Nobody used to have much of a handle on distance learning. Oh, it was around, mostly by way of online courses that served for various credentialing programs or training for office skills. While some of the institutions were worthy and the teachers qualified, lax accreditation practices allowed appalling lapses of elementary pedagogic integrity. To call it a mixed bag is putting it mildly.
As to acquiring professional chops, online just wasn’t it. To achieve that, you needed a bonafide physical college or university, and the more prestigious the better in your chosen field. Long, painstaking training. Pitfalls to be overcome. Time and bother. Expense. If your intention was to become a federal judge or a doctor or an epidemiologist or the concertmaster of a great orchestra, there was no way on Earth that an online degree was going to cut it. Nobody would take you seriously, and with good reason. In my profession, worthwhile supplicants go to Juilliard, to Curtis, to NEC, to my beloved San Francisco Conservatory of Music, to Michigan, to Indiana, to Oberlin, to Rice, etc. They might satisfy a few breadth/humanities requirements via distance learning, but that’s about it. The rest has evolved over centuries of practice, and it’s resolutely up close and personal. Today’s conservatories aren’t really all that different from their 17th century Neapolitan ancestors. (Except for the castrated teenagers. And bully for that.)
Then came Covid-19 midway through the Spring 2020 term and we conservatory denizens moved online. August professors in their dual-Steinway studios and well-equipped classrooms were obliged to become talking-head-plus-algorithms in a Zoom/FaceTime/Google Meeting screen box. Some intrepid types had already gotten there via globe-spanning Internet master classes. But many had never even considered the possibility or had the slightest idea how to go about it. Some schools dropped their faculty into the river without any preparation save a vague directive to swim, and by the way, be sure to provide reassurance and guidance to your students. And maintain educational standards.
I am blessed with a wise and compassionate administration. An extended spring break afforded space and time. Highly experienced colleagues—this is an institution with a jim-dandy music technology program—provided expert guidance. I heard no wailing, saw no gnashing of teeth. We recognized the challenge, and we fell to it. Stumbles and bumbles there were a-plenty at first. But we learned, we practiced, we grew.
And it’s working. We’re maintaining our enviable artistic and educational standards. Will I ever think that online teaching is an improvement over in-person? Poppycock. The Royal Touch is integral to our traditional method of training, placebo effect or no placebo effect. Apprentices need to sit beside their masters, listen to them breathe, watch their hands move, read their body language, hear subtle differences in tone. Teachers ditto with their students, classroom and studio alike. Students need to play and sing for each other, make music together, perform (live!) in public, debate and compete and criticize. But if certain aspects of our tradition pose a deadly risk, as they do at present, then we will adjust. We’re artists, not fools.
Certain of my classes made the shift almost effortlessly. I run my weekly advanced analysis class as a seminar in which I put that week’s homework submissions up on a flat-screen TV as each student presents the work in turn, with commentary from me and open discussion. It’s a fine approach for a small group of high-roller types who have committed to a course with a high work load and equally high expectations.
Translation to online instruction via Zoom posed little difficulty. The students continued to submit their weekly assignments to the same ol’ Google Drive as always. A Zoom share replaced the flat-screen TV. The student presented, I commented, the class discussed. My training presentations, formerly handled via whiteboard with staff lines, dry-erase markers, and the piano, moved to my iPad running GoodNotes on a Zoom share, accompanied by my piano at home. I saved my GoodNotes whiteboards for future reference. All Zoom sessions are recorded by my institution, so students could review or catch it at another time if geography or Internet fecklessness had thrown up barriers.
To be sure, my performance-oriented subjects required considerable tinkering and diddling. I had to give up ensemble solfège, to give one example. But I found substitutes—“music minus one” exercises that my students could solfège, record, and submit, recordings for dictation exercises, pre-recorded Keynote presentations, extra scores posted as PDFs for study. My departmental colleagues shared their strategies. We talked and planned and evaluated. It worked. And it will work again this fall semester as we continue exploring the formerly unthinkable practice of transferring a tradition-bound, master-apprentice educational model to an online environment.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world and its impact will be felt for a generation if not longer. It has also changed higher ed. There will be no flipping of a switch and blithely returning to the pre-Covid educational world. And that will be, ultimately, a good thing. Disruptions and shakeups are integral parts of anything worthwhile. It’s our choice: gripe and moan and fault-find, or take the opportunity for growth and reflection.
I choose the latter.