Inquiry into music: course home  (Page 3/9)

In the short term, the educational results of inquiry are not standardized, because arriving at a standard "correct" answer or acquiring a particular bit of knowledge is not the point. From the viewpoint of inquiry-based learning, a student who responds to the social studies investigation by deciding which side is "right," or by memorizing a list of "facts" about it, has not learned as much as the student who can demonstrate a nuanced understanding of the causes of the controversy, including an appreciation for the concerns of all of the stakeholders and the possible positive and negative effects of any proposed actions.

If the goal in the social studies class had been that all students know particular information - such as important dates - inquiry might not have been the best approach. If it is important that all of the students in the music theory course master the rules of Baroque counterpoint, then the Bach study may be the better assignment. However, if the goal is students who grasp the implications of historical and current events, or who are capable composers and arrangers, the inquiry assignments may be better; the students who have connected the knowledge to their everyday life and their own pursuits are more likely to remain engaged and eventually become genuinely interested in understanding history or writing good counterpoint.

In this way, allowing the students the intellectual "space" to develop a personal interest and connection with the materials eventually serves the long-term goals of the curriculum. For example, following the biology investigation, one student may know more about birds, while another has become something of an expert on local plants. However, both have also learned a basic process that they can now use to learn what the other knows, when they want to or need to. In addition, if the project leaves the class wondering why a park has many different kinds of birds but very few aquatic species, the new investigation that follows will be much more meaningful to the students than it would have been if the teacher had given a lecture on bird migration routes or water quality, and meaningful information is easier to remember and to apply to new situations.

How does online music inquiry work?

In general, learner-centered teaching methods are more challenging to organize than teacher-centered ones. However, because inquiry is so dependent on the availability of multiple sources of information, the Internet should make inquiry-based learning much more feasible than it has been in the past. In fact, there is so much information openly available online that many learners might be able to conduct useful inquiries with very little assistance, perhaps just a bit of structure and guidance in how to find useful resources and organize an inquiry.

Inquiry is closely related to the everyday skill of finding the answers to immediate questions, but formal inquiry takes a more long-range, "educative" perspective. It benefits from taking advantage of what educators know about how people learn and about the knowledge that is available in the various subject-area disciplines. For example, someone with a practical engineering problem may not realize that a particular type of math would be extremely useful in solving the problem. A beginning musician may have a clear long-term goal of writing songs for her rock band, but no clear idea how to learn what she needs to know in order to do that. In both cases, some structure and guidance could help the learner create a connection - an educational path - between their own project and "what people know" about engineering or music.