CTELT Newsletter Fort Hays State University

Ann Dillow Crowley
International Instructor of Music

When I was an undergraduate almost twenty years ago, I would have thought someone was completely delusional if they told me I would be on a university faculty teaching music through the computer/Internet to students in China and Taiwan…let alone be happy and challenged by it! My biggest concern at the undergraduate level was how I would have time to play horn in both the Chicago Symphony and the Boston Symphony. I did not think about the possibility of fostering relationships within a politically closed country and providing necessary education to their youth.

Fort Hays State University has bravely forged new frontiers not only by offering virtual classes/degree programs for domestic students, but by seeking international partnerships in several countries. The relationships between our partner schools and FHSU provide necessary tuition income for the university and necessary curriculum/degrees for the partner schools. That is all fine, but the biggest questions remain: what courses will we offer and how do we make this happen?

FHSU was founded as a liberal arts institution within the Kansas regents system. We offer many different degree programs ensuring that our graduates are educated across the curriculum to be prepared for their future professions and for flexibility in the future. This chameleon effect is exactly what many FHSU professors have had to address to be able to deliver virtual classes both domestically and internationally.

Many people wonder how humanities courses are useful to international students? I will focus on music in this article as it is my field of study. Music is a language unto itself. Whether I am teaching domestic or international students, until they grasp the basic elements of music they are very uncomfortable in the subject. When they understand the concepts, a whole new world opens up to them. This is a world of opinion. The international students that I work with grew up not being allowed to have a free thought or dare to have an opinion. The Chinese courses are taught largely by rote. Memorization, memorization, memorization will make you successful and agreeing with someone is always best! I encourage my students to have an opinion and express themselves. My only rule is that if you say you like something or dislike something have an educated reason to support your opinion. The brilliant aspect of offering music and the other humanities courses is we give them information they can use, enjoy, and apply their whole lives. We are creating lifelong learners.

Learning English is very difficult … learning the language of music can be difficult…if we were all to have to learn Chinese—scary!! By providing the platform of music to the international students, we give them another venue to express themselves and communicate with people, not only in the United States, but globally. In our flat world, we must seek and find ways to have a common ground with citizens of other countries.

The FHSU courses for our international students are all set up in a similar format. A cooperating teacher (CT) meets the class and delivers the material designed by the FHSU professors. We use the Blackboard platform to store lecture materials, tests, assignments, communication methods and grade books. I strive for everything that is delivered in class to be available on Blackboard outside of class. I designed and filmed a set of lectures of myself delivering the material as if the students were in a live classroom with me in Malloy Hall. The CT plays these DVDs (they are streamed on Blackboard also), outlines and discusses the key terms in the textbook, plays the musical examples from the class CDs, and leads them in discussions. The students meet weekly for a few minutes in their homework teams to discuss weekly homework questions. The students rotate sending me the answers to these questions. I grade, respond, and communicate with them on a frequent basis. The music students do three listening projects per semester. I designed an interactive worksheet (using Dreamweaver) that the students use to do guided listening and answer directed questions. This was integrated as an answer to research papers or writing reviews over concerts as that opportunity may not occur for them on their campuses.

It has been thought by some that the virtual classroom is a cold and uncommunicative place to learn. I totally disagree with this as virtual students are required to interact with their professors. Many traditional classes can occur on campus with students attending lectures, writing papers, taking exams, and, unfortunately, without having to interact with their professor.

In the four years that I have been working in the international field, several changes have had to be made as we learn more about the culture of how our international students learn and what motivates them. Something that I would like to stress is that our international students are not different from our domestic students. They all have likes, dislikes, hopes, aspirations, families, histories, and futures. Certainly twenty years ago, I was not any different from them… well, except for that Internet thing!