Teaching continues, despite the corona crisis

A lot can still be done, although there are many challenges when teacher and student sit at home in their living room and cannot play and sing together as usual. This is the conclusion after the first week of experiences with extended online teaching at RAMA.

The Corona crisis has completely shut down all the Academy’s teaching and rehearsal rooms, both in Music Hall Aarhus and in Musikkens Hus in Aalborg. Still, 80 to 90 percent of the teaching is run roughly as planned, says Principal Claus Olesen. Both the teachers and the students make a huge effort to make it all slide anyway.

The biggest challenge for students is how to practice, without access to rehearsal rooms. It can easily be messed up with neighbors, so Claus Olesen has sent all students a letter to show their neighbors, explaining the difficult situation and asking to find solutions that both parties can live with.

Friday afternoon in the first corona week, many teachers met for exchange of experience with education online via the Zoom platform. Professor Jim Daus Hjernøe demonstrated to his colleagues, how to improve the sound of the program. A song teacher told how she, among other things, had good experiences in letting her students sing along with recorded music on the headphone, which she could not hear herself, thereby getting the student’s singing voice completely clean and subsequently giving criticism. Others could tell how, for example, they exchanged sheet music, exercises and audio recordings via the program.

Despite the significant problem of not being able to play and sing live, it has nevertheless proved that it is possible to a large extent to conduct meaningful high-level music education online.

(This is a short version of the story. Full version in Danish: Go to “Danish”)