jps change october12 2012

7/31/2019 JPS Change October12 2012

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Social Performance Anxiety and the Human Voice John Paul Sharp

John Paul SharpOctober 2012

Creating a Student Center forPrivate Voice Students

Friday, October 12, 2012 1


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Introduction

I am a professional singer. I write, direct and perform for professional andcommunity productions in the stage, film, and recording arts. In 2009, I

earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Vocal Performance at the Universityof Colorado Denver. I began teaching private voice lessons out of my homein April of 2012.

One problem Ive encountered in my work as a private voice instructor is alack of progress from students due to their not remembering what wasdiscussed in lessons. It is a problem I also faced as a voice student incollege. Id have my lesson and as soon as I left it, my mind wouldautomatically focus on the many other responsibilities I had to take care of.By the time I found a window of opportunity to practice, I nearly forgot

everything Id been told from the lesson. Even though I practiced, it wasalways apparent I had forgotten information my instructor previouslyrelayed to me in my next lesson. When this happens, both student andteacher can experience negative feelings.

There are many obvious viable interventions and I have tried a lot of themas a student. I would bring a recorder and tape everything, but that methodnever worked for me because I didnt have time to sit down and listen to awhole lesson before practicing. I would try and take notes during lessons,

but when I practiced, the notes read like a garbled mess because taking

notes during voice lessons is very difficult. Instructors often relay a lot ofinformation at once and it is not always easy for the student to understandwhat information is the most pertinent to write in between singing.

Times have changed even since I earned my B.S. in Vocal Performancemore than three years ago. Now it is common for my students to haveimmediate access to information through handheld computing devices likeiPhones and iPads. I wondered if perhaps I could help alleviateforgetfulness by providing to students as many resources as possibleonline. Todays reality allows for me to record and upload gigs of

information, such as a 4 channel surround sound recording of weeklylessons. But how much work does this require and is the effort worth it?



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Interventions

Over the last few months, I have written and e-mailed lesson summaries tostudents detailing:

1) what the student and I worked on during their lesson,2) what the student was great at,3) what the student needs to improve upon, and4) goals for practice before the next lesson.

My effort to write and send these summaries takes approximately ten tofifteen minutes. This method seems to work fairly well in comparison todoing nothing at all. Students have told me the e-mails help themremember their lessons better, but I am not always convinced the effort is a

complete solution.In the last month, I have begun recording lessons with a Zoom H2Recorder. For more information about this piece of equipment, read theproduct description at the manufacturers website:http://www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/h2/. The recorder was a giftfrom a friend of mine and I decided to employ it as a strategy for teachingprivate voice lessons because it can easily record and transfer an hoursworth of 4-channel surround-sound audio into high-quality .wav files. The4-channel recording is especially useful in recording voice lessons because

often the teacher is sitting or standing on one side of the recorder and thestudent is sitting or standing on the other.

I am now sharing large files (e.g., an .mp3 version of an hour lessonrecording contains close to 150 Mb of data). I upload them to my website,which takes about an hour or more due to my limited internet speed athome. Because the content of the lessons are often sensitive in nature, Irealized I needed to password-protect these files so that only individualstudents could access their own recordings. Each student now has theirown username and password and their recordings are stored within

individual folders where only the associated student and I have access.

As previously stated, I never had much luck recording my own voicelessons as a student, mainly due to a lack of time in listening to a wholehours worth of work. I imagine the same is partly true for my students,

but as part of a separate study, I am asking students to listen to theirlessons as a way to reflect on their progress. My goal in doing this is to



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encourage students to take a more aggressive approach to their studies andlearn how to assign goals and measure their own progress through theirown volition.

My long term intervention goal is to create a Student Center all my

students can access. Ive already started by putting an icon on the lessonspage of my website: http://www.johnpaulsharp.com/lessons.html

Currently, only I can access the Student Center splash page because I amstill trying to figure out how to create an informative web-space wherestudents can feel both excited and safe (i.e., a web-space, only accessible tomy students, which contains individual student areas that are onlyaccessible to them, but not identifiable to each other by name).

In 2013, I hope to have the Student Center fully realized. The splash pagewould contain general information and resources applicable to students byage range (e.g., recorded vocal warm-ups, instructional videos about vocalhealth, lead sheets, common rhythm and sight-reading exercises).Individual student areas would contain lesson recordings and summariespertinent only to each student.



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My rationale for creating a Student Center is three fold:

1. I want to give students additional value from their lessons theymay not find with other private voice educators. I would love forstudents to become more excited about their lessons through

making the Student Center fun and exclusive to them, and thushelp them remember what they are learning in lessons.

2. I want to create a library or database of self-created resources tohelp me save time for the future students and lessons.

3. The more information and resources I can put in the StudentCenter, the more everyone can save on paper costs and printingtime costs.

There are obvious challenges to the creation of Student Center and itsapplication will probably not totally solve the issue of students forgettinginstruction from their lessons. A great deal of time and effort is expected onmy behalf to fully design the site, mix down and upload media files on aregular basis, maintain usernames and passwords through a spreadsheet,and keep the Student Center updated. Time savings may not be fullyrealized for a few years. Some voice students are never fully committed totheir lessons either and forgetfulness may easily be due to a lack of effortfrom students.

With the creation of the Student Center, students would be expected to visitthe site on a weekly or bi-monthly basis, depending on the frequency oftheir lessons. Students would be required to have access to the internet and

be able to view and download video, audio and text files. Students underthe age of 14 may or may not benefit from a Student Center withoutparental guidance (e.g., a six-year-old student is most likely not savvyenough to use the internet freely and safely). While all the students Ivehad this year do indeed fulfill all these requirements, their time constraintsmay not allow them to spend much time online in the first place, socreating a web-space that is user-friendly and efficient is essential foroverall success.



