Collaborative multi-stage exams in aural skills education: Theoretical underpinnings and two proposed approaches

In postsecondary music education, music dictation remains an essential activity for both learning and assessment of students’ aural skills. Dictation is often focused on the individual pursuit of self-improvement, and takes on a competitive form rather than fostering collaboration between peers in both learning and assessment environments. Through a synthesis of research literature across music education (informal and popular music pedagogy), higher education (collaborative and two-stage exams), and psychology (group dynamics and social loafing), I outline a practice-based research project in which I devised and implemented the first documented instance of a two-stage exam in a music course. Despite positive feedback from students, direct observations revealed instances of social loafing, which although inherent to the two-stage exam design were further compounded by the requirements of assessing written skills in music. Significant changes to the assessment design were identified to enable implementation of collaborative exam in courses where listening tasks are critical. Informed by recent research on two-stage exam methodology in multiple disciplines, as well as the adaptation of five factors that reduces social loafing in group contexts (Forsyth, 2018), I propose two novel multi-stage exams that makes collaborative peer learning a key feature of written assessment in aural skills education.