NFE Reflections Perdue 2007-8
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MCC New Faculty Experience ReflectionsAlexandra Perdue, Music Department Mesa Community College Contact me @ musicbiz@mail.mc.maricopa.edu
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Teaching Mission: Utilize Innovation to Inform and Empower
My goal is to use innovation to inform and inspire my students about the Music Industry and help them develop their own path for success.
The students I've encountered, generally, have a strong passion for contemporary music/popular culture and dream of working in the industry, but lack a realistic assessment of the skills and rigor involved in a long-term career. My job is to provide a wholistic set of learning experiences that serves as a proxy for real the world and helps students articulate a vision for where and how they want to contribute.
In my classes, students learn to consider questions such as:
How does the Music Industry work?
What trends and technologies are shaping the business of music?
How do I plan to negotiate the tension between art and commerce that underlies the Music Industry?
What aspects of the Music Industry do I find most exciting?
What specific skills and experiences do I still need to attain to move forward in my career?
How can I grow my network of peers and professional contacts while still in school?
Teaching Objectives
• To partner with students to build overall self-confidence via subject mastery of industry terms, business operations, marketing trends and legal issues.
• To foster critical thinking and enjoin students to develop well-researched, independently conceived points of view
• To prepare students to function effectively in a highly competitive, digitally driven market
• To facilitate the acquisition of relevant career skills
• To encourage innovative problem-solving in both the personal and professional arenas
• To engender a sense of intensity, rigor and focus in the planning process
Student Learnging Outcomes:
After completion of the Music Business program, students should be able to:
• Speak the language of the industry like a native
• Understand the far-reaching implications of trends in consumer marketing, brand development and the entertainment industry, at large
• Distinguish between what is personally appealing in music and what drives measurable success in the broad marketplace
• Apply the rigor of market research and analysis to create relevant and timely insights into the business issues shaping the Music Industry
• Adopt a consistently innovative, “outside the box” mode of problem-solving
• Develop a fearless attitude in the face of any and all challenges that affect the Music Industry
• Create a realistic, personalized career plan with a 5 year time horizon
I've created my personal SLC objectives for my students to align with MCC's Student Learning Outcomes: http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/about/orp/assessment/outcomes.pdf
A Day in the Life…
A day in my classroom is designed to give students an intimate and up-to-date look inside the music business.
On the first day of the course, I instruct students to consider their music industry class not as “just a class” but as their most important and beloved job. From day one, students are challenged to demonstrate skills they will use as working professionals.
Their classmates are now seen as their potential professional network and their assignments provide an opportunity to build a career portfolio.
Typical work includes:
• Break out sessions where students read and analyze industry news from current business media and trade journals as a group and discuss implications of new developments-- facilitates awareness of trends in the marketplace; confidence in public presentation; team-building skills
• In-Class assignments where students may create a marketing plan for a musical artist or a new technology product and present to their classmates-- facilitates independent , creative problem-solving and recreates the pressures of competition and time constraints in the real world
• Interactive, mediated lectures—example: while learning about Music Copyright we go live to the Copyright Office website, locate circulars and register songs for copyright--seamlessly integrates technology as a learning tool; encourages exploration of technology
• Student Presentations invite students to use YouTube and MySpace and emerging music websites to identify and critically analyze concepts like marketing production values, brand differentiation and promotional strategies-- facilitates the use of relevant resources to examine music marketing techniques
• Mini-technology workshops where students learn how to use and troubleshoot new technologies from iPods to Wikis-- facilitates skill development with the technologies and innovations that are current in the industry.
• Field Observations and site visits where students are assigned to visit a recording studio or music retail environment to analyze business structures in real time.
Measuring the Effectiveness of the Program:
Effective career programs, regardless of industry, provide students’ with:
a general self-confidence in public, self-presentation
a level of ease in interpersonal communication and networking
a strong understanding of the skills needed to attain meaningful work
a commitment to consistently rigorous and well-researched positions
a mastery of industry terms and concepts
a curiosity about and facility with the technology that drives the industry.
My gold standard in measuring success is the percentage of students who graduate and attain or create meaningful and personally satisfying employment in the Music Industry.
Why it Matters:
The Music Industry is tough business. Contemporary record labels employ only about 20,000 people in the U.S. in total.
The competition for regular employment and/or a recording contract is fierce. So, professionalism, mastery, self-confidence, intellectual rigor, and a healthy appetite for technology and innovation can provide the keys to future success.
Despite the challenges of procuring and/or creating meaningful work in the Music Industry, it can be done. My goal is to help students see the possibilities and be optimally positioned to make their dreams a reality.
