Online Education Comes of Age

Since its inception in 2002, Berkleemusic.com—Berklee’s online continuing education school, and the largest online music school in the world—has educated a veritable army of professional musicians. The online educational service has worked with more than 30,000 students from 150 countries and won the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) award for the best online college-level course across all disciplines for eight years in a row. And as with so many of Berklee’s initiatives, these early successes are just the foundation for more ambitious plans.

“The mission of Berkleemusic,” says Debbie Cavalier, vice president for online learning and continuing education/CEO of Berkleemusic, “is to expand the reach of the college and offer the Berklee experience to people who cannot physically come here.” President Roger H. Brown sees online courses as a key component in addressing the chronically rising cost of higher education. “The way we do things has changed a lot since the 13th century,” Brown says. “The way we transport ourselves, the way we communicate, the way we store and track information—almost every facet of our lives has changed dramatically, but higher education has not. To a large extent, what we do here is similar to what was done at the University of Padua in 1222. Technology changes things, making them cheaper or more efficient, but higher education has been largely immune.”

 

Everything Old Is New Again

While distance learning is a recent phenomenon at most participating colleges and universities, it’s nothing new to Berklee. Musical superstars including Alf Clausen ’66, Gary Burton ’62, Chucho Valdés, and Michel Camilo all credit early Berklee correspondence courses with helping them establish the music fundamentals upon which they were able to build higher levels of artistry. According to Clausen, who is best known as the composer for The Simpsons television show, “I completed a 25-lesson Berklee correspondence course in arranging and harmony many years ago. I still remember the thrill of waiting for each lesson to arrive in the mail.” Similarly, jazz legend Gary Burton says the correspondence courses he took gave him a head start before matriculating at Berklee.

Contemporary artists and music professionals are now doing the same with Berkleemusic. Amy Heidemann ’08 of the pop duo Karmin learned to play guitar through Berkleemusic lessons, and Stefan Lessard, the bassist for the Grammy-winning Dave Matthews Band, has taken music theory courses. “Being in the [Dave Matthews Band] has given me 20 years of street cred,” Lessard says, “but I wanted to learn more.” Dean of the Professional Performance Division Matt Marvuglio says that working musicians often derive the greatest benefit from his courses. “[Online classes] are particularly effective for people who are playing regularly,” he says, “because they can apply what they’ve learned and see immediate results. That’s a great motivator.”

And just as Berklee correspondence courses opened opportunities for musicians a generation ago, Berkleemusic classes have created some remarkable connections for current students. Harpist Deborah Henson-Conant found herself on tour opening for Steve Vai after she took the superstar shredder’s online class.

Berkleemusic is, however, more than just a re-imagined correspondence course. “There is a lot of information online,” Brown says. “You can see college lectures on almost any topic, just like a generation ago when, if you had the motivation, you could learn anything if you were willing to sit in the Boston public library for long enough. Now you can do that from your own home.” Easy access to the information means that driven students can educate themselves with information that’s freely available. “The Berkleemusic YouTube channel has received 17 million views,” says Cavalier, “and is the fourth-most-visited channel in higher education. It pulls from our course content and makes some of the information available to anyone at no cost.”

But for most students, simply having access to the information isn’t enough. Professor Peter Norvig of Stanford University has been heralded for the success of his 120,000-student artificial intelligence class. “The classroom is not primarily about information, but rather motivation and determination,” Norvig says. Brown concurs. “A big part of what an institution does is scaffold your motivation.”

Mike King, the director of marketing for Berkleemusic and a course instructor, notes that one of the advantages of the online school is the curatorial function of the faculty. “There’s so much information out there that it can be daunting to wade through it all,” he says. “In my classes, I try to provide a curated look at all the tools that are available: what works, what doesn’t, and what the pricing models are for those toolsets.”

King is enthusiastic about the speed with which online courses can address the rapidly shifting environment of the music industry. “In the online class, I can quickly pull up examples from developments in the music business world the same day they happen. That business environment is changing really fast, and the online course allows us to teach developments as soon as they happen.” He notes that industry veterans frequently sign up for classes to keep their skills sharp and stay on top of current trends.

