Auralia (Part 2)

I spent the last journal entry highlighting some of the pros and cons I have encountered with Auralia, and now would like to touch upon student reaction to the program and how it can be further integrated into our theory curriculum.

The first thing to point out is that regardless of quality, you will not be able to please all students.  Aural skills are not topics most students are accustomed to practicing in their free time, and as such most attempts at quizzes and other outside practice will be met with some resistance.  I also had many times this semester where students complained that a quiz was much too difficult, but when viewing the statistics available via our cloud integration, I discovered that only six students had practiced the exercises before taking the quiz.  Because of this, I think integrating Auralia is more of a mental hurdle for the students than anything else.  The program is a different type of homework that they’re not used to, one that could theoretically never end, and as such some may not even try to attempt it.

That being said, we have had many students this semester express their enthusiasm for the program, and have stated that it has helped them with aspects they were struggling with in class.  Additional experimentation with other topics, including sight singing (or at least pitch and interval imitation) would be very useful.  What would really put the program over the top is outreach to the developers in order to collaborate on the design of a Penn State SOM syllabus that would be included in the program, thus allowing students to take proficiency tests akin to MACGamut

While some topics need improving, Auralia really shines when it comes to the quizzing of basics that are accomplished through drilling.  These fundamentals can then be applied in class for sight singing and dictation.  In the future, I would probably supplement Auralia with additional Laitz harmonic dictation exercises, but otherwise I believe it serves its purpose fantastically.