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Week 1: Welcome to Introduction to Guitar (Post 2)

Alrighty well, today we completed the first week of the course! Yay!

My fingers are already sore and I only learned how to play two chords so that's good...

Mobile Learning and Coursera

I'm fascinated by Coursera's apps. (n.d.) The app is really easy to use and convenient. I can flip it open and access my course at any time! The app is available on my phone but also on my iPad. Another feature that I discovered was that when I left the Coursera app the video I was watching appeared in the corner so that I could keep learning while I was surfing the internet. This is a wonderful example of mobile learning done right!

Course Organization

I'm also really interested in the way they have organized their classes. They all seem to be a combination of teaching activities, practice quizzes, and a final summative assessment. It even makes use of the discussion boards (although I haven't participated yet!).
In Guitar for Beginners (Berklee College of Music, n.d.a), they have an orientation available (Figure 1). The welcome materials are supplementary and they mostly include the learner connection part of the course. They encouraged me to meet the teaching assistants, to connect with my classmates, and to answer a survey in an effort to get to know me. I'm not sure how effective this is. I answered the survey and there was seemingly no impact on my course.
The orientation materials ask the learner to articulate some goals for the course which I thought was very useful especially with a self-paced course. In the course resources, there were links to learner support, an explanation of the peer review project, a quick note on plagiarism, and specialization (Berklee College of Music, n.d.b).

Figure 1
Orientation materials from Guitar for Beginners (Berklee College of Music, n.d.a)

Parts of the Course

As mentioned above, each course uses a combination of teaching videos, practice quizzes, discussions, and a final summative assessment (Coursera, n.d.). I'm accessing the entire course through the app on my iPad so the screenshots I will share are taken from the mobile view.
Figure 2 is an example of the teaching video. As the video plays, the transcript highlights. It's extremely well done! I can also highlight the text to save it in my notes which is a feature I know I will need as I progress in the course! Another way to use the transcript is to scroll ahead and click on a sentence you would like to start on and it adjusts the video to that sentence. I found this feature really helpful when the professor started talking about the basics of music which I'm already familiar with.

Figure 2
Teaching video (Berklee College of Music, n.d.e)


Figure 3 is an example of the mid-video quizzes that pop up to keep the learner engaged. This reminds me of Vizia (n.d.). Vizia (n.d.) claims that adding quizzes throughout the video increases engagements. In my experience, it certainly kept me accountable and reinforced the concepts that were just taught. In addition to the mid-video quizzes, there are other practice quizzes after a set of teaching videos/PDFs. I definitely feel engaged and I can feel my brain working and learning!

 Figure 3
Mid-Video Quiz (Berklee College of Music, n.d.d)


Figure 4 is an example of the discussion post that they asked me to complete. Get me talking and I will talk all day but I have an extremely difficult time writing out thoughts and sharing them in "discussion" formats. I am definitely more comfortable talking in a chatbox than I am in a discussion forum. But I was happy to see that they value learning communities!

Figure 4
Discussion (Berklee College of Music, n.d.c)


Improvements

What I found was missing from the course were more practice activities. It seemed like the quizzes were too difficult and weren't scaffolded in a way that built on previous knowledge. I was also missing playing my instrument. In the classes that I teach, every single activity has the children playing and/or exploring the instrument. I wish there were more activities that were centered around playing the instrument especially in week 1.

Finishing Up Week 1

I did it! I learned the E major chord and the A minor chord today which was pretty cool! I'm a little apprehensive but I'm excited to keep learning (Figure 5)! 

Figure 5
Finishing Up Week 1
Figure 4


References:
Berklee College of Music. (n.d.a) Guitar for Beginners. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/guitar/home/info

 Berklee College of Music. (n.d.b) Guitar for Beginners: Course Resources [Webpage]. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/guitar/supplement/dfrHs/course-resources

 Berklee College of Music. (n.d.c) Guitar for Beginners: Comparing Major and Minor Chords [Discussion]. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/guitar/lecture/pjaUg/essential-accessories-for-acoustic-guitar

 Berklee College of Music. (n.d.d) Guitar for Beginners: Essential Accessories for Acoustic Guitar [Mid-Video Quiz]. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/guitar/lecture/pjaUg/essential-accessories-for-acoustic-guitar

Berklee College of Music. (n.d.e) Guitar for Beginners: Essential Accessories for Acoustic Guitar [Video]. Coursera. https://www.coursera.org/learn/guitar/lecture/pjaUg/essential-accessories-for-acoustic-guitar

Coursera. (n.d.) Welcome back. https://www.coursera.org/

 Vizia. (n.d.) The end of passive viewing. https://vizia.co/

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