Developing Engaging, Enriching, Empowering, and
Creative Composition Projects for Your Classroom
ILMEA Summer Learning Series
Jesse Rathgeber
Assessing and Evaluating
Assessing and evaluating creative works can be a tenuous affair. Creativity is a very subjective issue. Grades also have a negative affect on student divergent thinking (Hickey, 2012). Martinez & Stager (2013) also suggest that when projects, like creating a music compostion, place too much importance upon adult judgement, the outcomes are rarely as meaningful to students nor are prime examples of their best work. When addressing the assessment issue, it may be best to look at ways to assess the process or the product, with possibly more interest in the former.
Process Assessment
Assessing students based on the process of composing allows teachers to advise students, help them uncover more nuanced understandings of techniques and musical dimensions, and help them create ever more unique works.
Question Posing: We can’t possibly know the what and why behind creative decisions without asking students to explain them. Yet, we often give suggestions based on our own informed assumptions. So, we need to ask students questions before making suggestions. Sometimes the process of asking questions help students reconceptualize what they are doing and see new options. Allsup and Baxter (2004) give a framework for asking questions:
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Question Types:
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Closed: These questions are more fact-finding in nature, hoping to get quick and short information. Ex. “What does this instrument do?”
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Guided: These are focused questions intended to seek out more specific information. Ex. “How have you been dealing with texture?” or “Can you explain how you created this melody?”
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Open: No right or wrong answers. These questions probe to what students are doing and attending to. Ex. “What have you been doing?"
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Question Foci:
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Creative: By asking creative questions, you help reframe any issues and help students come up with multiple solutions. Ex. “What would you want to change about the texture?” or “How many different ways could you play this rhythm?”
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Judicial: These questions ask students to make judgments about their work. Ex. “How do you feel about your work” or “What do you think about how your group is working?”
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Analytical: An analytical question helps students uncover the musical dimensions at play in their work. Ex. “How is your composition organized?” or “Which instrument has the melody?”
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Providing Suggestions: Keep suggestions to a minimum. If giving a suggestion, frame it by giving students a few alternative strategies. Ex. "How might it sound if you changed the tempo?" or "How could you make the melody more prevalent and lyrical?"
Facilitating Reflection: Asking students to listen to their work and think about what they need can sometimes yield a great deal of insight about how students are composing.
Product Assessment
With etudes, more so than free compositions, sometimes the products can be used as evaluations. In these cases, it is helpful to limit the parameters that students will be assessed on. These parameters might be connected to the manipulation of specific musical dimensions stated in the prompt.
Rubric: Teachers or entire classes can create rubrics for assessment when tasks are relatively closed. These rubrics should be presented to students ahead of time to direct their focus on the specific musical dimensions and parameters of the etude.
Checklist: Sometimes students just need the basic parameters presented to them. Checklists provide students with the required components of the etude. When evaluating a project, both teachers and students can check off on each parameter. When making a checklist, it is useful to have no more than five parameters on the checklist.
Portfolio: Students can collect their work throughout a certain period for their portfolio. At the end of the period, students select works that represent their understanding of musical dimension and their creative growth. Portfolios can have rubrics or checklists as well as a large reflection component attached to them for when it comes time to evaluate their work.
Feedback: It is very easy to provide feedback to students about specific points using tools like Soundcloud. This tool can be used by a teacher as well as by other students.