Table of Contents

• Introduction: Mapping the
  Territory



• Precedents in Pedagogy



• Acoustic Ecology as Interdisciplinary
  Pedagogy



• Introducing Acoustic Ecology to
  Undergraduates



• Commentary on course
  assignments



• Group Fieldwork Projects



• Sound Journaling



• Preliminary Assessments



• Conclusions and Implications for the
  Teaching of Interdisciplines



• Postscript



• Appendix: Sample audialization
  exercise



• References



• Notes

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Introduction: Mapping the Territory

The development of new post-secondary courses in established disciplines allows
the course designer to follow a path – one that may have many branches and
options, but a path previously taken by other course designers and instructors with
some success. The development of new courses in interdisciplinary contexts, and in
new disciplines, requires a somewhat different process of exploration, largely
without maps. Literature searches may turn up few truly relevant results.
Precedents may be incompletely applicable to the situation at hand. Unexpected
attendance -- or lack of it – at the first class may suddenly turn a lecture
course into a seminar, or vice versa. The course designer and/or instructor’s
task is to turn uncertainty into an advantage. This requires 1) flexibility in
planning; and 2) a pedagogic focus on conveying to students how and
why the integrated field of study (or ‘interdiscipline’; Klein
1990) answers questions that cannot be answered by its predecessors or its
component disciplines. The latter task is crucial, since it demonstrates the
necessity of integrative thinking to the understanding of emerging fields of study
that do not segregate the traditional categories of Sciences, Social Sciences and
Humanities. It is my purpose here to describe one such exploration and to show its
significance to the philosophy and pedagogy of interdisciplinarity, in the hope
that it may serve as an example to curriculum designers and other administrative
decision makers of the advantages of interdisciplinary approaches. The implications
of such approaches for administrative structures will be discussed in the
concluding section.

In order to clarify the significance of interdisciplinarity to the discussion
presented here, it is useful to distinguish among the terms multidisciplinarity,
transdisciplinarity, and interdisciplinarity. According to theorist
Julie Thompson Klein, the distinction is crucial. She describes multidisciplinarity
as “a juxtaposition of disciplines”(Klein 1990, p.56), such as the
teaching of social history with history of the arts. Multidisciplinary frameworks
may in time give rise to interdisciplinary ones, or to new disciplines (e.g.
Performance Studies, Gender Studies). Transdisciplinarity is defined as describing
“conceptual frameworks that transcend the narrow scope of disciplinary world
views...signif[ying] the interconnectedness of all aspects of reality”
(ibid., p.66), e.g. rhetoric, phenomenology, and sociobiology.
Interdisciplinarity, however, is not associated with a specific category of subject
matter or method. In fact, Klein suggests that its definition tends to flex with
the uses to which it is put in the service of scholarship and pedagogy. It is
rather a process of integrating methods and information, which may be, derived from
particular disciplines into a unified approach that is not limited by any
particular canon. From this concept comes Klein's use of her coined term
'interdiscipline', which is particularly useful to the emerging category of fields
which begin as interdisciplinary networks rather than growing from a
multidisciplinary base. For purposes of discussion here, I propose to limit its use
to the description of fields of study that are fully integrated; that cannot be
broken into component disciplines without distortion. Examples of such
interdiscipline are Urban Planning (integration of history, architecture, art,
geography, demographics, design, engineering), Choreography (physiology,
kinesiology, history, literature, music, aesthetics), and Environmental Studies
(geography, biology, geology, anthropology, chemistry, resource management).