Having seasoned professionals in classes often provides lateral learning opportunities where students learn from one another. Norvig is especially vocal about the value of peer instruction. “Peers can be the best teachers,” he says, “because they’re the ones that remember what it’s like to not understand.” Many Berkleemusic instructors emphasize the power of peer learning in their online classes. “You would think that in the classroom you have the maximum amount of communication with the students,” says Gary Burton, who teaches online courses in improvisation. But I’ve discovered that the students interact with each other constantly. Everybody sees everyone else’s homework and my comments on it. This offers a tremendous amount of information going back and forth, and in all directions. I don’t recall that sort of thing ever happening in the classroom—except among the most extroverted students.”

 

Flip

ping the Classroom

Salman Khan is the creator of Khan Academy, an online school that offers more than 3,000 videos on a wide range of primary education topics, and which computer pioneer Bill Gates called ‘the future of education.’ Khan told an audience at the annual TED Conference in San Diego, CA, “Teachers wrote to me and said, ‘We’ve used your videos to flip the classroom. We assign the lectures for homework, and the exercises that used to be homework are now done in class.’”

This model allows students to pause or rewind lectures as many times as necessary to grasp the material without feeling embarrassed in front of their classmates. They then work through exercises in class, when help is available from the instructor and other students. “This has the benefit of humanizing the classroom,” Khan says, “making it richer in both communication and community.”

Similarly, Berkleemusic inverts the measurement and advancement tools in the classroom. “In a traditional classroom,” Khan notes, “you have lectures and homework, and then a snapshot exam. No matter what your score is, the class moves on to the next topic.” Marvuglio says that he has noticed students vary their pace throughout a course, slowing down when they need more time to absorb material, and speeding up when they grasp it easily.

Khan says this approach “is fundamentally different from what’s happening in classrooms right now. Traditional education penalizes experimentation and failure, and does not expect mastery. At Khan Academy, we encourage experimentation and failure, but we do expect mastery before you’re allowed to progress to the next lesson.” The model has proven successful, so much so that the Los Altos, California, school district is using Khan Academy for its fifth- and seventh-grade math classes. Likewise, more than a dozen high schools are using Berkleemusic to teach music theory classes.

The approach has proven remarkably effective. “This has allowed us to level out the process of absorbing information for all different learning styles,” Cavalier says. Berklee Bass Professor Danny Morris concurs. “The anonymity of the Internet levels the playing field. In a physical class, some students will participate, but others tend to hang back. Online, everybody participates.” King notes that this helps engage students who might otherwise be intimidated by their classmates. “In my classes, I’ve had hobbyists studying alongside people like [Phish guitarist and lead singer] Trey Anastasio; [singer/songwriter] Rachel Yamagata; Alessandro Cortini, the keyboardist for Nine Inch Nails; and the musical director for the U.S. Air Force Band. They’re all in it together.” Marvuglio says this approach leads to more learning opportunities than are available in a traditional classroom. “In a Berkleemusic class, you can listen to every assignment submitted by every student and hear the teacher’s critique, and the comments of your peers. That provides many more learning opportunities than you’d have in a classroom, where only one or two projects get commented on.”

Berkleemusic courses typically feature video, audio, over-the-shoulder screen demonstrations, animations, and quizzes to complement the instructor’s lectures in a way that some believe is even more effective than what can be done in a physical classroom. The approach is not without potential obstacles. “One early problem we found,” says Cavalier, “is that when instructors were commenting on students’ work, they had to do so in writing, and the nuances of tone of voice and body language were lost. Those things are important, so we developed a system by which teachers can comment using audio and video inside the learning environment. It’s important that students appreciate both the critique and encouragement teachers have to offer.”

 

Getting Results

Burton is sanguine about the opportunities presented by Berkleemusic. “The most appealing thing about online learning from the college’s point of view is that it makes Berklee’s type of education available to a much wider audience—especially people for whom coming to Boston for four years isn’t possible.” Brown concurs, noting, “The beauty of online education is that the student can stay in the home they live in, in the country they live in, in the job they’re in, and learn at a time that’s convenient for them. Whatever their life circumstances are, this allows them more control over their education.” These benefits extend to the faculty as well. “This spring,” Burton says, “I was touring with Chick Corea, and I managed to teach the course from all over Europe, week after week.”

