60% of your grade for the semester will be based on assignments you will submit every other week. Here are general guidelines for those assignments.

Each paper should be approximately three pages long. This does not include a title page, bibliography (if any), etc. If you were getting ready to ask if these things did count, you should probably rethink your approach. The value inherent in the words you write is what matters. Excessive wordiness will not be rewarded, nor will succinctness be punished.

Three pages is a just reasonable estimate of the amount of space it will probably take to cover the depth and breadth expected. Sadly I have, on rare occasions, had students fiddle with word processors' typesetting ability to extend the apparent length of a paper. With standard point sizes, fonts, and margins, a single page can conservatively be expected to hold 250 words. Please don't chisel this number in granite. Hemingway would probably come up with a different word count than would Chaucer, but either's response could be as worthy.

My purpose in asking you to respond to these questions is twofold: 1) In lieu of the class participation, preparation for quizzes, discussions, and scintillating lectures which distance learning does not offer, they give you a vehicle by which to focus your thinking. The text, video, and CDs comprise a wealth of information. To transform this information into knowledge you must find a way to digest it and to get it ordered in your mind. That's the most important reason. If you are in this class simply for your own edification and enlightenment, you can feel assured that you are understanding things and that you have a reasonable chance of remembering what you learn. 2) Most of you, however, are planning to apply the credits earned in this class toward a degree, so these papers allow me to assess your comprehension, not just to satisfy the state's grade keeping requirement, but to let me know that you are understanding the material.

Your purpose in writing the papers should also be twofold: 1) To take ownership of the information presented in the text and videos by attaching it to the framework of knowledge you have gained thus far in life. 2) To demonstrate the depth and breadth of knowledge you have acquired so that you will be fairly assessed. You may need to remind yourself that this is an advantage of distance learning: engaging the higher order thinking skills required for synthesis and analysis of information is a far better learning experience than short term memorization of low level facts.

Tips for effective learning:

Read the chapter in the text before viewing the video! The videos are able to condense more information into the available time than a regular classroom lecture, so note-taking will be nearly impossible. Also, you should concentrate on the music performances without distraction. Music has become such a common part of the everyday background of our lives that this is sometimes difficult to do.

Read the chapter in the text again after viewing the video. This is where you start paying the price for having no traditional lectures to reinforce the concepts and no thrice-weekly meetings of class to ask questions (or to hear questions asked that did not occur to you). People are only capable of retaining a disappointingly small percentage of information they read only once!

Intro to Music syllabus

General Information on Examinations