The designation of 'interdiscipline' also applies to an emerging branch of
Environmental Studies, a field called Acoustic Ecology, which integrates acoustics,
cognitive psychology, aesthetics, geography, sociology and music. Acoustic Ecology
may be called a "humanistic science" --- its roots lie at the intersection of music
composition and the science of acoustics with social movements toward environmental
awareness. It encompasses the study of sound in human and natural environments
(including noise, music, speech, animal communications, and silence) as it
interacts with issues of cognition, community, culture, and health. As a field
which transcends traditional categories of study, including the division between
Fine Arts and Sciences, it represents an evolving interdiscipline which is
relatively new to academic scrutiny and to inclusion in curricula. For this reason,
it provides a useful example of the challenges involved in developing
interdisciplinary courses based on integrated subject matter rather than a
combinative multidisciplinary perspective

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Precedents in Pedagogy

The literature of interdisciplinary education in its general sense of including
more than one discipline is extensive and inclusive, but often of limited relevance
to the teaching of fully integrated subject matter at the post-secondary
undergraduate level. The majority of it refers to multidisciplinary collaborations
at the secondary level; e.g. using art, literature, and/or geography to teach
history. Most studies, too numerous to cite here, focus on the successes and
failures of specific programs. Accounts of secondary and undergraduate pedagogy may
present interdisciplinarity as an administratively imposed task that requires team
teaching (Meister and Nolan 2001, Frank and Schülert 1992, Bartell 1979). The
notion of interdisciplinarity as a concept inherent to some fields of study is
rarely given emphasis. Even fields of study that began in the 1960s and '70s as
interdisciplines, e.g. Communications and Women’s Studies, developed in the
1990s to include discipline-specific canons of literature and methodology. Thus,
the question of ‘what is an interdisciplinary subject?’ imposes itself
on the process of course design.

Literature on interdisciplinary pedagogy at the level of university
undergraduate programs is focused on three principal areas: definition, defense,
and evolution. A distinction between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary
approaches is drawn by Squires (1992), who cites "integrative degrees" such as
medical sociology as examples of fully realized interdisciplinarity motivated by
new categories of employment. Hagoel and Kalekin-Fishman (2002), working from
within the perspective of medical sociology, trace the expansion of disciplinary
concepts in the sciences, citing Environmental Studies and Medicine as fields in
which interdisciplinary conceptualization and collaboration are crucial, but
sometimes resisted both by discipline-oriented scholars and by students. Lombardo
(1992) discusses problems of definition inherent in the founding of new
disciplines, since traditional disciplines may change with time to encompass
aspects of others. As an example, she traces the development of Cultural Studies as
a socio-political response to the limitations of traditional English departments
and suggests that such developments may be facilitated by a focus on problem
solving and teamwork. The defense of interdisciplinarity as equal in value to the
method-centered approach of traditional disciplines is a recurring theme,
apparently because such defenses are considered necessary to overcome
administrative barriers in educational institutions. Interdisciplinarity may be
regarded as “counter-factual”, although this does not necessarily
inhibit cooperation (Weingart and Stehr 2000, p.111). Newell (1992) argues that
undergraduate education in a specific discipline need not precede interdisciplinary
approaches, since "the wholistic perspective of interdisciplinarity allows
disciplinary literature to be read as representative of a perspective, rather than
definitive in itself."

The integration of knowledge and methods from widely differing disciplines into
a seamless unity requires respect, imagination and lateral thinking. For
disciplines based in the methods of science, the task of integration with
non-scientific fields is particularly problematic, since it may involve accepting
the validity of alternative methods of proof. In a defense of multi-disciplinary
and integrative approaches from a scientist’s point of view, Stephen J. Kline
presents a series of hypotheses based in Systems Theory. The second of these
is:

“Honor All Credible Data. In multidisciplinary work, we need to
honor all credible data from wherever they arise. (This includes not only data
from various disciplines and from our laboratories, but also from the world
itself, since we have no labs from which we can obtain data for many important
purposes.)” (Kline 1995, p.6)

Newell's view (op.cit.), as well, is directly applicable to the
integration of scientific with non-scientific methods in education. Students of art
history, for example, need not learn the mathematical principles of engineering in
order to understand why the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral is vaulted -- the
builders of the time did not have access to algebraic formulas, either. They do
need to know that forces are exerted on load-bearing walls, and that the success of
a given design depends on an understanding, whether mathematical or experiential,
of those forces. Thus, an appreciation of disciplinary canons sufficient to
motivate the interdisciplinary scholar or student to ask for assistance from a
specialist is appropriate, while full facility with the specialist's discipline is
not usually required. The designer of an interdisciplinary course would be well
advised to request specialist colleagues to review drafts of the course proposal
and syllabus.

