Behind the Editor’s Desk

The same essential body of knowledge can be taught via books or online courses. At Berklee, the book-publishing arm (Berklee Press) and the online school (Berkleemusic) are organized under the same division, Berklee Media. Until recently, we even shared staff, and even now, there is much overlap between who is writing books and who is developing online courses. My office is right next to that of Debbie Cavalier, the Dean of Continuing Education, and we constantly send potential authors back and forth to each other. Many authors (Dave Kusek, Jimmy Kachulis, Dan Thompson, Eric Beall, and many, many others) have written both books and online courses on the same material, and they use their books as textbooks for their courses. And sometimes, an author will pitch a concept to one of us or the other, and we’ll say, “This would work better as a book,” or “This would be a great online course.”

From the author’s perspective, the processes of writing each are very similar. They both entail looking at the subject, organizing what topics get presented in what order, and crafting how best to articulate concepts.

But there are differences that anyone developing either one (or both) should keep in mind. By playing to the strengths of each medium, the final products can be optimized for the best user experience.

1. Online courses at Berkleemusic are highly interactive. Students post assignments for review by the instructor and other students. Students ask questions. This is perhaps the richest dimension of the online experience, and high quality courses are designed to facilitate meaningful communication. Interactivity and communication are chief benefits of online courses over books, and they exponentially magnify the learning experience.

2. Integration between media types in online courses can be deeper, more prevalent, and more seamless than in books. Many books have accompanying CDs or even DVDs, but it is relatively cumbersome to switch between reading a book and listening to a CD. Online, it is natural to read a paragraph, take a Flash quiz, and watch a video, all on the same page. The multimedia experience is the other chief educational advantage of online courses.

3. Books can vary in depth and breadth more than the standard 12-week online course format can, and different books have different types of purposes and grandiosity of ambition. A course must always be a deep, substantial hunk of education that significantly raises students’ capabilities and understanding. Books, though, can be more focused, such as Gilson Schachnik’s new Beginning Ear Training (the one with the elephant), which is essentially a set of ear training practice exercises with minimal pedagogical rumination. Or, books can be deep and comprehensive, such as Dan Thompson’s Understanding Audio, which shows how an intimate understanding of the physics of sound can transform your disappointing, lackluster plink-plank-plunk of a guitar sound into a banshee-screaming fire engine of a groove machine. As is Dan’s wont.

Courses conform to schedules, and for that reason, they must have tighter parameters regarding the amount of content they present. Books, though, can have chapters or appendixes that might potentially be relatively advanced or esoteric to some readers. A big chart with tons of detail might work nicely in a book but be awkward in a course. It’s not such a big deal for a reader to skip a chapter in a book, compared to skipping a week of a course.

Beyond the schedule, courses have to conform to other standards, particularly if they are associated with academic institutions such as Berklee. The ones here at Berkleemusic are NEASC accredited, college level courses. This means a number of things, in terms of academic rigor, substantial homework assignments, student assessments, credentials of authors and instructors, and so on. And if they are Berkleemusic courses, it goes without saying that the content must be aligned with that of Berklee College’s standards and scope. A course that’s part of a curriculum has different requirements and parameters than do most books, though certainly textbooks need to similarly be reflective and supportive of exterior factors.

4. Books are portable. You don’t need electricity, and you can read them in bed, on the beach, while seated at your piano, etc. Sure, you might do the same with your laptop, but it’s not as easy. You can give a book to someone else.

5. Reading a computer screen is more taxing than reading a book, and so varying media types are ideally interspersed, in writing online courses. Rather than just screens and screens of endless text, like an online book (which is what lesser online courses do than those we have at Berkleemusic), we enliven the readers’ experience by changing teaching/learning approach often. Good classroom teachers do this too. They lecture for a bit, then write something on the board, then ask a question. So online, text is interspersed with graphics, movies, audio clips, discussions, animations, and so on. This is how we keep students awake. It requires more collaboration between the author and courseware developers, graphics designer, and so on, than books.

In a book, it is fine to have just text or just music notation, though of course, graphics and accompanying recordings are often helpful. It’s generally subtler, though, more along the lines of presenting a concept, then exemplifying it, then perhaps practicing it, and so on, as a means of varying the reader’s perception mechanism. It might all happen in text.

6. The experience of reading and holding a book is more organic than the experience of viewing a computer screen. Readers can read a book at their own paces, without worrying about deadlines and project due dates. They can skip a chapter, read chapters out of order, or practice the same exercises every day for twenty years.

From a user perspective, the online experience is both more intense and more directed than the book-reading experience. The element of timing in a course adds structure to learning, which can inspire a greater flurry of effort from the student/reader. Then, the course ends, and the student and teacher say their good-byes.

Books are forever. A book can sit on your shelf and serve as a reference indefinitely. You might have a question long after you read a book, and so look something up in the index, spending two minutes per year with a book every year for the rest of your life.

7. Online courses are relatively easy to update. A teacher can post “Late breaking news” at any time, during an online course, and therefore add content on the fly, that’s not part of the traditional authoring process. If you are teaching a software program and there’s a new release, you can change your content quickly and easily. A book might become obsolete and appropriately go out of print in the same circumstance.

It’s helpful to have taught material before writing a book about it. This could be in an online course, a live course, a seminar, a private studio, or whatever. Students and other sounding boards help us to refine our ideas and align our pet priorities with real needs. Their questions and challenges are gifts that help us to maintain relevance. But there’s nothing like writing a book to deepen how well we really understand our subject. Writing, and dare I say being edited, gives us the space to articulate our ideas clearly, reworking a sentence or an explanation over and over until it’s rendered clearly. And when we uncover a gap in our understanding, we can go research it. We can read three other books about it, and then write the best explanation ever about how it really should be.

To a great extent, courses are defined by the students participating. For example, in my Finale course, some sections might have more music teachers, others more film composers, others more church choir directors. Everyone asks unique questions to address their personal work (which is the basis for their assignments), and this makes each course a unique journey, with a unique persona.

Courses are optimized to be journeys, rather than persistent references. They are little communities that last for a finite period where participants can potentially change each other’s lives. They are about human interaction as the means of transferring knowledge.

In a book, the author is an expert who takes the stage and rhapsodizes, uninterrupted. In an online course, the instructor says his bit, and then opens the floor to discussion. In courses, the transfer of knowledge is more customized to the reader, and less predictable. In books, subjects can be more deeply articulated.

While the author’s effort is similar in producing either one, the reader’s experience is quite different. Both have their places in the learning process. And writing either one with an eye towards optimizing the user’s experience will always yield the most useful and even transformative results.