The aim of this case study was to explore what happens when a teacher and some of his students agree to make more use of digital learning and communication in chamber music classes. As we have seen in the previous sections, a number of things happened, and I will now try to point at what I find the most important and interesting from an educational point of view.
The first thing I notice is that the hybrid chamber music course include a large number of online and offline tools, probably many more than what is common in normal chamber music settings. The teacher and students make use of and work with computers, phones, videos, recordings, recording devices, online chats, online communication platforms, assignment tasks, and they read, write, listen and talk. They use their instruments and scores, of course, and produce in addition material related to concert productions. In sum, what I see is a rich learning environment, a learning environment with many possibilities of learning due to the large number of tools. According to socio-cultural learning theories (see for example Vygotsky 1987), tools play a fundamental role in learning, both physical tools (such as instruments, computers, the Internet, etc.) and psychological tools (such as language and symbol systems). According to these theories, what can be learned, and how it is learned, will differ according to which tools are used. This does not mean that the quality of the learning by necessity is better with more tools. It means that it is different, it opens up for other things to learn, and it means that some tools offer certain learning opportunities and other tools offer other ones. To write about chamber music is different than playing it, for example. However, the array of tools we see in this particular practice is interesting, since it exemplifies an alternative to a more limited understanding of which tools are relevant in chamber music instruction.
A second and related observation is the number of participants in the course. Not only is this hybrid practice an example of a rich learning environment, it is also an example of an extended community of practice. Students, the chamber music teacher, main instrument teachers and other faculty (in this case music history and ear-training staff) contributed and strengthened the community in different ways, and the learning management system was an important factor making this possible. Again, I lean on socio-cultural theories, which see learning as a social and participatory phenomenon (see for example Lave and Wenger 1991 or Rogoff 2003). People learn from participating in social practices, and the richness of the community is therefore interesting to me, and promising from the perspective of learning.
A third observation is how positive the students were to the asynchronicity created by online tools. They appreciated the opportunity to reflect alone in writing on ensemble and chamber music activities and challenges before they had to communicate it to the others. They also appreciated to have time to digest comments from others. The asynchronous setting seems to have created a positive space for reflection and digestion, a positive distance, and it seems to have taken away some of the possible tension in face-to-face feedback and communication. In my opinion, this is a very important finding, since it helps to nuance the common argument that performance education is always best face-to-face in a physical room.
In sum, this particular chamber music tuition practice seems to have been a rich learning environment and an extended community of practice, and there is reason to believe that the students learned more, or at least differently, than they would have done in a regular chamber music course. A number of learning tools facilitated both face-to-face and asynchronous instrumental learning, reflection and feedback, and enabled more continuous coursework and positive changes in the feedback culture in instrumental tuition. The teacher took on several teacher roles and operated as a master musician, an instructor and a facilitator and supervisor, and heightened thereby probably the students’ sense of responsibility and ownership.
Technology seems to have played a central role in creating many of the positive characteristics of this particular practice. Still, both the students and the teacher had a strong interest in chamber music, and were motivated to put in extra effort and expanding the scope of the course compared to the minimum requirements in the curriculum. I will therefore argue that technology is only one part of the picture, and that the particular combination of high motivation, shared and high expectations, an openness to including new learning tools, and a clear, developed and dynamic understanding of student and teacher roles is what truly characterises the strengths of this particular practice. It is however important to note that this combination also led to a time-consuming chamber music course far exceeding what is expected in terms of credits and teaching hours.