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Acoustic Ecology as Interdisciplinary Pedagogy

The literature of post-secondary education in Environmental Studies, itself a
developing interdiscipline, gives particular emphasis to the necessity for
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches (Pawson and Dovers 2003; Belsky
2002; Hamelin 1995) and to the advisability of presenting environmental topics
within the framework of social and ethical perspectives drawn from the Humanities
(Foster 1999). So does Acoustic Ecology, the study of sound (including music,
noise, and silence) and its effects on health, cognition and culture. Like all
ecological studies, it shares the characteristics of a science (physical properties
and measurement of sound), a social science (human perception and social attitudes
toward sound) and a branch of the humanities (aesthetics of sound, definitions and
vocabularies used to describe sound). Still in its infancy as an academic research
field, Acoustic Ecology is at this time practiced primarily by musicians,
composers, music educators, broadcasters, and recording technicians. Their
observations combine art and science, a constant reminder not to concretize this
rich field of inquiry into static methodologies.¹
The philosophy and methods of Acoustic Ecology are still in their developmental
stages, as recent writers acknowledge (Dietze 2000, Karlsson 2002, Truax 2001). As
such, the field affords opportunities for the development of interdisciplinary
pedagogy from the standpoint of basic structural decisions: What are the operative
categories of knowledge? How are they defined? How can principles and methods
derived from different disciplines be combined? How do combinative and integrative
approaches differ, and what are the effects of each on student
comprehension?

In 1999 I was presented with the opportunity to develop a new
interdisciplinary course for the University of Calgary. Called “Introduction
to Acoustic Ecology”, it began as a block course href="#note2">² designed to present the basic concepts of the
subject and some of its potential applications. My intention was to design a course
that would give students a background in an emerging interdisciplinary field that
combines scientific with humanistic modes of thought and learning, and consequently
to expose university undergraduates to a form of study that would embody the nature
of interdisciplinarity by merging several categories of learning. The first step
was to ponder the scope of disciplinary connections. Physics (acoustics),
Engineering (design), Architecture and Planning (indoor and urban soundscapes),
Geography (natural soundscapes), Psychology and Neurology (audition), Musicology
(connections between soundscapes and musical aesthetics; musico-linguistic
connections, uses of music as a therapeutic mode), and Sociology (effects of taste
and attitude on noise-induced stress) were all significant. Each discipline,
however, bristled with specific methods that were impossible to impart to
undergraduates in one week. The solution was to base the course on experiential
exercises that would demonstrate the principles of the various component
methodologies without requiring a thorough knowledge of any one of them.
Experiential learning would provide a bridge between the factual domain of science,
the interpretive domain of the social sciences and the imaginative domain of the
humanities (Figure 1).

Thus, experiential exercises would have to be combined with references to
theoretical and methodological approaches derived from disciplinary knowledge. They
would include developing attention to auditory information (listening exercises),
perceiving and describing soundscapes on the campus (sound mapping and sound
journaling, which require attention to acoustics, auditory perception, design and
geography), and producing sounds (improvisations, which require attention to
acoustics and aesthetics).Figure 2 illustrates the connection of exercises with
related categories of knowledge

Figure 1: Categories of learning for "Humanities / Science"
integration

Figure 2: Integration as demonstrated by Acoustic Ecology

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Introducing Acoustic Ecology to Undergraduates

Acoustic Ecology is an emerging field of study that weaves together aspects of
physics, health sciences, communication theory, education theory, psychology,
biology, neurology, anthropology, sociology, musicology, and aesthetics. First
defined by Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, it is the study of sound
(including noise, music, and silence) in natural and social environments, its
effects on listeners (human and otherwise), and its history and
evolution.

--Preface to University of Calgary course syllabus,’
Introduction to Acoustic Ecology’, 2000.

