This syllabus & schedule is presented to students as a Google doc. In the first week of the semester I ask students to comment on the doc with any questions, feedback, observations, etc that they want to share. I then respond to student comments and adapt syllabus accordingly if needed. After doing so, students take an open-book syllabus quiz that asks them to locate certain information on the syllabus. This ensures that students are familiar with the syllabus. This Word doc is a clean version of the syllabus, what students see before commenting on it.

Lecture notes/class plan for 16th class in semester, on Tibetan Buddhist ritual music. References Powerpoint slide deck that accompanies lecture. Includes core questions (how I frame learning objectives for the lesson) and low-stakes participation activity embedded throughout lecture.

First day activity in which students are challenged to answer the question “what is music?”. Helps students identify their assumptions about what music is, and challenges those assumptions by providing counter-examples. Leads to discussion about “music” as contextual, ambiguous, and subjective concept. By the end of the activity, students have both a working definition of “music” to use for the course, and an understanding that that definition is fluid, imperfect, and always up for debate. Also begins to build listening skills by challenging students to identify as many different sounds as possible in their current soundscape.

Expanding beyond the ability to read and write, there are multiple types of literacy needed to be a successful citizen. In a media-saturated world, these expanded literacies are necessary to understanding and changing the world. Throughout the course, students will think and write critically about information and media in order to better understand and critique our current information environment, in which we all are hoped, assumed, and constructed to be passive consumers. Beyond news media, we will explore how information is created, saved, described, and accessed through institutions like libraries and archives. We will examine the ethics of information use and determine how to critically evaluate sources, and how to leverage the tools at our disposal to discover information in support of academic and personal research.

Use and/or adapt the following information literacy lesson plans in your course or library class! Contains Activity Sheets, Interactive Apps list, ACRL Framework for Information Literacy Sandbox, Community of Online Research Assignments, Library 101 Toolkit, Information Evaluation Resources (SMELL & RADAR)

This is a guide for faculty who are interested in converting their courses to OER. It briefly defines OER, and provides resources for finding OER materials.

This syllabus was used in an online-format Music Theory Fundamentals course at CCNY that had both asynchronous and synchronous elements. With help from the textbook’s publisher, I was able to set up Blackboard so that my students’ grades from the online activities were automatically sent to my grade book (which saved me so much time!).

Downloadable Remote Teaching Resoures, Remote Synchronous Teaching Instructions, Embedded Librarianship, Research & Citation.

Gene insertion of opsin, light-activated cell-membrane channels, into neurons of interest allows researchers to manipulate light to either excite or inhibit neuronal activity to gain a better understanding of brain function and dysfunction, and explore therapeutic applications.

I used this handout in class to introduce the modes and how they can be found in popular repertoire. We worked through each of the steps together as a class, and I introduced the modes’ names in step 4 of each excerpt. During this step, we also discussed characteristic intervals and scale degrees of each of these modes. A list of the modes was provided in the course’s textbook.

Neurons communicate with each other and relay information to the brain through synapse. Influx of calcium through ion channels acts as a trigger for starting the neurotransmission cascade, which upon reaching action potential, leads to the release of neurotransmitters, propagating the signal from the pre-synaptic membrane to the post-synaptic membrane.

Designed to develop students’ understanding of different theories that have been developed to explain the process of acquisition of second languages and of the interaction between such theories and strategies for maintaining and developing bilingualism.

This course was created as part of the Open Pedagogy Fellowship, through the Mina Rees Library at The Graduate Center, CUNY.