I had the same experience I was in MTP with Ivan for one or two months, and then the month was over and I was kinda dropped I had to wait three months at a new mtp round, because I was to late with subscribing to a new round, because of the fact I thought I was still in with Ivan!

Now I'm with Ivan again, luckily

Just my opinion for what it's worth...

Yes and no Staffy. Pedagogically there are as many learning styles as there are teaching methods. No one way is 'best' in a simple sense; what is required is matching the teaching and learning style. (In a more complicated sense there isa 'better' here and that involves moving a student's learning style from one approach to a different one - I'm sure you can guess which I favour .) A reflexive student will learn more and more deeply by being provided with an example rather than being told a solution. The reflexive student will consider how and why their approach differs and what they may do to alter anything to match the example and if indeed they need to. A non-reflexive student will require a teaching method that (more) fully explicates the example. So as many people have already said in this thread what is required is flexibility on the part of both student and mentor; that requires both an understanding of styles on the part of the mentor and an ability to apply and adjust to them, and so pedagogic experience .

Nonetheless, as you mentioned a page or so back few are pedagogically trained (oddly enough I am) and so there is a learning curve here for both the students and the mentors. (One thing though - I do know that Kris spends quite a lot of time considering not just how good a guitar player a prospective Instructor is but also on their ability to communicate their understanding.) As Chris says the program is in its early stage - although it may have been running for a year it has only really been through a limited number of full iterations. At the UK Universities I work for it takes several years to bed in, properly assess and learn from how well a new module/program/course etc has worked and so be able to adjust it in an informed manner rather than reacting to issues as they arise.

I am also, like you, rather reticent about 'naming and shaming'. UK universities have had this sort of student feedback for many years alongside the 'number count' of how popular a course is based on the number of students who do it. In the first instance 'naming and shaming' is too open to abuse by students who like or dislike, for whatever reason, a particular Instructor and vice versa by mentors who seek to curry favour with their students, and so gain positive feedback: neither lead to a good learning environment or experience in the longer term. In the latter case, 'popularity', students don't always chose what is educationally better but often opt for what is easier to achieve: there is both an impetus to acquire short term rewards rather than longer term learning, and a desire to avoid what is seen as 'difficult'. In the UK too many Higher Educational Institutions have dropped Science and Maths courses because students don't take them as they are 'difficult'. This has lead to some Institutions now being unbalanced in their curricula. Just because more students chose to study course 'x' does not mean it, or its instructor, is better, valuable or more meaningful than course 'y'.

What I think is great about this thread is the feedback that Kris and Chris will no doubt reflect on in order to see how the program may learn and improve.

Just my 2 cents though

That wouldn't be so hard.... Kris and the other guy's already rates the Instructors lessons based on those criterias, so why could not the students be judged on the same basis? The idea here is to rate the level of the student in total, not a particular lick or phrase.

//Staffay

Staffy, but what about sloppy playing? Now when I got some bad grades on a REC take, it means I play something in wrong timing/sloppy. A lvl 10 lick played sloppy isn't a lvl 5 lick played well...

So instructors would have to grade both the technique and the musicality, now they only have to grade the technique, and I am not a fan of grading musicality...

I agree 100% to this Tony, I maybe talked too much "in general" here, I was speaking bout the actual lessons on the site, not the MTP. In my point of view there is no point in mastering an advanced solo with a lot of key-changes for instance, if You dont know the theory behind. Its like learning Pythagoras theorem without knowing that the sum of the angles is always 180 degrees. What I was pointing out was that a lot of lessons tells what notes to play and which scales to use - but not how it was constructed and the thinking behind. Its like giving half of the solution, and it makes no sense to me.

In the case of MTP-training, the actual problem is that it requires different way's of teaching according to the students level - eg. a beginner will for sure benefits from a more defined, goal-intense education whilst a intermediate player will benefit more from a reflexive way of learning. The problem for the teacher here, is to actual place himself on the same level as the student and take it from there. I did some learning at the University for a teacher that I have overpassed technically years before, but he adopted my kind of playing at that time, and I learned a lot from him by just guidance. Since I had some pedagogical education as well, its fairly easy for me to see what lessons or which instructors who are pedagogical. But thats not an easy task for someone without experience on a beginner level, even that it is easy to see which teachers making the most commitments to the students.

//Staffay



Sloppy playing will ofc. hold back the level of grading. On the other side of the coin - some of the lessons here on the site contains both "sloppiness" and lack of musicality by my means. The system I'm talking bout here, must not be taken so serious, since we actually can't judge in music at all imo. Neither do I think the grading of the lessons is 100% accurate, or the judges points in the current REC-program. Its all a subjective matter, what I'm talking bout is to encourage more people to take part in the REC-program by loosing it up a little.

//Staffay

Very true Staffay though pedagogically there is a deeper sense of learning below the theorum concerned with reflexivity and the paradigm that one inhabits. In a general sense it's the understanding not just of a theory and method but of the methodological presumptions that grounds the theory and why that theory and method are used in the first place. At a deep reflexive level we are able to partially surface and critique our own paradigm and from that question and challenge our own belief structure on how the world operates. If we can achieve that then we have - to use the Hegelian term - achieved aufhebung (or in French 'la releve') and so both learnt what we are and are able to move beyond it taking what is good with us .

In guitar terms there is the difference between rote learning the notes of the minor pentatonic - which is superficial learning. There is a deeper understanding, which requires an understanding of how that scale is constructed and how it may be used. At a deeper level there is also a consideration of how it fits in to [a] particular conception[s] of how and what is music and musical and why, and from that how it may be used against itself...

On your second point - again very true - and it is why Nietzsche argued via the Idiot that we may learn from anyone and any experience - the key being that we are open enough to learn .