A brief history of the field is now necessary, as it provides the rationale for
specific pedagogical decisions. Canadian composer and music educator R. Murray
Schafer pioneered the development and dissemination of Acoustic Ecology, as well as
coining its title. Working in the late 1960s and 1970s at Simon Fraser University,
Schafer began the practice of sound mapping, a technique for describing the ambient
noises in a given locale through graphic maps. His Vancouver Soundscape Project, a
prototype for the concept of sound mapping, categorizes and quantifies sounds of
all types in Vancouver neighborhoods^3.
Schafer’s objective was to make the music community as well as the general
population more aware of their auditory surroundings. Schafer’s followers,
particularly composer Barry Truax, continued his work at Simon Fraser and are now
active in promoting the concept of Acoustic Ecology worldwide href="#note4">^4.. The idea of considering the world as a vast
soundscape -- the auditory equivalent to a landscape, a crucial concept in Acoustic
Ecology -- is now promoted by the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), with
affiliate branches in Canada, the United States, Germany, Switzerland, France, the
United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan, and Australia href="#note5">⁵. Founded in 1993, the WFAE began publishing a
journal in 2000 and now keeps educational resource lists and articles on its
website.

The course plan for the University of Calgary was not directly modeled on the
Simon Fraser University courses of Schafer and Truax. The basis for this decision
was the fact that I would be working with undergraduates who would not necessarily
have any background in music or in communication theory, as the SFU students did.
More significantly, the block course format would allow one week for all aspects of
the course except the final fieldwork project, which was due only four weeks later.
Providing the technical background for the component disciplines of Acoustic
Ecology was not feasible under the time restraints. Thus, my principal objective
with the course was to provide a brief introduction to the ideas and
Weltanschauung of the field, along with exercises that would give a taste of
the practitioner’s experience. In effect, the purpose of the block course was
to be a pilot project, a justification for a more fully developed offering in the
future.

In its first manifestation, the introductory course was offered to third and
fourth-year undergraduate students through the Faculty of Communication and Culture
in January 2000. The block course format was deemed appropriate for an experimental
course that required spans of time for fieldwork. Of the 20 students enrolled, five
were Music majors (set 1), two were from the Faculty of Science (set 2), eight from
the program of Communications (set 3), and the remaining five, majors in Social
Sciences and Management, signed on for a credit option with no initial preference
for the topic (set 4, “unclassified”). href="#note6">⁶

Because Acoustic Ecology is a relatively new field, literature suitable for a
brief introductory undergraduate course was hard to come by. I assigned some
excerpts from Schafer (1992) along with material on the WFAE website, and
recommended books by Schafer (1994) and Attali (1985), but presented most material
in the form of lectures, demonstrations, and auditory exercises. Students were told
that because the course had a concentration on auditory concepts, they would be
expected to listen rather than read as their primary mode of information intake---
reading supplemented lecture and discussion, rather than the reverse. Most had
little difficulty in adapting, and those that did were encouraged to ask for help.
Students were requested to report any hearing difficulties that might interfere
with their ability to do the assigned exercises; none did.

The course content was structured around four central questions, each
introducing a series of related concepts and techniques. In the first unit
‘What is hearing?’ introduced lectures on the physics of sound
and the physiology of hearing, along with a history of ambient noise derived from
Schafer’s speculations in The Soundscape (1994) as well as my own
investigations. “Ear-cleaning exercises” from Schafer (1992), designed
to enhance auditory attention, were also introduced in conjunction with my own
audialization exercises (a sample is given in the Appendix, below). href="#note7">⁷ The question ‘How is sound
described?’ led to considerations of vocabulary drawn from music and
physics, and to the social-scientific concepts of sound as cultural unifier,
boundary delineator, commodity, and communication system.

The third question, ‘What are the ambient sounds of this
campus?’ introduced instruction in sound-mapping techniques and
observations of sound in outdoor and architectural spaces. In the afternoon of the
second day I led students on a soundwalk through the University of Calgary campus
so that they could practice sound-mapping techniques in preparation for their
assigned fieldwork projects. The walk began inside a building composed of
classrooms and faculty offices, then proceeded through a landscaped outdoor
quadrangle, the Student Union building, an Engineering facility, and a Music
Department practice room wing. At each location, the students took notes on their
impressions and drew a sound map. These were shared in a discussion at the end of
the day.

