California State University, Northridge



2016-2017 Annual Program Assessment Report

College: MCCAMC

Department: MUSIC

Program: UNDERGRADUATE, MUSIC THERAPY B.A.; GRADUATE, M.M.

Assessment liaison:

1. Please check off whichever is applicable:

A. ___X___ Measured student work within program major/options.

B. ___ X__ Analyzed results of measurement within program major/options.

C. ________ Applied results of analysis to program review/curriculum/review/revision major/options.

D. _________ Focused exclusively on the direct assessment measurement of General Education Basic Skills outcomes

UNDERGRADUATE, B.A.

The music department assessed undergraduate PLO #5 during the 2016-17 academic year: “develop pedagogical and/or clinical skills fundamental to their area of specialization for application across a variety of music and music-related professions.” This PLO was measured through gateway evaluation in Mus 477 (Music Therapy Practicum, see attached, p. 5) and capstone evaluation in Mus 494A (Internship in Music/Music Therapy Option, see attached p. 6) in the music therapy area. A rubric was used to assess students’ skills upon entering the program (see attached). Based on recommendations from national accredidation agencies, the following skills were assessed at the beginning and at the end of the program:

1. Assessment: The ability to look at a client and develop goals and objectives from interactions

2. Activity Development: Musically-based interventions planned for the client

3. Musical Skills: How well the student plays guitar, piano, sings, and plays ukulele

4. Goals and Objectives: The ability to write appropriate goals and objectives, which came to the assessment

5. Relationship: how well the student is able to bond with the client

Whereas the skills were assessed with one common gateway form during the students’ first semester, evaluators at each internship location were responsible for assessing these five areas on a scale of 1-4, which is the rating scale and areas of music therapy accredidation agencies. These internship locations are located all over the country. Whereas each rubric for the capstone experience varied by location, these five areas are always embedded on each capstone form. Due to these different complete capstone forms, which varied by location, the complete capstone rubric could not be normed. These evaluators were our only option, as we only have one full-time music therapy faculty member who cannot assess his own students. Because these clinicians have normed standards of evaluation according to music therapy accredidation agencies, we felt that that each student’s evaluation would be more or less normed. In addition, we thought that external clinicians working in several different venues to evaluate these students would give a more objective and accurate representation of student abilities.

Given that music therapy is a relatively small program, we could obtain longitudinal results from five students during the first year. Thus, the data was too small to analyze yet. We recognize that our initial sample size is small, so we intend to continue collected data on individual students longitudinally for the next three years in order to allow us to interpret a broader range of data. Each student improved in each area. Students made the most improvement in assessment (1.6 points), musical skills (1.4 points), and goals and objectives (1.6 points). The improvement was less in activity (0.6 points) and relationships (0.6 points), but as can be seen on the attached chart, these scores were already very high and thus had less room for improvement. We believe that conducting this assessment longitudinally (rather than cross-sectionally) will yield more accurate and comprehensive results.

The music therapy program is demographically representative of the music department and CSUN as a whole, particularly in terms of first-generation college students and students of Hispanic backgrounds. Additionally, these students’ internships are in several multicultural locations within the Los Angeles community. Thus, students have opportunities to work with clients of diverse backgrounds.

2. Preview of planned assessment activities for 2017-18.

We plan on continuing collecting data for the music therapy program. We hope that we can better analyze this data next year from a wider sample size. In the future, we will rely on a direct rather than indirect assessment; providing a gateway and capstone entrance and exit exam for our students rather than an evaluation form from independent assessors will yield more concrete results.

In addition, we aim to assess PLO 5 (“develop pedagogical and/or clinical skills fundamental to their area of specialization for application across a variety of music and music-related professions”) in the music education program. This will be accomplished through a gateway evaluation in MUS 266 (Foundations and Field Observations in Music Education) and a capstone evaluation in MUS 473/474 (Choral/instrumental Methods and Practicum). Since there are three full-time music education department members, we can develop and easily norm a rubric.

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Capstone Evaluation Form[pic]

GRADUATE, M.M.

As advised by the special assistant to the dean in the fall college assessment meeting in 2016, the music department decided to assess PLO 3 (“demonstrate artistic and intellectual rigor in the organization, interpretation, communication, and dissemination of musical knowledge.”) This PLO will generally be met through the academic courses (rather than lessons or ensembles) for the Master of Music, particularly Music 601 (Research and Bibliography). A gateway test (see attached) was developed to access the four areas of this PLO and given to students enrolled in MUS 601 at the beginning of the semester with a 90% response rate. The same test (capstone) was given to students who completed 601 in 2016-2017 with only a 20% response rate. The lack of participation in the capstone activity could be attributed to the fact that the exit test was given after the final grade was posted; the department will collect more data at the conclusion of the Fall 2017 semester before grades are posted. Thus, we were able to garner some general information, but we will need to collect more data due to the small sample size of capstone respondents. In the future, this test will be given as part of the class members’ participation grade at the conclusion of the class.