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Evaluation

How can I determine if the Student Center, and the act of uploading andmaking all instructional materials available to students online, is a

successful endeavor?1. Observation during lessons. By observing students from week-to-week,

I can get a sense of how well a student is progressing and therefore,absorbing the information I relay to them during their lessons.

2. Student feedback. In casual conversations, or interviews, as well asstudent surveys employed by the teacher and answered by studentsthrough SurveyMonkey.com, I can get a sense of students perceivedvalue. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CRHRP8D.

3. Teacher reflection. I will evaluate my own time-constraints through

reflective writing during the course of this class and in the future. Iwill continually question whether the time and effort I expend areworth the actual benefits of making instructional materials availableonline for all my students.



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Findings

The Student Center is not fully functional at this stage. I have beenuploading lesson recordings and summaries to students and students

parents for their review.Through my evaluation of student progress, I feel my students areprogressing more than normal. This could be due to a number of variablesand may have nothing to do with my change efforts. For example, some ofmy students are participating in my action research where they are askedto journal (i.e., engage in reflective writing) about their practices during theweek. This act of journaling on the part of students may be a highlycontributing factor.

As I expected, it is not fully clear whether these change efforts are worthmy time. Through conversational interviews, feedback from students isminimal and generally ambivalent. They are expectedly not forthcoming intheir opinions and I believe this is due to the complexity and intimacyinvolved in learning how to sing. I imagine they are not even sure iflistening to their recordings and receiving their summaries is working forthem or not at this point. In my own experience as a student of voice, I didnot realize much of my progress until after I had graduated from myundergraduate program and began working in the entertainment industry.Only as a working professional did I have the greatest moments and

epiphanies in which I remembered information relayed to me by previousprofessors.

Regardless, students who filled out the survey felt a Student Center wouldgenerally be very helpful, with a mean average of 9 on a scale of 1 to 10(i.e., 1 being not helpful at all and 10 being extremely helpful). Studentschose lesson summaries and warm-up recordings most often as the type ofinstructional materials they would like to see in the Student Center. Inregard to how difficult it is for students to remember their lessons, theaverage answer from students hit right in the middle of the scale (i.e., 5 in a

scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not difficult at all and 10 being extremelydifficult). Whether this data is affected by my change efforts or othervariables (e.g., more time to practice, less stress in students lives, theirinvolvement in my action research study, etc.) is unclear to me at this point.I intend to continue to evaluate my students perceived forgetfulnessthrough student evaluation and interviews in the future.



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Perhaps most interestingly, I received the most support from the parents ofchildren I teach. In one example, I have a six-year-old voice student whosemother told me in our most recent lesson how much she appreciated beingable to access all the materials for her child during the middle of the week.Another parent of an eight-year-old child studying acting said she felt more

empowered to participate in practice with her child during the week. Irealized in receiving this feedback there are more stakeholders than just thestudents and I. Parents are also valued participants in my work as a privatevoice instructor.

In my own self-reflection, I have found uploading instructional materials tobe somewhat tedious and time-consuming. I believe this is due to my nothaving established a set routine for synthesizing materials into electronicform and uploading the materials. As I continue to develop this process, Ifeel it will go smoother and faster. As I tell my students, practice makesperfect and I feel when I have a proper Student Center built and availablefor students, I will have become more efficient in my change efforts. Also,

because some materials are applicable and sharable among all my students(e.g., warm-ups by age level, rhythm and sight-reading exercises), much ofthe initial work I perform will not need to be repeated.



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Conclusion

In order for the success of this change project to be fully realized, I mustcontinue to synthesize materials into electronic form in an organized,

efficient way. Currently, I am e-mailing students with links to their filefolders without them being able to access the splash page. The StudentCenter splash page must be accessible to all students and student areasmust be accessible individually without compromising their identities. Iwill need to assign current students with new, anonymous usernames andswitch to this method for all new students. To keep track of thisinformation, Ill need to develop and maintain a spreadsheet listingstudents real names with their chosen usernames.

I may eventually have a limit to the amount of data I can keep in my

website. If this is true, I will either need to set a time limit on how long Iwill make students recorded lessons available online or I will need toupgrade my webhosting to allow me to store unlimited data.

Currently, I am asking my students to participate in a great deal of researchI am conducting in the timeframe of approximately one month. I would not

be surprised if they are nearing burnout or exhaustion from evaluatingtheir activities on a much higher level than what is normally expected ofnon-college bound (i.e., casual) voice students. In the future, I will probablylimit any data collection to casual interviews during lessons as I feel it is

important to help these types of students feel empowered and relativelycomfortable about their journey in learning how to sing. Because learninghow to sing can be such a personal process, it is important for me toconsider students workloads, stress levels, and emotional states. I mustmake sure Im not unnecessarily pushing them and creating too muchpressure. I dont want to lose students and I dont want my students to giveup on singing.

Ultimately, I feel the work I have done through this change project has beenvaluable for me in terms of developing my practices and professionalism as

a private voice instructor. I have become much more proactive in thisregard than many of my colleagues with whom I have been sharing myexperiences participating in this change project and my action research.Even if some of my students are reaching burnout or exhaustion, I believethey acknowledge and appreciate the extent to which Im involving myselfas their private voice instructor. I think they see my passion and know how



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committed I am to their progress as singers and that is possibly morevaluable than any changes I make in my practices.

By documenting this process and my academic work, I believe mycolleagues, and other private voice instructors who happen upon my

portfolio, can benefit by applying my efforts to their own practices. PerhapsI can be a symbol of inspiration to other professionals in my industrythrough my change efforts.


jps change october12 2012

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