The Effect of Individualized Online Instruction on TPACK Skills and Achievement in Piano Lessons

ANNOTATION: Kaleli, Y. S. (2021). The Effect of Individualized Online Instruction on TPACK Skills and Achievement in Piano Lessons. International Journal of Technology in Education 4(3), 399-412. doi.org/10.46328/ijte.143

This study worked with a control group and experimental group of music education majors to compare student learning outcomes and performance in online piano instruction via a pre- and post-test after 20 hours over 10 weeks of piano instruction.

The work was conducted during the pandemic, a response to the rapid transition to online learning that occurred during the pandemic. According to the author, that transition brought to light just how little some universities know about effective online learning, especially ion arts courses. Further, the author wrote, as the pandemic wound down, it became clear that online learning is here to stay and there is still not enough understanding of the best ways to teach online. The author also pointed to a number of studies that provide that “the positive contribution of technology to education is undeniable.”

This particular study of piano learning was conducted with 30 music education majors at a four-year university in Turkey around 2020. Piano skills are required of all music education majors, and the author suggested that a particular challenge with music learning is that traditionally, teachers teach private lessons via a highly individualized style that suits the learning needs, level, and pace of each individual student. Thus, any system to teach music should be designed with individuation in mind, but current online learning models are not designed as such.

The experimental group received one hour of online education and one hour of face-to-face instruction, and the distance learning group did not have face-to-face instruction. The material covered was the same in both groups, reflecting the first-level national standards for piano skills: knowledge of C major and A minor, four octaves, major and minor sounds, a few simple cadences, and staccato and legato articulation.  Overall, the study showed that the experimental group, who combined some online learning with face-to-face learning, performed far better on a Piano Lesson Achievement Test post-test. The researchers also used a TPACK model of self-reported measures of self-efficacy and technological skills, determined via 47 items on a 5-point Likert scale post-test. The study defined the TPACK (Technology Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) model as “dynamic, procedural integration knowledge between technology, pedagogy and content, and how this interaction affects student learning in the classroom.” [sic. The article’s translation was not well-edited in English.] As such, the study also sought to determine whether technological training in combination with pedagogical and content knowledge would yield better student outcomes.

There are a few issues that limit the reliability of the study results. For one, the paper does not clearly define the difference between online education and distance education, so one can only assume from the various mentions of it that “distance education” meant teaching entirely via Zoom, as the author referred to online video conferencing apps as the means by which distance education is conducted. Second, the paper does not include any description of the instructional design of the online portion of the course, but since the same design was used for both the control and experimental groups, it may not be all that significant that this was not mentioned. Though there is a lack of clarity on many terms, the study does support the conclusion that a combination of asynchronous and synchronous learning produced better results than entirely asynchronous online learning—a finding that has been reported in a wide variety of previous studies in other fields, as noted by the author.