Finally, ‘What is your unique experience of listening?’
led to experiential exercises in language as sound, the body as resonator, rhythm
as measurement, and music as ambience. In the first set of exercises students
experienced language as a series of sound patterns and visited the campus
Linguistics laboratory for a tour of the “Sounds of the World’s
Languages” software.⁸ Some ‘body
as resonator’ exercises included listening to their own speech through
stethoscopes and creating improvised percussion with handclaps, footsteps, knee
slaps, finger snaps, tongue clicks, and abstract vocalizations. Improvisation with
voices and “found instruments” (keys, beverage bottles, shoes, notebook
covers, binders, pencils) was also practiced in a particularly resonant stairwell.
The purpose of these exercises was to expand students’ perceptions of how
sound is created, as well as their awareness of how much ambient sound they usually
“screen out” --- a recognition of what is physically heard but not
attended to, and the ways in which such ignored sounds can influence their
responses to speech, their mood and their ability to concentrate. The element of
play, rarely made available to adult students, was an additional factor. A few
students found it difficult to participate at first; all but two (both Management
students from Group 4) joined in once the musicians showed obvious
enthusiasm.

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Commentary on course assignments

Assignments for the course included a Group Project (fieldwork paper and
presentation), and Sound Journals. The group project was designed to encourage
cooperative decision making about venue and methodology, while the Sound Journal, a
diary of sounds heard in daily life, provided a focus on the act of listening
consciously. Both were exercises in experiential learning, based on the premise
that any study of an environmental science must include contact with the
environment (Colascibetta 2000; Covington et al. 2000). Simply reading about the
mathematics of acoustics, or the neurology of hearing, does not in itself produce
an understanding of Acoustic Ecology. Nor does recording give a true indication of
ambient sound, since even the best equipment (which is rarely if ever available for
purposes of instruction) will distort the intensity and spatial location of sound
signals. Experience of the place being studied, including its spatial properties,
is essential.

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Group Fieldwork Projects

The Group Fieldwork Project required each self-selected team of two to four
students to find a local venue for fieldwork in which they would describe and map
the ambient sounds of the venue as well as suggesting possible alterations to the
acoustic ambience.⁹ Preliminary research and
scouting of possible venues was reported in an outline, which each group discussed
with the class in order to share ideas about methods of approach. Fieldwork was
scheduled for the fourth day of the block week, with the class dismissed at 11 a.m.
so that groups could spend the rest of the day at their research venues. They were
required to report to the rest of the class the next day on their findings and
their plans for the written project, which was due four weeks later. Each written
project had to include graphic sound maps of the venue and some brief examples of
ambient sounds on audiotape, as well as a description of methods, processes,
findings, and suggestions for further investigation.

The fieldwork projects chosen by student groups demonstrated considerable
range of focus as well as methodology. Within the general guidelines given,
students were free to adapt their methods to the circumstances of the venue and the
tools available to them, since standardization of measurements was not possible due
to lack of equipment. Thus, a group of science students with occasional access to
an oscilloscope were able to take precise measurements of sound frequencies in
their project, while most groups concentrated on a combination of verbal
descriptions, maps modeled on the Schafer literature, and sample audio clips.
Fieldwork venues chosen were primarily public areas, on campus or within the city
of Calgary. One group concentrated on the university library, noting the
differences in ambient noise and human activity on different floors, e.g. the
Reserve Reading room (frequent entrances and exits), the Music Library (soft
humming and tongue-clicking by readers of musical scores), and the mechanical floor
midway up the 13-storey Library Tower. Another group mapped and described the human
and electronic noises of the “Campus Cove” recreation area and pub in
the Student Union building, concluding that while many of the noises were
intrusive, they defined the character of the place. “Consider a place like
the Cove and imagine it having no sound at all: would we really feel comfortable in
an arcade with no noise or a library where talking is allowed?” . href="#note10">¹⁰

