Well, I decided to bite the bullet and sign up for an online music course. This one on music production so that I could maybe improve my skills a little since I’ve only been using digital audio workstations for about a year now. And even though it’s only a week into the course, I think I’ve seen enough of it to form a very definite and fair opinion. I probably should have figured this out even before signing up, but I needed to go through with it to know for certain. So what follows is my honest evaluation.
Let’s start with who the course is being offered by. It’s the Berklee College Of Music at Coursera.org.
When I read the description of the course, it sounded exactly like what I would need to improve my skills with a DAW. That I could also earn a certificate (could be helpful to my business) was a big plus but not the main reason I signed up. I just wanted to learn how to use my equipment better and maybe get a better mix out of my songs.
After signing up I did all the preliminary stuff like reading the course outline, filling out my profile, going to the forums, and so on.
I then started watching the lessons which were all videos. I really didn’t know what to expect here. I guess it was foolish to think there would be live instruction when you have students from every time zone in the world, so I was cool with the “canned” course.
But here is where I was expecting something much different.
One of the videos was an explanation of what our assignments would be and how we would be graded. I was expecting the assignments to be real world application of what we learned and I was expecting to be graded by the actual instructor or at least by the staff working for the site itself. Not the case. And again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised given the number of students that are probably signed up for this course.
For starters, the assignments were nothing more than making your own videos teaching one of the subjects we’d learned. Well, this turned me off right away. I am no teacher and have no desire to be a teacher. I came to the class to learn how to use my DAW better, not teach other people how to use it.
Now, I can kind of understand their reasoning for working the assignments this way. The instructor in the video said that if you can reach a point where you can correctly teach the material to others, that’a when you really know it well. I guess this might be true to some degree. But book knowledge and real world application are still two different things. I may be able to explain to somebody exactly how EQ works but does that mean that I’ll be able to properly apply it to a real world application? The one doesn’t guarantee the other. So in essence, what I’m saying is that the assignments are too easy, not to mention not very interesting.
To compound this problem we have the grading system. We are not going to be graded by any staff personnel. We’re going to be graded by other students. Isn’t this kind of like the blind leading the blind? How can another student, who probably doesn’t know the material any better than I do, grade my presentation? Most will either grade me too high or too low depending on their level of experience and personal bias. This is a recipe for disaster.
And…to top it all off, part of our requirements to receive a grade is to grade other student’s presentations. And we have to do five of these for every week of lessons. Man, that is a lot of work for a student. In short, I’m spending more time grading presentations than learning and doing my own work.
Needless to say, I am very disappointed by the whole process. Again, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I couldn’t possibly expect a “professor” to grade all this work himself.
And therein lies the problem with online education in general. You can’t possibly expect to get individual attention when you have classes with potentially thousands of students.
I will say this much. so far, even though the material has been very basic up to this point, the videos have been well done. They are well thought out and adequately presented. I will be able to get a better feel for the quality and how in depth they go in the material in the later weeks.
So how could this process be improved? Can it be improved? They actually put a lot of thought into this. The forums are a great place for students to interact with each other and exchange ideas and even help each other. In that respect, there is a feeling that you’re not in this alone. That I do like. And while the thought of exchanging ideas and even making new friends is interesting, the thought of leaving my fate in the hands of other students, not so much.
Do I recommend this course? Well, based on what I’ve seen so far, if all you care about is learning something that will hopefully improve you as a music producer (and I would have to go through the whole course to get a better feel for that) then I say go for it. You should get something out of the videos.
However, if your goal is to get some kind of certification that you can hang on your wall to impress people with, then this may not be your best avenue. If I need a piece of paper to get a job, I don’t want that piece of paper to be in the hands of somebody who may not know the material as well as I do. That is a scary thought.
Online education. It is what it is. And I guess what it is shouldn’t surprise anybody.
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim