At a Glance:
- Client: The People's Music School (TPMS)
- Challenge: TPMS needed to move beyond traditional assessments and find a platform that could foster creativity, enable collaboration, and provide equitable access to music education for all students.
- Solution: Integrating Flat for Education's intuitive, accessible, and feature-rich platform into their core curriculum.
- Key Results:
- Students showed an 11% improvement on creative composition projects compared to traditional midterms.
- Dramatic increase in student agency and individual musical expression.
- Streamlined teacher feedback and a powerful, real-time assessment pipeline.
- Greater diversification of musical repertoire through peer collaboration.
The Client: The People's Music School
Founded on the principle that music education should be accessible to all, The People's Music School (TPMS) in Chicago is a vibrant hub of musical learning. Their mission is to provide high-quality, tuition-free music education to students from diverse backgrounds, fostering an environment where students can not only learn to play but also to love and create music. The school sought a tool that could support this mission by moving beyond passive learning and into active, creative expression.
The Challenge: Cultivating Creativity and Measuring Progress
TPMS educators recognized a gap in their curriculum. Traditional music teaching often focused on performance and theory, but lacked a robust framework for fostering genuine creativity and assessing student progress in a way that was both practical and meaningful. The challenges they faced included:
- Ineffective Assessments: Relying on traditional multiple-choice tests failed to capture a student's full musical understanding and creative growth.
- Lack of Accessibility: Not all students had equal access to the necessary tools and resources outside of school hours to practice and experiment with composition.
- Bridging Theory and Practice: It was often difficult to help students connect abstract music theory concepts with practical application in a dynamic, engaging way.
- Encouraging Expression: Teachers needed a platform that could empower students to express their own musical ideas from day one, regardless of prior knowledge.
The Solution: A Unified Platform for Music Creation and Learning
TPMS chose to integrate Flat for Education across its curriculum to directly address these challenges. The platform provided a comprehensive solution that made music composition a central teaching and learning tool.
Accessible and Inclusive Learning
By making Flat for Education universally accessible to every student, TPMS ensured that all learners, regardless of their background or home resources, had a creative outlet. This allowed for continuous musical development both in and out of the classroom, fostering a sense of autonomy and deep engagement.
Read more about Flat for Education's accessible features here on the linked post below!
Noemie Aschenbroich
Enhancing Musicality Through Composition
Instead of treating composition as an advanced topic, TPMS used it as a foundational teaching method. Students used Flat for Education's intuitive editor to compose, making complex music theory concepts tangible and easy to grasp. The instant playback feature became a key tool, allowing students to hear their musical choices in real-time and immediately understand the results of their decisions.
Promoting Collaboration and Individual Expression
Flat for Education’s features enabled a dual approach to creativity:
- Individual Assignments: Empowered students to explore their unique musical voices and express their ideas without limitations.
- Real-time Collaboration: Students engaged in group projects, co-creating music and providing constructive feedback to their peers. This feature fostered teamwork and exposed students to a diverse range of musical styles.
Innovative Assessment Strategies
Flat for Education transformed how TPMS assessed student progress by providing multiple pathways for evaluation:
- Performance and Evaluation: Students' compositions became their performance pieces, giving their work a real-world context and allowing teachers to assess their ability to express emotion and narrative through music.
- Constructive Feedback Loop: Teachers provided specific, actionable feedback directly within the musical score using inline comments, creating a continuous cycle of revision and improvement.
- Theory-Driven Exercises: Instructors designed targeted composition assignments that compelled students to apply specific music theory concepts, effectively reinforcing their overall musical education.
The Results: Empowering a New Generation of Musicians
Since implementing Flat for Education, The People’s Music School has seen remarkable results, fundamentally changing how their students engage with and understand music."Flat for Education has completely changed how we approach assessment. We're not just testing knowledge; we're giving students a voice and a way to express themselves. The fact that our students perform 11% better on creative assessments is a testament to how engaged they are when they're truly creating, not just memorizing." — Megan Robbins, Music Educator at TPMS
The benefits have been far-reaching and impactful:
- Unprecedented Student Agency: Students gained greater control over their musical expression, engaging in the full creative process from brainstorming to editing.
- Enhanced Music Literacy: Composition projects directly linked the music students see on the page with the music they hear, significantly boosting their ability to interpret and perform.
- Diversified Repertoire: Peer collaboration exposed students to a wider array of musical styles and backgrounds than traditional publications, an especially powerful benefit for students from underrepresented communities.
- Deeper Theory Appreciation: Students gained a practical understanding of music theory and the underlying reasons behind a composition's sound.
- Alternative Assessment: The platform provided a new, successful way for students to demonstrate their knowledge, benefiting those who may not thrive in traditional testing environments.
Conclusion: Creating a Future of Innovative Musicians
By partnering with Flat for Education, The People’s Music School has not only streamlined its teaching and assessment processes but has also fulfilled its core mission: to nurture skilled musicians who are also thoughtful, creative, and innovative. This success story proves that when music education is made accessible and engaging, students will not only learn, but will truly fall in love with music and the process of creation.
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Acknowledgements:
We sincerely thank Megan Robbins, Flat for Education user and music educator at TPMS, for her willingness to share her knowledge and expertise, which enabled us to create this use case.