Dr Christopher Wiley presents paper at Popular Music Education Symposium at Western University, Ontario, Canada

Dr Christopher Wiley addressed the inaugural ‘Progressive Methods in Popular Music Education’ Symposium at Western University, London, Ontario, Canada, on Friday 8 June 2018, presenting remotely via video-conference link from his office at the University of Surrey.

Dr Wiley’s paper, ‘From Research-led Teaching to Teaching-led Research: Keeping Curricula Contemporary in Higher Education Popular Music’, discussed the relationship between teaching and research in twenty-first-century UK higher education, with specific reference to his delivery of an undergraduate module on Adele’s 25 album.

A previous version of his presentation had been given at an international conference at the Institute of Musical Research, London (UK) in April 2018, focussing on the use of autoethnography as the principal methodology for the study rather than on the pedagogy of popular music education and the curriculum design itself.

The two-day Symposium was hosted by the Don Wright Faculty of Music, concurrently with MayDay Group Colloquium 30. Together the two events attracted a diverse line-up of presenters as well as over 100 registered delegates.

Further information about the ‘Progressive Methods in Popular Music Education’ Symposium is available online: http://www.music.uwo.ca/outreach/symposium-on-progressive-methods.html

The conference programme may be downloaded here: http://www.music.uwo.ca/outreach/images-pdf/mayday-progressive-methods-conference-program-2018.pdf

And presenter abstracts are available here: http://www.music.uwo.ca/outreach/images-pdf/PM-Abstracts-Fri.pdf

Dr Christopher Wiley organizes and presents paper at major international conference at the Institute of Musical Research, London

Dr Christopher Wiley has organized the two-day international conference, ‘Beyond “Mesearch”: Autoethnography, Self-Reflexivity, and Personal Experience as Academic Research in Music Studies’, held at the Institute of Musical Research, University of London, on 16-17 April 2018.

The conference, which was supported by the Institute of Musical Research as well as the University of Surrey, drew strong interest from a large international delegation of around 80 participants from across the UK, Europe, North America, and Australia.

It featured three keynote addresses and 20 papers arranged in a series of parallel sessions, together with an innovative group discussion session (which may form a model to be adopted more widely at future conferences in music studies) in which delegates separated into smaller breakout groups led by a senior academic before reporting back to the conference.

Dr Wiley also chaired a number of sessions and facilitated discussions on a range of topics, as well as delivering his paper ‘From Research-led Teaching to Teaching-led Research: An autoethnographic enquiry into keeping curricula contemporary in higher education popular music’, elements of which have previously been presented at academic forums in both music and education studies.

This event followed the success of the multi-disciplinary conference recently co-organized by Dr Wiley, ‘Writing About Contemporary Artists: Challenges, Practices, and Complexities’, held at the University of Surrey from 20-22 October 2017.

Dr Wiley previously co-organized a two-day international conference, ‘Musical Biography: National Ideology, Narrative Technique, and the Nature of Myth’, at the Institute of Musical Research in April 2015.

Further information about the ‘Beyond “Mesearch”’ conference may be found at the website: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/department-music-media/research/autoethnography-and-self-reflexivity-music-studies

The full programme, including abstracts, is available here: https://christopherwiley.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/imr-beyond-mesearch-conference-programme-16-17-april-2018.pdf

 

Dr Christopher Wiley leads session at University of Surrey Teaching Symposium

Dr Christopher Wiley delivered a presentation and facilitated the ensuing discussion at the University of Surrey’s fifth annual Surrey ExciTeS (Excellence in Teaching Symposium) on Wednesday 3 January 2018.

His session, ‘From Research-led Teaching to Teaching-led Research: Keeping curricula contemporary’, explored the relationship between teaching and research and its implications for maintaining up-to-the-minute taught university curricula, for which substantial original research may necessarily be undertaken by the lecturer for the express purposes of teaching (as distinct from research previously conducted with a view to publication and used within the classroom only as a secondary endeavour).

To illustrate his arguments, Dr Wiley outlined aspects of the design of his first-year undergraduate module on Adele’s 25 album, previously discussed in a roundtable panel he convened for the Study Day on ‘Teaching and Creativity in Popular Music’ held at the University of Surrey on 10 June 2017.

Dr Wiley concluded his session by contending that the dichotomy often posited in the academic profession between teaching and research, typically viewed as two distinct (if not mutually exclusive) activities, is unhelpful for its omitting to take account of the extent of the middleground between them. He further suggested that just as teaching may be research-led, (pedagogic) research may itself correspondingly be led by teaching.

Dr Wiley has participated in all four previous Surrey ExciTeS events, delivering sessions in 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

Dr Christopher Wiley organizes Study Day on Teaching and Creativity in Popular Music and convenes roundtable

Dr Christopher Wiley organized a Study Day on ‘Teaching and Creativity in Popular Music’ at the University of Surrey on Saturday 10 June 2017, bringing together some 25 higher education academics from across England.

The day comprised a combination of paper presentations and innovative teach-in workshops, in which facilitators presented aspects of their teaching techniques in performance, songwriting, and production in genres ranging from musical theatre to hip hop.

