Open Course

The Impact of Open Source

     The open source course I selected to review this week was MUSI 112: Listening to Music (http://oyc.yale.edu/music/musi-112#overview), provided by Open Yale courses. This course is designed for musical novice to foster the development of aural skills that lead to an understanding of Western music.  The learner objectives for the course consist of learning how music is put together and learning how to listen to a variety of musical styles.

     Before exploring through the open source course, I read the details in the syllabus. The syllabus is one of the most important components of an online course or face-to-face course. They syllabus also has vital information for the students such as, textbook resources, grading scales, and participation requirements. Instructors of online courses must make the course organization, calendar, activities, and expectations as clear as possible (Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek, 2012).  I felt the course was carefully pre-planned for a face-to-face or an independent correspondence type of learning environment. I didn’t observe any technology emphasis or skills required to navigate or interact this course, which made me think it wasn’t totally pre-planned for an asynchronous online learning environment.

     As I continued my journey of learning how to listen to music, I notice that each session was basically a recorded lecture of the face-to-face learning environment. Of course open source courses were designed and created to allow anyone from anywhere to learned material from prestigious universities for free or at a very affordable rate. One of the fundamentals of teaching online courses is not to dump face-to-face course onto the web (Simonson et al., 2012). This course did just that. Each session showed the weekly recorded lectures and provided criteria for the weekly assignments.

     In my conclusion, I felt that this open source course was not pre-planned for a distance learning environment. The course had minimal interaction and few activities to maximize active learning. The course didn’t entirely utilize a systematic instructional design process in my opinion. The critical components of an instructional design system include the learners, the content, the method and materials, and the environment, including the technology (Simonson et al., 2012).  On the other hand, the instructor did have an organized syllabus, presented the material effectively by having visual and audio delivery options, assigned coursework to measure the learners gained knowledge, and the class pace was appropriate for the musical novice learners. Perfect for a face-to-face learning environment.

Reference

MUSI 112: Listening to Music (2012). http://oyc.yale.edu/music/musi-112#syllabus. Open Yale courses.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2012). Teaching and learning

     at a distance: Foundations of distance education (5th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.