Abstract:

This study explores what we can learn about educational design and practice by examining the transition to online made by improvising musicians during the pandemic. Recent studies on teaching in the age of Covid-19 capture the many challenges faced by teachers in the shift to remote learning (Jandrić et al. 2020,). Some of the most significant challenges were associated with attempts to facilitate learning activities involving high levels of interaction and collaboration amongst students. Such activities rely on listening, gesture, the ability to act and respond in the moment, and the capacity to alter social configurations fluently. In collaborating with others in this mode, elements such as access, attention and proximity are important, and reflect characteristics that support relationship-rich education (Felton and Lambert 2021).

Music improvisation artists experienced comparable challenges when attempting to move their practice online. Research examining the impact of the pandemic on improvisation in music demonstrates that improvisation practiced by musicians who are co-located in the same physical environment is not the same as that practiced by musicians collaborating online (McDonald et al. 2021; Cai and Terry 2020). Studies highlight some of the key constraints of improvising online, but also how those constraints led to new improvisational practices where technology has the potential to become another ‘player’ in the process. For example, musicians initially saw auditory latency as debilitating. However, over time they found ways to work with it, such as by using longer pauses and silences in their improvisations. They reported that in some cases this new aspect of their practice led to deeper listening, a skill considered fundamental to social improvisation.

In music, research has investigated criteria for facilitating collaboration in online group musical improvisations. It focuses on aspects such as localisation, mutual awareness, mutual modifiability, signalling group configurations, sound visualisations and shared and consistent representations (Cai and Terry 2021). By exploring the transition to online experienced by improvising musicians, this study offers new ways of thinking about the role of technology and its interrelationship with other elements in supporting improvisational processes in education. Taking a postdigital perspective, it explores factors that would better support improvisatory processes in education to help teachers and students move more fluently between educational environments, and not be ‘over attached, or invested into, one particular medium’ (Cramer and Jandrić 2021).

References:
[1] Cai, C. J., & Terry, M. (2020). On the Making and Breaking of Social Music Improvisation during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Symposium on the New Future of Work, August 3–5, 2020, Virtual Event.
[2] Cramer, F., & Jandrić, P. (2021). Postdigital: A Term that Sucks but is Useful. Postdigital Science and Education, 3, 966-989.
[3] Felton, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2021). Relationship-rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
[4] Jandrić , P. et al. (2020). Teaching in the Age of Covid-19. Postdigital Science and Education, 2, 1069-1230.
[5] McDonald, R., Burke, R., De Nora, T., Donohue, M. S., and Birrell, R. (2021). Our Virtual Tribe: Sustaining and Enhancing Community via Online Music Improvisation. Frontiers in Psychology, 623-640. Http://10.3389/fpsyg.2020.623640.

Keywords:

Improvisation, music, online learning, postdigital, educational design.