With all the current coronavirus situation & social distancing, I have moved my lessons to cyber format. I thought I’d publish a bonus post this week & share a little about how I’m doing that right now.
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I’ve taught distance lessons before, but hadn’t moved my entire studio to this format. Originally I was doing them much like a traditional lesson, only over a video chat platform such as Google Hangouts or FaceTime. Zoom seems to be the up-and-coming video chat platform, but I haven’t tried it. (So. Many. Accounts.)
However, there were some technical difficulties with sound. So here’s what I came up with:
- Students submit three assignments per week, each due via email or Google Hangouts Monday, Wednesday, or Friday at 9am.
- I respond with a feedback email or video by sometime that evening, which will also includes the next assignment.
- Assignments must be submitted by the deadline, or they may be considered a missed portion of lesson time & feedback may be sent following the next submission deadline. Students are welcome to send them in the evening before if prefered.
- These 3 video sessions per week will be billed collectively as one weekly lesson.
So far, I am loving this format. Even though a lot of students haven’t fully taken advantage of this yet (hopefully they will once they get a little more settled in), I believe this format has oodles of benefits, such as:
- smaller, more digestible chunks of information;
- more check-ins mean less time to cram in practice;
- the deadline for assignments rather than a hard & fast lesson time allows for more flexibility for both student & teacher;
- another opportunity for parental involvement.
I’m trying to limit each assignment to about 3 bullet points. This is also a great time to include some video watching & analysis in your students’ homework assignments. If your student is still school-aged, consider having him/her watch a video with a parent & discuss their favorite parts!
This format of course doesn’t replace in-person instruction, but it’s a pretty cool way to get through this time without students having to miss lessons (& let’s be real here, it also keeps some income flowing).
How are you handling lessons during social distancing? Do you have any tips? Leave ’em in the comments for us all to see!
-Barbara
Barbara Fischer runs Fischarper, LLC and loves her job as a harpist and private music educator. She enjoys blogging about various aspects of the music field on fischarper.com/blog. For more music resources, check out the Fischarper store. Find out where you can find Barbara on the interwebs here. And you can sign up to receive Fischarper updates by joining the email list.