Featured faculty is a site dedicated to highlighting C.W. Post faculty and their use of innovative teaching technologies to engage the students in their courses and improve the learning process.

Nominated by Prof. Paul Kim, School of Visual and Performing Arts

C.W. Post Department of Music Listening Library

See John's course listings

For about the past 15 years, John Meschi has been a leading advocate at the C.W.Post campus for the use of technology in education, specifically music and arts education, and has developed some creative web applications for his students to listen and learn about music.

MUS 1P Introduction to Music Concepts
MUS 14A Introduction to Music Technology

For an example, see John's "Analyzing a Melody" learning object, which breaks down and analyzes the Beatles famous song "We can work it out."

As a former student of John put it "John exemplifies the type of faculty member that will tirelessly work with any of his students to help them get it right! He has been known to work very long hours helping us."

John has continued development of new creative ideas, by devising an innovative way for the faculty in the Department of Music to make use of digital music files for educational uses, either in the classroom or as listening assignments.

The idea behind the online Department of Music Listening Library is to provide a location for students to easily access music for listening assignments or to listen again to recordings played in class. It is the Internet equivalent of the traditional listening room, usually based in a campus library, where students go to complete listening assignments which have been put "on reserve" for them.

The library also gives the Department a place to keep recordings and other instructional material online for faculty to use on campus in network-equipped smart classrooms. In an ideal situation an online network library gives faculty instant access to more music than can be carried into a classroom. For example, if a student says, "That piece reminds me of a Beethoven symphony", an instructor could access the network library and play the mentioned Beethoven piece immediately instead of saying, "Good point. I'll play that piece next class."

The original home of the library was a Department Intranet that runs on a computer in the Fine Arts Center. To allow for wider accessibility, the library was moved to WebCT this semester and now can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet. On WebCT, students login with an id and password and go to the library home page, which links them to the individual course pages, each containing links to various musical works. When a student clicks a "music link," the music plays on his or her computer.

Not only is the library being used for listening assignments and course material, it was recently used to distribute "rehearsal tapes" created by Professor Alexander Dashnaw for members of two of the Department's performing ensembles instead of distributing the recordings the traditional way on cassette or CD.

Through the library and other planned online resources, its Web site and its Music Technology Lab, the Department of Music at C.W. Post continues to give its students the technological skills and experiences needed to be successful and innovative in today's musical world.

We in the FTRC congratulate John on his use of technology in teaching, and wish him the best of luck with its development.

If you know of a faculty member at C.W. Post who you would like to nominate for inclusion on this site, please see our nomination page.