What is Vi r Music project?

The background

In northern areas population centralizes and periphery becomes more and more periphery. In many areas availability of studies is difficult because of the long distances and small population. Travelling into study place is expensive and time consuming. Time should be used more for studying process than travelling. Top professional teachers in some instrumental areas are almost impossible to find in the periphery areas.

Music schools are becoming interested in exporting basic and high level music education of good quality to the areas where it is geographically difficult. It is important that experts of music education, -virtual education and experts of technology together deliberate solutions for this issue. Therefore five organisations from Sweden, Norway and Finland decided to set up this Vi r Music project.

The purpose of the project

The need for virtual music teaching comes from the problems caused mostly by long distances. The new technology has not been implemented and exploited completely in music education. There is hardly any instrument pedagogue who knows virtual pedagogy. There is no research for the virtual pedagogy in instrumental teaching. The technical solutions of virtual educations can’t respond to demanding challenges of virtual instrumental teaching.

This project can respond to the following problems and development issues:

• How to guarantee equal education possibilities to everyone regardless of the living area?
• How to develop the cultural education to increase the attraction of rural areas?
• How to achieve cost savings with the development of virtual education technology?
• How to use more time for studying instead of travelling to an institute?
• Only a small group of people has got benefits from currently implemented virtual education experiments.
• The usage of technology requires certain skills and the user can be alone with the problems
• Teachers are not always able to give technical support and support from other technical persons has not been available for supporting of teaching.
• What characterizes the pedagogy of virtual instrumental education?
• The focus is usually more on the technical aspects than on the teaching methods.
• The human relationship between the student and the teacher is important especially in the beginning of the education. How can personal education and virtual education be combined?
• How to move on from the planning of teaching to the planning of learning process?
• The methods of virtual teaching have not been integrated to music teacher education
• It is quite easy to deliver audio and video, but there are more things that need to be delivered!

Objectives

The main objective of the project is to create a cooperation network that will start researching and testing the possibilities for virtual music education, to establish the education for instrumental pedagogue who use virtual pedagogy, to have further education for existing instrumental pedagogues, the development of virtual pedagogy in instrumental teaching and the cooperation based exploitation of the technology of virtual education. The objectives for the project are:

• Producing interactive virtual music education at different levels (apprentice / master) with different technologies (video conferencing, master classes / asynchronous) both nationally and internationally
• The development and integration of music virtual pedagogy, methods and technology in instrument pedagogy education.
• To research and solve technical problems such as the quality of sound, the audio and video synchronisation and usability generally by practical testing situations in virtual music education
• To take in use an existing internet based solution for the education materials.
• The implementation of current technologies in virtual music education.

Target group

Students, teachers and technical persons from universities and other higher educational institutes, music schools and organisations. Children and young people who study to play instruments.

Activities

• Literature review on existing pedagogical practises
• Research: Bringing together the target groups / Systematic research about virtual music teaching and learning sessions / Systematic analysis and documentation on distance learning practises
• Virtual learning platform for music education over Internet
• Students observe and practice distance tuition and video conference teaching and join existing master classes.
• Curriculum Work
• Planning of Professional Specialisation Studies (30 ects) of Virtual Pedagogy of Music
• Virtual classes
• Workshops
• Coordination