A part-time professor graded the tests in order to avoid a conflict of interest with the only person who teaches MUS 601 in the department. The only area where exiting students showed a marked improvement was in the organization aspect of the PLO (“ how to identify a thesis”). Quite surprisingly, the other areas did not show any improvement (see attached averages and differences on excel table). There was a decrease in score in the communication area (-.92), where students were asked to write a short paragraph analyzing an abstract of an article. In addition to the small sample size, this could also be attributed to the fact that there was a significant number of English Language Learners enrolled in MUS 601 during the Fall and Spring of 2016-2017 and far fewer this fall. There were also decreases in score between the gateway in capstone in “dissemination” (-.703) and “interpretation (.1.04)” In these activities, the students were asked to name peer-reviewed journals and primary sources in music respectively.

There is no clear explanation for this decrease in areas other than the small sample size, but it has been communicated to the instructor in the class to stress these areas in subsequent semesters.

3. Preview of planned assessment activities for 2017-18. Include a brief description as reflective of a continuous program of ongoing assessment.

We will continue to collect and analyze data from the gateway/capstone activity in order to achieve a better sample size for evaluating PLO 3 (demonstrate artistic and intellectual rigor in the organization, interpretation, communication, and dissemination of musical knowledge.) In addition, next year the exit activity will be given in the class before the final presentations as part of the students’ class participation grade in order to achieve more buy in. The students assessed this year were demographically representative of the university’s population as a whole. Also, due to the Shanghai Normal University Exchange Program, about 25-30% of the students assessed were Chinese and did not have English as a first language.

Gateway/Capstone Assessment

1 (dissemination). Please name three peer-reviewed music journals (3 pts)

2. (interpretation) Please name three kinds of primary sources for obtaining information on Mozart (3 points)

3. (organization) Which is the clearest thesis? Pick one letter (1 pt)

a.    I will draw on Michel Chion’s work in my analysis of the ballet score

b.    In this paper, I argue that Josquin and his contemporary, Robert de Févin, use motivic alterations not to disguise a musical idea but rather to illuminate certain aspects of a text.

c.    Bartók’s works were regarded by many Korean composers as important examples of successful integration of folk tunes and atonal music in the middle of the twentieth century, when European contemporary music became better known in Korea.

d.    The participation of the US all women’s Mariachi bands at the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies signaled for cultural critics, community members, and professionals a new arrival of mariachi as a transnational phenomenon

4.  (communication) Please read the following given musicological abstract and in complete sentences, state its thesis, methodology, and contribution to musicological scholarship (significance of the topic). 3 pts

In his music-theoretical treatise, Unterweisung im Tonsatz (1937, later published in English as The Craft of Musical Composition, 1942), Paul Hindemith demonstrated that harmonic tension is grounded on perceived dissonance resulting from a natural occurrence: the overtone series. His impetus for writing his theory of harmony was not only to defend tonality, but to legitimize his own neo-tonal music during the heyday of serialism and other avant-garde musical styles. While Hindemith’s harmonic theory largely derived from the experiments of Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894) and Carl Stumpf (1848-1936), he had put his theories into practice even before writing the treatise with three heretofore understudied electronic compositions: Des kleinen Elektromusikers Lieblinge (1930), Konzertstück for Trautonium and String Orchestra (1931), and “Langsames Stück und Rondo” (1935). It seems that Hindemith did an about face somewhere between 1935 and 1937, turning away from technology towards naturalism. Paradoxically, his experiments with electronic music provided him the tools to explore the natural phenomena of acoustics and psychoacoustics.

In this paper, I argue that only after experimenting with the electronic manipulation of sound was Hindemith able to develop his influential harmonic theory. Hindemith’s first sketches of the treatise, located at the Hindemith Institut Frankfurt am Main, show his indebtedness to electronic music, even though the final published version hardly mentions it. With the trautonium, an early synthesizer-like instrument, Hindemith was able to produce subharmonics, combination tones, and formant regions from electronic sounds to create various new timbres. Throughout his career Hindemith virtually ignored any discussion of timbre, but analysis of his electronic music from the 1930s proves that he was thinking about the internal properties of sound. Hindemith reproduced technological counterfeits of acoustic instruments with the trautonium and composed (and recomposed) music in the 1940s and 1950s based on psychoacoustics. In these pieces, he demonstrated how the composer can increase and decrease dissonance largely based on the capacities of the subconscious ear, a concept which he famously referred to as “harmonic fluctuation.” Hindemith’s technologically-mediated concept of timbre, which he applied to his late oeuvre, suggests a “proto-spectral” approach to composition.

Assessment Preliminary Results

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