Two projects stood out as particularly demonstrative of the utility of
fieldwork. One, by a group that contained one Music major and two Communications
majors, analyzed the ambient noises in the Calgary Children’s Hospital. The
group recorded and mapped auditory activities in the Admitting area, the X-ray
area, and the cafeteria. Noting the intensity of sound in the waiting room for
Admitting, they realized that the noise of children interacting with toys placed
there, and with each other, was not an aberration but an intentional circumstance
designed to relax the children. Another surprise was the sound of a buzz saw
piercing the quiet ambience near the X-ray area: it was used for removing casts,
and caused noticeable anxiety in some children waiting nearby. In a list of
suggestions to the hospital included at the end of the paper, the students
recommended that the room containing the saw be equipped with additional sound
insulation.¹¹The opportunity to critique an
actual working ambience gave these students the chance to apply what they had
learned, and validated their observations. The other project, carried out by the
two Science majors and one student from Social Sciences, investigated the
soundscapes of three religious communities in Calgary by visiting a mosque, a
synagogue, and a small Buddhist monastery. One science student with a particular
interest in Buddhist chant obtained permission for the group to spend a full day at
the monastery with audio recording equipment, then produced computer generated
sonograms of chants and ambient noises. He observed that the interaction of sound
and space was crucial to the ambience, demonstrated his assertion with sonograms of
recordings taken at particular locations within the room, and surmised that
disconnecting sound from space was liable to distort perception of the
soundscape:

"In our experience of the Great Compassion Repentance Ceremony at Avatamsaka
monastery, the resonance of the room formed part of the experience. Certain
frequencies were accentuated, and thus changed as we moved throughout the room
–- there was a physical interaction with the space." href="#note12">¹²

The interdependence of resonance (sound) with resonator (spatial setting) is
in fact one of the key concepts in Acoustic Ecology as it is in physics, and the
student’s experiential recognition of the phenomenon was undoubtedly worth
more than any explanation he could have received from a textbook. For this reason,
fieldwork is essential to any course of this type.

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Sound Journaling

Students were also required to keep a sound journal to record conscious
listening experiences outside of class time, approximately one hour each evening.
The journaling process is idiosyncratic by nature, since descriptive words for
sounds are not well standardized in English (one person’s
“crunch” is another’s “crackle”) and individual
perceptions vary. Instructions for the process may be complex, with attempts to
classify sounds into distinct categories discussed and agreed upon by the group, or
open-ended; e.g. ”write a description of everything you hear, in terms that
make sense to you.” In the block course, the latter decision was made.
Open-ended journaling, while not particularly productive for quantitative research,
is satisfying to the imagination. It builds confidence in students not previously
accustomed to describing sounds.

As expected, the music majors in the class had considerable range of vocabulary
as well as awareness of their own auditory attention. One, a flute player,
catalogued the vocalizations of her pet canaries into a musical-linguistic grammar,
using onomatopoeic descriptors (“chirp, peep, warble, squawk”) and
imitations (“bee-aaa-bee-aaa!, chee-erp”) interspersed with the
technical vocabulary of musicians (“tempo, pitches, rubato,
accentuation”).¹³Another, a singer, spent
time sitting on a bench at a shopping mall with eyes closed, taking note of the
voices of passers-by in conversation and documenting her emotional
responses:

“Some male voices had a warm tone that was soothing and portrayed a
comforting energy. Other male voices had a sharp edge that overpowered the warmth
of the low [tones]. The female voices were most definitely higher in pitch and
many had a sweet, innocent tone.” ¹⁴

One communications major concentrated less on direct description of sounds
and more on explanation of circumstances causing the sounds:

“I can hear the TV from downstairs. I can tell that some sort of sport
is being watched because I can hear a crowd of people moan and groan in
anticipation as they await a goal or score. The volume of the crowd has increased
but there is no goal because I can hear a unified sigh of disappointment (ahhh).
The crowd is getting louder again. Their cheers are indiscernible. They get
louder. There are two sharp and high-pitched toots of a whistle. The announcer
then announces that there has been a goal.” href="#note15">¹⁵

The interweaving of auditory with other sensory images was also quite common
among journal entries; e.g.:

“The wind was blowing full gusto and this whistling and whirling was
most definitely the prominent noise. It danced with my hair and moved gently
through the surrounding bushes and shrubs.” href="#note16">¹⁶

In general, the journaling exercise was effective in focusing attention on
the conscious perception of ambient sounds. Such attention led most students into
greater consideration of the amounts of noise to which they are exposed on a daily
basis and the range of emotional responses that noise can evoke.

