Fostering Creativity and Collaboration in a Fully Online Tertiary Music Program

One of the pedagogical challenges for online teaching is preparing tertiary music students for collaborative work, particularly in performance, composition and production. This article surveys the use of online performance collaboration within a higher education music course. Using a framework of constructive alignment, synchronous and asynchronous learning tools are investigated and discussed. In order to achieve crucial lifelong learning needs, we determine how collaborative online performance tools can not only develop musical skills, but also breakdown the perceived limitations in an online course by enhancing creativity and building meta-capabilities such as networking, communication, independent thinking and problem solving that professional portfolio musicians require today.