounts of data. However, being able to transfer 10 megabytes of data per second isn’t going to help if your microphone can only collect 5 megabytes of data per second. Furthermore, all of this is dependent on having sufficiently fast internet speeds that can support the increased ability to transfer sound data.
Regardless of which software and audio equipment you choose to use for your studio, know that a major limiting factor will be the speed of your internet. Due to the data-heavy nature of videoconferencing, it is unavoidable that teachers will need the fastest internet service they can afford. In general, low internet speeds will result in low call quality as video and audio quality will be scaled down to fit you and your students’ bandwidth even if you have the best tools. However, with so many people shifting to telecommuting, many internet service providers have provided more affordable pricing for their fastest internet packages allowing more people than ever to gain access to high speed internet.
For most situations, upgrading your microphone and internet speeds will yield the most significant boosts in quality. Further improvements in call quality are incremental even though equipment becomes exponentially expensive. Higher quality microphones don’t generally feature USB connections, meaning you’ll need an audio interface – a combination that can very easily surpass $1000. To bypass the audio quality component altogether, some teachers have opted to use digital pianos with MIDI outputs connected directly to their computers. However, these require specific software to allow you to use them as a sound-input during a video call, adding another layer of complexity that you may not want to spend time navigating.
You may even find that you want multiple video angles, which can be achieved using several cameras and software like ManyCam, Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), or simply by switching video sources in your videoconferencing software. Again, these add another layer of complexity that you may not have the energy to navigate. Anecdotally, I found myself having to transition rapidly between teaching my lecture courses and applied lessons. This made using multi-camera setups cumbersome and complicated, and I’ve since had perfectly fine results using a simple music stand to elevate and tilt my laptop’s webcam to capture different angles.
Simple setup using a music stand allowing me to quickly and easily alter video angles.
Common Instructional Issues
Even with the best technology at our disposal, there are still instructional problems that require creative solutions. While some issues, like addressing technique, simply require us to improve our communication skills, others have several convenient solutions. A few of these issues include playing duets with your students, annotating their scores, and even planning different activities.
Duet Playing
Duet playing is extremely common throughout any method series and is a core part of an elementary student’s learning experience. The lag time we encounter due to internet connections and data transfer speeds is unavoidable, making playing duets in real-time impossible. However, this limitation need not mean that we neglect this valuable element of instruction. Consider recording the teacher accompaniments for your students at two tempos (one performance tempo and one practice tempo) so that they can practice playing with the accompaniment on their own.
If you are not confident in your ability to record the accompaniments, you can even transcribe them into programs like MuseScore, a free music notation program, and create an audio file. This is especially convenient, because you can set the tempo for the exported audio files, allowing you to make recordings at different tempos to accommodate different stages of proficiency. Another benefit is that you can change the instrumentation used in the recordings, giving your students variety in the way the accompaniment sounds!
Whether you record these accompaniments or create midi audio files, you can compile these recordings into a single playlist on an internet-based service like SoundCloud or YouTube so that your entire studio can access them.
Score Annotations
In traditional instruction, many teachers take time to write in their students’ scores, and there are a couple of convenient options that allow us to continue this practice through screen-sharing, and through cloud-based software.
Annotating a score is a simple process when you have an image of the page you are working with. Images are easy to annotate using simple software like MS Paint or Powerpoint. When screen-sharing, a student can take screenshots of your annotations or copy your annotations onto their score as you are writing and explaining them. Using free cloud-based software like Google Slides (Google’s cloud-based equivalent to Powerpoint), students can even maintain access to your annotations after the lesson. Some videoconferencing software, like Zoom, even allows you to take control of your student’s computer so that you can annotate their digital images for them.
Alternative Activities
It can be helpful to think of lessons not as “piano lessons” but “music lessons that take place at the piano.” This line of thinking decentralizes the focus on the piano and can give you more freedom to address other elements of musicianship that will, indirectly, benefit their piano playing. In this new instructional format, it’s easier than ever to plan alternate activities. To break up the lesson, make online flashcards using www.cram.com for basic concepts to use with your students for review, use some of the music theory exercises at www.musictheory.net, or even have listening sessions on YouTube!
Conclusions
While transitioning to remote instruction has been a tremendous learning experience for many of us, there are positives to this new format. For example, students showing mild symptoms of illness can choose to take their lesson from home, allowing them not to miss lessons and preventing teachers from having to schedule make-up lessons. Teachers are honing their ability to communicate complex tasks through creative instructions and visual demonstrations, rather than physical adjustments made directly to the student. More teachers are now able to diversify their recruiting by making virtual instruction a permanent part of their studio offerings, allowing them to reach students that may want to study with them despite prohibitive commuting distances. While we may inherently prefer traditional face-to-face instruction, remote instruction is here to stay in some capacity. Despite some of its limitations, it can reach a similar level of effectiveness when combined with the right tools and creative thinking.
What valuable lessons have you learned during your transition to virtual instruction? Let me know in the comments below!
