Assessment of undergraduate students' music compositions

Abstract

This study aims to investigate and identify the criteria and parameters for assessing compositions, and how assessment can help students' learning. Participants in the study include three composer-assessors and six undergraduate music students. An assessment framework for music composition based on both the macro and micro philosophies of assessing music compositions was established. Assessment results, written comments and interview data from the composer-assessors and the student-composers were collected and analysed. A Rasch measurement model was the main tool for calibrating a stable and unified assessment scale based on subjectively rated data, and it provided a solution for standardizing ratings of assessors with different levels of severity in their ratings. The study revealed that both macro and micro aspects of assessing composition were important but assessors weighted heavier on the micro skills; supportive feedback and comments served to facilitate students to improve their works; and the framework was proven to be an effective tool in assessing music composition.

Recognizing creativity in the music classroom

“…A shared understanding of assessment criteria can encourage students to develop their appraising and critical thinking skills by progressively making richer evaluative comments about their own and other students’ compositions (Major, 2007). Teachers can thus find a way to nurture talk about composing work in the classroom and assist students in making further progress through supportive and quality feedback (Leung, Wan, & Lee, 2009). Explicit discussion of what teachers and children consider to be creative will help improve teachers’ ability to teach for creative music composition.…”

Music Assessment in Higher Education

“…Leung, Wan and Lee [15] developed a study to identify the parameters for assessing musical compositions, and how assessment can aid students' learning. The study included three composer-assessors and six undergraduate music students.…”

Creative thinking in music: Its nature and assessment through musical exploratory behaviors.

“…Consequently, there are many instruments, procedures, and methods that have been developed to assess musical creative processes, products, or persons. A systematic review of these tools is not the purpose here (for this see, e.g., Hickey, 2002;Leung, Wan, & Lee, 2009;Nielsen, 2011;Richardson, 1983;Webster, 1992). Rather, we present an overview of the main measurement approaches-including musical divergent thinking tests, compositional creativity assessment, and product-based assessment-to discuss the critical needs for future measures of musical creativity.…”

“…This technique involves domain-appropriate judges (e.g., music teachers, composers) who evaluate independently the musical products using a Likert scale on several criteria such as originality, musical structure, expressivity (e.g., Auh & Walker, 1999), and/or other "technical" criteria such as tonal and rhythmic coherence (e.g., Hickey, 2001;Kratus, 1994). The consensus between judges is estimated statistically using correlational or Rasch measurement approach (Leung et al, 2009) to ensure interrater agreement and the reliability of the composite scores derived for each musical product. Typically, the agreement estimated in studies of musical creativity using the CAT is acceptable for various types of products, criteria, and experimental conditions (e.g., Auh, 1997;Hickey, 2001;Priest, 2006).…”