Brown believes that Berklee is uniquely positioned to capitalize on these opportunities. “People used to say that music is the one thing you could never teach online. Well that’s wrong. We’ve already proven that. The students we’re seeing [at Berkleemusic] are as motivated—or more highly motivated—than their on-campus counterparts. That could be because Berkleemusic students tend to be older—between 25 and 55. They pay the tuition themselves and tend to take one or two courses instead of seven. We also have some courses that are being taught online for on-campus students, so we’ll be able to compare the learning outcomes.”

Many Berklee professors who have authored online courses say it has forced them to think more clearly about the sequencing of material and how to move students through it. Since most Berkleemusic instructors are Berklee faculty members, these refinements directly benefit their on-campus students. The college as a whole has benefitted from having Berkleemusic to serve as a sort of proving ground for trying out new courses.

In the past, some have expressed concerns that online classrooms do not provide the same level of social interaction as physical classrooms. But proponents of online education say that today’s students have developed the social skills necessary to form meaningful communities online. Morris agrees. “There’s more social interaction online, “he says. “It’s like Facebook.” And as King says, “I’ve found that the students often form lasting bonds. In fact, the Internet marketing company Passion Fire Media was formed after its founders, Daniel McCormick and Steve Lenard, met in a Berkleemusic class.”

 

Looking Ahead

“For those who can afford it,” President Brown says, “the idea of being on a physical campus and having rich experiences for four years is the gold standard. It’s the best way to get a great education. But we’ve got almost 7 billion people on earth, and we’re not going to be able to give that experience to all of them.” As a case in point, alumna Arooj Aftab was a singer/songwriter in Pakistan with few music education opportunities. After excelling in Berkleemusic courses, she was offered a scholarship to attend Berklee and graduated in 2010.

“At a minimum,” Brown says, Berkleemusic is a “way of disseminating our educational DNA more widely in the world. But it could also be that we’re building an ark for the coming flood in which the costs of higher education become unsustainable and we’re forced to radically rethink how we deliver education.”

According to Cavalier, Berkleemusic has begun the process of seeking approval from the state of Massachusetts to offer a bachelor of professional studies degree starting in 2014. “If the state approves our request,” she says, “we’ll have two majors: music production and music business. The admissions standards will be more open, requiring an interview, but no audition. This degree is really aimed at older students, people over 25 who weren’t able to complete a college degree, or who are trying to change careers.”

In addition to these plans, President Brown sees an array of potential opportunities that may arise from the growing sophistication and acceptance of online learning tools. “What if we made it possible for people to get a little bit of their Berklee education under their belt before they arrive here? If they could take some introductory courses while in high school, they might be able to spend fewer semesters on campus, which could create a more affordable education. Imagine a day when you could transfer Berkleemusic credits for the whole first year. We’re not doing anything like that right now, but you can see how it would make a lot of sense.”

Brown also sees possibilities for Berklee alumni who left the college before completing their degrees. “Out of our 40,000 alumni,” he says, “over half didn’t get a degree, and they live in a world where a college degree is often a gatekeeper for just getting an interview for a job. Wouldn’t it be nice if some of them could complete their degrees online?”

Cavalier agrees, and hopes that in the future Berkleemusic can support students who must depart the college because of unforeseen opportunities or challenges. “Maybe it could allow students who go on tour to not have to drop out,” she says. “Maybe they could stay enrolled with a reduced course load and keep working toward a degree while they’re on the road.”

Brown also sees potential gains to be made for students considering applying to Berklee. He says, “We don’t have a specific course entitled ‘How to Prepare for Your Berklee Audition,’ but maybe we should. A motivated student might be able to show up far better prepared that way.”

These sorts of paradigm shifts are not without their critics. “Some people say, ‘It’s just not the same as being here for four years,’” Brown notes, “and my counterargument is that most of our students aren’t here for four years anyway. A fair number still drop out. Wouldn’t it be better if we make it possible for them to get a degree, even if they can only spend two or three years here?”

He also sees this sort of innovation as intrinsic to Berklee’s institutional character. “Jazz, electric guitar, turntablism—there have been many institutions that resisted all those movements, and we embraced them all. We have always been a leader and embraced new things. I think this would be the wrong time to change and start resisting what’s going to happen.”

If the enthusiasm of faculty and students is any indication, online learning will soon be a mainstream experience.