Creativity-Based Music Learning: Modeling the Process and Learning Outcomes in a Massive Open Online Course

While developing creativity is an important goal of many educational endeavors, creating music, from a music education perspective, is a powerful pedagogical tool. Beyond comparing the relative creativity of individuals\u27 musical creative products (e.g., melodies, songs, lyrics, beats, etc.), research in musical creativity must consider how engaging in the creative process can be an effective teaching tool, what I have termed creativity-based music learning. If music teachers are to develop students\u27 abilities “to experience music as meaningful, informed by sensitive discernments and broad understandings, in each particular musical role engagement in which one becomes involved” (Reimer, 2003, p.214), then we must gain a better understanding of how different aspects of the person and context interact during the creative process. Based on the available literature, Webster (1987a, 2002) conceived the Model of Creative Thinking in Music as a conceptual model for understanding the importance of various components that are at work in the musical creative process. Since, generally speaking, learning results from thinking of some sort, Webster\u27s model represents a reasonable starting point from which to examine how musical creative thinking leads to musical learning. There is much research in music education and the general creativity literature that has investigated how these various component parts (e.g., music aptitude, personality, motivation, previous experience, context) relate to creativity, but there has yet to be any substantive attempt to understand how all of these various elements simultaneously interrelate during a given musical creative process. More importantly, there is limited research on how creativity-based music learning contributes to important learning outcomes such as students\u27 perceptions of learning from the process, students\u27 self-evaluations of creative products (e.g., songs they have written), the development of conceptual understandings, and the development of musical creative self-efficacy. The initial primary purpose of this study was to develop and identify a statistical model that best represents the nature of the various interrelationships of components of the musical creative process, as identified in Webster\u27s (2002) model, and as they relate to learning outcomes. Understanding how all of these components relate and ultimately impact various learning outcomes has important implications for how we educate our music students. Data were collected from students taking a Massive Open Online Course entitled “What is Music?: Finding Your Song,” which was designed, developed, and taught by the researcher, and offered in January 2014 through the Canvas Network. In the course, the question “what is music?” was approached from several perspectives, including Music as Human Activity, Music as Emotion, Music as Physics, and Music as Form. While learning about each perspective, students were encouraged to engage with and complete various musical creative projects (e.g., creating a representative playlist, writing lyrics, writing a melody, writing a song). Such an educational context in which creativity is used as a pedagogical tool provided an opportunity for studying the educational outcomes of such an approach. Embedded within the course were measures of several predictors of learning (based on Webster\u27s model), including past experience in music, personality, music aptitude, contextual support, musical creative self-efficacy, motivation, and situational engagement. Initial analysis plans included the use of structural equation modeling to (1) compare and contrast the statistical fit of competing models; and (2) examine how each of these constructs not only relate to each other, but also how they each contribute (uniquely and in combination) to various learning outcomes, including perceptions of learning, self-evaluations of creative products, and musical creative self-efficacy. However, a sufficient number of students did not engage in and complete the creative projects, nor did a sufficient number of students complete all of the research items, in order to examine the full structural model. When it became apparent that sufficient data would not be available, the study was re-envisioned to examine questions about why students chose to participate or not participate in the creative music-making projects. Data were collected from 281 students, and although missing data was quite extreme for variables measured late in the course (e.g., motivation), large amounts of data were available regarding students\u27 past experience in music, their expectations regarding participation as MOOC learners, and demographic information (e.g., age, gender, education, language, geographic region). The available data were used in an exploratory manner to derive a model for predicting creative project participation in the course. The sole important predictor of project participation was whether students identified themselves as an active participant at the beginning of the course, although this variable explained only a small amount of variability in project participation. Follow-up analyses for group differences in Active Participant (individuals who identified themselves as active participants versus all other Types of Learners) found that “active participants” had significantly higher levels of Musical Creative Self-Efficacy, greater perceptions of the learning context as challenge-supportive, and higher scores on the Openness personality factor. Notably, students\u27 Past Experience in Music appeared to be unrelated to both whether they intended to participate in the creative music-making projects and whether they actually participated in the projects. In addition to the primary MOOC study, the development and initial validation procedures and results for two new research instruments utilized in the MOOC study, the Past Experience in Music Inventory (PEMI) and the Musical Creative Self-Efficacy Scale (MCSES), are described in detail. The latent class measurement model utilized for measuring Past Experience in Music is a unique and potentially valuable approach for measuring this important variable in music research of all kinds. Finally, an exploratory analysis of all zero-order rank-order intercorrelations of all non-nominal variables indicated some initial support for the General Specified Model of Creativity-Based Learning. It was not possible to take the next step with the model: to prune it, alter it, or reject it altogether, but when viewed as a very large-scale pilot study, this study did provide enough evidence to warrant investing the considerable amount of resources necessary to take that next step. Implications for creativity-based music learning and the significance of MOOCs and MOOC research are discussed. In particular, music MOOCs represent an opportunity to fill in some much needed space for lifelong learning. However, if we are to promote lifelong musical engagement, then the pedagogy within a MOOC should also promote engagement. As such, questions and further research regarding such engagement, especially within a creativity-based learning framework, are central to better understanding how to promote and facilitate lifelong musical engagement and musical learning