Now we're talking buddy! We shall have Kris to read some Nietzsche before the next change in the MTP!!!!

//Staffay

I'm flying across the pond, and punching the next person to say, "pedagogically." I will, of course, wear my oven mitts.

This post has been edited by NoSkill: Apr 19 2010, 01:27 AM

Aaahhh, touche' ! I can spot a happy marriage between Your oven mitts and my hat coming up!!!!

//Staffay

Just want to add something to the discussion .. don't know if everybody remember all different steps of the MTP development (?)

The MTP was first tested by Kris and Chris in Oct. 2008. The first real MTP (Instructor-SudentMentor / StudentMentor-Student) started in Dec. 2008. This phase was mentioned above a few times as the most successful phase and i agree to a certain point with that... BUT imo the main reason this phase became successful because it was something new !!

The attempt to start a 2nd phase with the same structure was canceled during the selection process, simply because there were not enough Student-Mentor applications for this program.

The following MTP was completely open. Everybody could apply and choose the topic he/she wants to work on. Instructors came up with great assignment ideas which were a nice addition to the GMC's video lesson library.

In the middle of this phase, things got a bit mess up by rules. I think a simple structure would be the easiest and most flexible to make every member happy:

1. members can enter the MTP whenever they want/have time.
2. members can participate as long they want. Some members need a long term structure/practice plan. Others just need guidance/feedback from time to time.
3. members and instructors can freely discuss/define the topic they want to work on.
4. REC assignments could be used as a tool if it fits to the topic.
5. if budget is a problem for GMC, define a separated subscription option, easy to activate/deactivate when members need it/have time. That would release members, not interested in this program, to pay for it and motivat others to work even harder as they pay every month for there participation.
6. If an instructor falls out, the students are dispatched to someone else. Maybe via a selection list during the subscription process.


One last word: Tony is maybe right that it needs years to develop the "perfect" program and i fully respect that !! I just wish at this point GMC would open a bit more it's way of communication with members !! There have been other topics on this matter before and GMC staff has been surprisingly absent. I guess the MTP is more complex to structure and organize in the background as we think. Of course members don't need to be involved in every decision GMC is taking, but responses are nearly limited to " ... we will look into it" .. followed by announcing new rules which they call them self as "unpopular". In GMC's own good, why they want to do that ? Frustration and education does not go well together !!!

Andy

This post has been edited by wrk: Apr 19 2010, 07:04 AM

Just from my experience in Higher Education - at the UK Universities that I've worked for we include Student Representatives in some of the stages for Module and Program design and in all the stages for Module and Program Review (albeit that at some points they're politely asked to leave the room .) We don't always follow their recommendations but we do ask for them and we do feedback to them as to what and why we do certain things. So I take your point about communication Andy .

Staffay - Kris reading Nietzsche - we'll have to work on it

I forgot that there wasn't enough interest in round 2 of MTP and that is how the current MTP format came about. I guess we only have ourselves as students to blame for the current format then...........

Despite all the problems, MTP is free, and anybody who is member can join in. I think some time is needed for developing it, and these topics are exactly what is necessary. In such a cool community, I'm sure we can all come to some agreements on how the MTP is suppose to look like. Don't forget there are a lot of people who would like to test MTP as well in these first stages, so why don't we wait for more people to check it out and then we can see how it can be changed to be in everyone's interest

This post has been edited by Ivan Milenkovic: Apr 20 2010, 01:49 PM

Only for members with an active subscription.

Which means that I for one cannot join (again), which is fair.



I'll take the blame too for that one. I would've signed up as a mentor, had it not been for a few personal problems back then.

Did you stop being a member coz of the new mtp rules ?? Or did they contribute to your decision ?

The new MTP rules didn't suit me, no. As I stated earlier, me and Pedja had a cool thread going, which grew to like 128 posts in 8 days, as we were both commited to the cause. New rules turned me off, and I decided to quit the MTP.

They did however not contribute to my decision to stop being a member, as this was long before those thoughts even occured to me

I agree with Ivan but its been a year or more? And I don't want to be waiting more years to learn you know. I know what you can argue with here but I think we have really learnt enough by now to implement a 'working' MTP from next phase.

Thanks again for the opinions here.

A returning question is "why did the mtp rules change"? The simple answer is to prevent GMC from going bankruptcy.

We have misjudged who will want to do mtp, how long they will want to do it, along with a whole bunch of other things on the back end side. I am not that sad about it, because I know that the best (and only, sometimes) way to learn is to try.

The ride so far has been a valuable experience, and I am proud over the success I had with the first mtp student ever, Praetorian. Some of you probably know that as a complete beginner he has been doing huge progress. And after all from a student perspective the mtp program we have now is better than no mtp program at all (the mtp program has little impact on the gmc subscription price).

Regarding Mahazran's interrupted mtp - this is definitely not ok and something we should address in future mtps.

The battle is not over yet though - and we are actively thinking about ways to improve the program, in other words dealing with many of the common problems mentioned in this thread.


It sounds like you have misunderstood this Jafo, the rules say that vocal mtp:ers are required to submit a REC take just like guitar mtp. The only way I see this could happen was if the student chose a lesson containing both singing and playing, I believe we have one by Ivan Mihaljevic.


Of course there wasn't any added rule one week before an assignment was due.

I understand you are frustrated but stating things you have heard as facts doesn't really add to the discussion. Sure there have been lots of misunderstandings back and forth but that's hard to avoid when humans interact.

Thanks for you input Kris. It was long awaited.

I disagree with this. If what the students told me was not what you told the instructors, then the students somehow walked away with bad information that was presumably getting mangled in one or more of three translations/repetitions.

That seems entirely germane to the discussion; it results in the unintended loss of a student who, as far as he knows, was victim of some rules that he didn't understand as necessary.

Thanks for taking the time to weigh in.