Abstract

Fundamentals of Tonal Music is a first-year two-semester foundation course in the undergraduate music program. The course provides an integrated introduction of tonal theory, connecting written theory, musicianship skills, and music making outside of class. Each class meeting is divided into two parts: (1) knowledge-based lecture; and (2) small group drills for practical applications of the materials learned in the lecture towards musicianship skills training. Due to the nature of the training and the big difference among students’ prior preparation and ability, students are assigned to a group of 10-12 according to their levels in the small group drills when they are engaged with hands-on learning activities and receive greater individual attention. For decades, selected postgraduate students were involved in teaching the small group drills along with the course instructor. These teaching assistants meet with the course instructor periodically, select learning materials according to their groups’ ability and progress, engage students in the drills, and assess their students’ works. For most postgraduate students involved, it is a challenging task since their pedagogical competence has never been developed and on-site supervision by the course instructor is not possible due to limited manpower. For the course instructor, it is hard to help these TAs and to ensure effectiveness of the delivery without observing their teaching in person. With professionals hired for teaching support, training, and on-site supervision, this project aims to (1) better identify the current needs when involving postgraduate students in undergraduate teaching; (2) develop postgraduate students’ pedagogical competence and better prepare them to teach in the undergraduate program; (3) engage postgraduate students as active partner in course design, teaching and learning materials development, assessment, and evaluation; and (4) provide them with more continue support during the process.