CTImusic
News

Summer 1998

What the CTI can do for you

If so, CTI Music is here to help you.

While we are awaiting the result of a review of the CTI as a whole, we are already moving in what we believe will be the direction it proposes: integration of the HEFC's various initiatives and the way in which academic staff find out about what is going on. We already took the first step down this path in our last Newsletter, in which the seven FDTL Music projects reported to you. You will have noted that some of these projects did not use computers at all. Although 'CTI' stands for 'Computers in Teaching Initiative', this title was set up nearly ten years ago, and things have moved on, and it is now clear that any clever solutions that maintain or enhance the quality of learning and teaching will call on a variety of resources, and the computer may sometimes help, but will never control, our preferred techniques.

Many of the new learning and teaching ideas that help us to deal with these increased student numbers are highly desirable in their own right, since they allow more independent learning and allow students to cover subjects and areas which we ourselves cannot cover. It is in these areas that we are anxious to help and support you, by:

You may well find it worthwhile at least to flirt with some of these new ideas, to help your workload, to keep your teaching skills up to date, and for promotion purposes and certification by the proposed Institute of Learning and Teaching.

The main initiatives likely to be helpful to the typical jobbing academic (apart from CTI Music, of course) are:

The Fund for the Development of Teaching and Learning (FDTL):

This is an initiative of the Funding Councils whereby departments that were rated 'Excellent' in TQA were able to bid for support for projects which would develop good practice. Seven Music projects made an initial report to you in our last issue. If you missed this, you may not realise the interesting nature of these projects, which are:

As you can see, they all have Web pages, which are also reachable via our own.

The Teaching and Learning Techology Programme (TLTP):

Currently the only Music TLTP project is part of Phase 3:

An earlier phase of the programme, based at Lancaster and using a large number of academics from various departments, developed teaching packages, not all of which reached final fruition, but some of which are available for use.

The Performing Arts Data Service (PADS):

This project (based in Glasgow) will establish an electronic archive of text, music, sound, etc. You may not think this applies to you, but just think how much stuff you've got tucked away in your computer; you may be famous one day, and people may be interested in your Collected Examination Questions (and maybe your other writings). So you could be both a donor to, and a user of, PADS sooner than you think.

The Electronic Libraries Programme (eLib):

If you have used COPAC to give you access to catalogues of libraries other than your own you will already have met part of the major project set up by the HEFCs' Joint Information Services Committee (JISC), of which eLib is a part, together with a whole host of projects developing information access of various kinds for various subjects. Of relevance to us is:

Find out more

Assuming you have a network connection, email, and a WWW program, you can discover all this from your desktop computer, via the Internet, even if you don't know your html from your http. If you are reading this on the Web already, then you clearly have found our pages, but if a colleague has very kindly printed out a paper copy for you, then you will need to know the following information: just call up http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/music/research/CTI.html, which is our Web page and will direct you to almost limitless information about these and other projects and initiatives. And if you don't have access to the network, contact us by other methods; we are particularly anxious to help those who have not yet got started. Or if you want to get your hands on some machines, we have two very simple suggestions:

About CTI Music

New colleagues, and those only recently computerized, may like to know a bit more about CTI Music and what we can do to help. The Computers in Teaching Initiative (CTI) was set up nearly ten years ago by the Funding Councils to provide expertise on which academics could draw. There are 24 CTI Centres covering a wide range of subjects or subject groups. Each CTI Centre is based in a normal academic department, so that its co-ordinator has close contact with academics, while the staff and students of that department can illustrate typical problems.

We at CTI Music have always been closely associated with our constituency; from the beginning we had close links with NAUMS, the forerunner of NAMSHE, our subject association, and a member of the NAMSHE Committee sits on our Advisory Group. If you have suggestions about what you would like to see us do, please contact him or us; your voice is important to us (though we are also bound by the HEFC's operating guidelines, and are unable to do some of the things we would like).

We maintain a Web page (reference above), we send a regular Newsletter free to all Music academics, likewise our (roughly) annual journal Musicus which deals with rather weightier issues in this area, and we respond to direct enquiries by mail, phone, fax, email, or personal visit. We run monthly Open Days at which you can come and see equipment working and discuss your problems with us, we will come to your department if appropriate to discuss computery things with you, and we will always try to put you in touch with somebody else if we don't know the answer ourselves, whether to do with computers or with other learning and teaching developments. Incidentally, if you are a University Music academic and this issue of our Newsletter has not landed painlessly on your desk, contact us, because it should have done, via one of your colleagues who is our named contact point; we always need to be sure we are keeping details of contacts up to date.

Our two specialist staff Lisa Whistlecroft (CTI Music Co-ordinator) and Barbara Hargreaves (Centre Administrator) are good with computers, and also with academics who are ignorant but keen to learn. Anthony Pople was Director until Summer 1997, and I have recently returned as Director to a close association with the Centre, having been the original joint grant-holder. I cannot begin to emulate Anthony in computer literacy and knowledge, but anyway we feel the time is now ripe for CTI Music to appeal to those, like me, who are anxious to develop their use of the computer sensibly and appropriately but are not particularly skilled or knowledgeable about what goes on under the bonnet. So please don't hesitate to betray your ignorance; I betray mine all the time.

Finally, if this brief Introduction to our services does not answer your particular question, and I have not described precisely the help you are looking for, and you still feel that there must be some help out there somewhere, then contact us anyway.

The CTI Music Advisory Group is

Professor Eric Clarke (Sheffield), Chairman
Dr Stephen Arnold (Glasgow) (also Director of PADS)
Dr Michael Clarke (Huddersfield) (also Director of an FDTL project)
Tim Crawford (King's College, London)
Dr Bernard Harrison (Lancaster, Head of Music Department)
Dr Andrew Lewis (Bangor)
Janice Macklin (Lancaster, Director of Information Systems Services)
Professor Anthony Pople (Southampton) (also the NAMSHE representative)
Dr Robert Samuels (Open University)
Dr Mike Russ (Ulster) (also Director of an FDTL project)

Roger Bray (Director)
Lisa Whistlecroft (Co-ordinator)
Barbara Hargreaves (Centre Administrator)

Roger Bray

CTImusic News is © 1998 CTImusic, Roger Bray, David Burnand, Lisa Whistlecroft. All rights reserved

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