A Faculty Case Study

Teaching The History of Rock Music

Jane Doe teaches a WCU Liberal Studies course called The History of Rock Music (MUS 302). From Chuck Berry to The Band, from The Clash to The Weeknd, the course aims to introduce students to the trajectories, histories, and impacts of rock music on culture and society.

Jane arrives in her morning class, in the third week of the fall 2021 semester, ready and eager to share with her students their first group project. She has carefully thought through how she can use Canvas in ways that enhance student-to-student interaction.

In her toolkit:

Completed lesson plan
Plans for forming equitable student groups
Written instructions (and verbal notes) for the group project
Plans for using Office 365, the Canvas Attendance Tool, and Adobe Spark

10:01
Jane opens the computer at the lecturn, logs in to Canvas, and navigates to her course.

10:02
Jane clicks on Attendance in her course sidebar.

Jane scans the room and marks attendance in Canvas based on three statuses: a) present, b) late, c) absent. These will generate an attendance value which she can integrate into her gradebook, even displaying it to her students.

10:05
Jane navigates to a Canvas module entitled Origins of Rock: Group Project.

She opens an Office 365 PowerPoint she developed before class, and opens it.

She turns on the projector.

10:07
Jane welcomes the class and announces she is ready to start.

She presents the first few slides, which discuss the origins of the electric guitar and the amplifier.

She then transitions into a discussion about the group project - where every student will create a webpage, using Adobe Spark.

10:10
Jane thinks back to a video she watched about team formation which was instrumental in getting her ready to form teams. She remembers one of the speaker's main points, that "the objective is to create heterogenous groups that have the assets and liabilities in relation to this course, mixed up equally across the groups."

She looks over notes she made in OneNote on her phone, about how the groups will be formed (a question about student goals, time on task, and experience publishing webpages).

She forms the teams, and students are attentive during the process.

Students notice how conscientious she is in forming equitable, heterogenous groups.

She asks students to sign a group contract, which was developed by Dr. Maurice Phipps, WCU Professor Emeritus, whose research area is cooperative groups and inter-dependency.

10:20
With the groups now formed, she displays a slide showing four specific roles she has created: researcher and presenter. In each quad, two students will conduct research, and two will develop and present.

10:25
She asks each group to re-assemble in the room in their groups, and to begin discussing whether fans were ecstatic or upset at Bob Dylan at the 1965 Newport Festival.

Meanwhile, she manually creates the groups in Canvas, so each group has their own space to review instructions and submit group work.

10:30
From the lecturn, she calls everyone's attention to the Canvas groups area, showing how it works and how they can collaborate after class in their group space.

She shows them the project rubric, and reminds them of the grade weight in relation to the overall course.

She asks that they identify 4 topics for further research, and that they self-assign that work (which reinforces the importance of inter-dependency).

10:40
With these last ten minutes in class, she moves throughout the classroom, listening to questions and discussion, creating greater rapport with students who have not yet talked in class.

10:50
Class is dismissed.

12:15
Standing in line for lunch at a campus dining spot, Jane receives notifications on her phone that students are submitting work. As she has a few minutes before she can order, she posts some rapid feedback.

Image: Guitar by Adrien Coquet from the Noun Project

Finished with this Module?

Select "Next" to begin the next module.