![]() We also occasionally hold group colloquies, which both facilitate efficient assessment and foster collective understanding. While this may present concerns of time management, we assign activities, such as visiting the ear-training/listening lab, completing analysis projects, and meeting with singing teams, to those students not directly involved in colloquies on a particular day. Practically speaking, most colloquies take 10 to 20 minutes per student and occur during class time over several days. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a written exam which allows instructors both to assess and to hone the analytical tools and musicianship skills by which students engage musical literature, all the while equipping students with life-long communication skills. As Singh comments, “in the real world, graduates are not just expected to write down all their responses or interactions” (248). We thus consider the colloquy, as a roundtable simulating professional discourse and activity, to be an apt replacement for written exams. As mentors, we seek to alleviate the potential anxiety students might feel over reading “Oral Examination 1” in the syllabus and instead adopt the word colloquy, which Oxford English Dictionary describes modestly as “a talking together” or a “conversation.” Students must also sing, count, and conduct passages of the repertoire, thereby demonstrating the synthesis of concept and craft required of the professional to present an informed performance. ![]() Put simply, the exams invite students to discuss scores with two experienced music professionals-their instructors. The oral assessment experience which we detail below reinforces the professional musician’s need to think and to communicate effectively in the language of the discipline: to engage a work of music efficiently, identify and articulate its salient features, perform it individually and collaboratively, and understand its place within the broader landscape of musical literature. Our students now engage scores-the primary materials of the discipline-from Day 1, as class time is dedicated to uncovering musical concepts directly from the repertoire and developing score-reading fluency. Today’s student learners hunger for experiential learning environments which offer real-life problem-solving scenarios through which to acquire, implement, and sharpen professional skills. Chief among these, we believe, are textbooks, workbooks, and written exams. ![]() In 2015, we implemented oral unit exams as part of a wholesale revision of our four-semester undergraduate music theory sequence intended to remove artificial impediments to the learning process. ![]() Still, a number of recent pedagogy studies demonstrate the feasibility and educational benefits of oral examination in undergraduate programs ( Asklund and Bendix 2003 Cantley-Smith 2006 Clouder and Toms 2008 Huxham, Campbell, and Westwood 2012 Iannone and Simpson 2012 Singh 2011 Thomas, Raynor, and McKinnon 2014). Application of oral examination within undergraduate curricula is much less common ( Symonds 2008 Huxham, Campbell, and Westwood 2012). While instructors are undoubtedly familiar with oral examination, or viva voce, their experience with it is likely limited to the qualifying and defense processes with which graduate studies culminate. It is perhaps a bit ironic that, in an e-journal dedicated to innovative teaching strategies, the authors of this essay promote a centuries-old form of assessment. Stutes, Wayland Baptist University The Colloquy: Introduction and Philosophy The Undergraduate Student-Faculty Colloquy: Cultivating Disciplinary Authenticity through Formative Oral Examination ![]()
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