Also included was a central roundtable discussion (pictured, below) on the subject of ‘Pedagogical Practice in Popular Music Teaching in Higher Education: Creative approaches and continuing challenges’, which Dr Wiley convened and on which he spoke about the challenges of designing an undergraduate module on genuinely contemporary popular music (specifically, Adele’s 25 album) in the absence of an established scholarly discourse on which to draw.

The event was held under the aegis of the London and South-East England 21st Century Music Practice Research Network founded in 2016 between 20 higher education institutions, as one of a series of study days framed around its six headline themes.

Further information is available at the website for the Study Day: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/department-music-media/research-department/popular-music-teaching-creativity

The full programme for the event is available here: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Study%20Day%20on%20Teaching%20and%20Creativity%20in%20Popular%20Music%20(programme).pdf

Dr Christopher Wiley delivers internationally broadcast webinar for Turning Technologies on student response systems

Dr Christopher Wiley gave a webinar on student response systems and innovative teaching practices on Wednesday 28 September 2016, 2-3pm EDT, as part of the ‘Explore Innovation with Turning Technologies’ Fall Webinar Series.

Entitled ‘Using Student Response Systems: Creative Applications, Advanced Features, and Tips for Getting Started’, Dr Wiley’s one-hour webinar was broadcast in North America as part of Turning Technologies’s ongoing programme of educational events.

Dr Wiley has been a Distinguished Educator with Turning Technologies since 2012. During his time in this role, he has addressed many audiences both nationally and internationally, and, last year, published a report on using response technology in higher education teaching.

The flyer for the webinar may be viewed here: https://www.turningtechnologies.com/pdf/content/ExploreInnovationWebinarWiley.pdf

Dr Christopher Wiley publishes Higher Education Academy report on Using Electronic Voting Systems in the Arts and Humanities

Dr Christopher Wiley has written a report entitled Using Electronic Voting Systems in the Arts and Humanities, published by the Higher Education Academy as part of its newly launched Innovative Pedagogies series.

The 8,000-word funded report discusses a wide variety of ways in which electronic voting systems (EVS) may be embedded within arts and humanities teaching, drawing on a range of examples from Dr Wiley’s own academic practice, as well as offering advice to educators who may be considering the introduction of EVS in their own teaching.

As a National Teaching Fellow, Dr Wiley was one of a number of Higher Education practitioners across the UK who were recently invited to contribute to this series of publications.

Through his innovative work on the use of electronic voting systems in Higher Education teaching, Dr Wiley has become a Distinguished Educator with Turning Technologies as well as delivering presentations at conferences across Europe (Ireland, Greece, Germany, and Denmark) and at six UK universities in the past two years.

Dr Wiley’s full report may be freely downloaded at the following link: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/dr_chris_wiley_final.pdf

The abstract may viewed be here: https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/using-electronic-voting-systems-arts-and-humanities

Bibliographic citation 

Wiley, Christopher. Using Electronic Voting Systems in the Arts and Humanities, Innovative Pedagogies series. York: Higher Education Academy, 2015. Available online at <https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/using-electronic-voting-systems-arts-and-humanities>.

Update: Dr Wiley’s report was featured on the Turning Technologies blog on 20 July 2016. The link to the post is as follows: https://www.turningtechnologies.com/blog/2016/07/Audience-Response-Systems-Arent-Just-For-STEM

Dr Wiley also contributed an invited blog entry to the Turning Technologies UK website on 2 August 2016. Entitled ‘Three Creative Ways to use Audience Response Systems’, it may be read here: http://turningtechnologies.co.uk/blog/2016/08/Three-Creative-Ways-to-

Dr Christopher Wiley is featured on the Turning Technologies website and Surrey Research Insight blog

Dr Christopher Wiley has recently been profiled in an interview on the Surrey Research Insight blog as well as a case study written by Turning Technologies.

Turning Technologies’ feature on Dr Wiley’s pioneering use of electronic voting systems (EVS) in arts and humanities teaching, ‘TurningPoint in the Arts: Electronic Voting Systems as a Springboard for Student Engagement’, was published on their website on 14 April 2015. It discussed various aspects of Dr Wiley’s use of EVS in higher education teaching including multiple-choice questions that test deep-level understanding, game-based learning employed alongside flipped classroom techniques, and the technology’s moment to moment and demographic comparison features.

Surrey Research Insight (SRI), which manages the open access repository of academic publications for the University of Surrey, interviewed Dr Wiley in a blog post entitled ‘SRI talks to Dr Christopher Wiley’, which appeared on 1 May 2015. Dr Wiley spoke about his published work on Michael Jackson (which is available on open access), his interests in musical theatre and film music, and his current research on literature and music and on student evaluation of teaching.

The full texts may be viewed at the following links:

Surrey Research Insight: https://surreyresearchinsight.wordpress.com/2015/05/01/sri-talks-to-dr-christopher-wiley/

Turning Technologies: http://www.turningtechnologies.com/pdf/content/INTLCaseStudy-UniSurrey-DrWiley.pdf