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Preliminary Assessments

Outcomes from the initial course offering showed some minor discrepancies among
the disciplinary background sets. Sets 1 and 2, the musicians and science majors,
showed the highest levels of performance on assignments, both on powers of
observation of sound as demonstrated by journal entries and by research design for
the field work projects. Music majors were also the most inventive in the
experiential exercises: this was not surprising, given their professional training
in relating individual sounds to larger structures, as well as their performing
experience. Set 3, being the largest group, varied most in course performance. Some
individuals made the adaptation to aural emphasis easily, others were challenged.
Set 4, predictably, was the least successful in terms of observational skills and
course performance, but the individuals reported gaining greater awareness of their
auditory surroundings, particularly the high levels of noise in recreational areas
on campus. All students but one reported enjoying and learning from the course; the
dissenter felt that the experiential exercises were inappropriate.

Some specific challenges were presented in the development of the first Acoustic
Ecology course at the University of Calgary. The first was lack of familiarity on
the part of administrators as well as students. An interdisciplinary course can be
difficult to justify at a time when budget restrictions threaten all but courses
deemed “core” to programs, even in a faculty dedicated to
interdisciplinary instruction. Since the field is not yet well known in academic
circles, the idea had to be presented as an experiment despite extensive precedent
at another university. Since funding was provided that year for the development of
block courses, a format not yet in extensive use, the course was given support as a
pilot project.

A second challenge was the diversity of student backgrounds. This was overcome
without much difficulty by turning it to an advantage. If a common set of
assumptions and approaches was lacking, students could share their backgrounds as a
way of demonstrating the diversity of approaches possible in an interdisciplinary
field of study. This was accomplished during guided class discussions by setting
sample problems and asking students from various backgrounds to describe how they
would approach solutions. Contributing students were then led by questioning to
explain how previous experiences shaped their perspectives on the problem. Finally,
the preponderance of questions over established answers, typical of an emerging
field of investigation, became ground conducive to the growth of speculative
thinking about such issues as noise regulation, cultural influences on auditory
attention and musical taste, noise-related causes of hearing impairment, and the
scarcity of silence in urban public venues.

The course has not to this date been repeated on the undergraduate level,
reportedly as a result of budget constraints. It has subsequently been redeveloped
for graduate students in Architecture and Environmental Design (see Postscript,
below). Improvements to future versions of the course should include access to
equipment that can enable precise measurement of sound. A wish list would encompass
decibel meters to measure sound intensity (loudness) and oscilloscopes to measure
frequencies, as well as sound analysis software. Since these are expensive items,
such access would most likely necessitate collaboration with faculty members in
Engineering or Physics, or with technicians in the noise control industry. Portable
audio recorders would ideally be supplied to student groups doing fieldwork,
preferably all of the same type and specifications so that measurements are
comparable.

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Conclusions and Implications for the Teaching of Interdisciplines

The course in Acoustic Ecology presented here demonstrates an experimental
method for conceptualizing and teaching in an interdiscipline, a fully integrated
field for which a multidisciplinary (discrete, non-integrated) approach is not well
suited. Such a course may indeed employ more than one instructor, but the crucial
difference between multidisciplinary and fully interdisciplinary teaching is that
the latter does not separate component disciplines as discrete units within the
subject area. Instead, it requires an inquiry-based approach that defines the
subject area by means of strategic questions, which often bypass traditional
methodologies. Methods may thus become combinative, layering aspects of physical
description and measurement, social significance, and assignment of cultural or
personal meaning (refer to Figures 1 and 2, above), as exemplified by the exercises
of sound walks and mapping. It is tempting to speculate that the integration of
methodology along with content may well be essential to the successful teaching of
interdisciplines; further research and reporting of examples are needed to complete
this picture. However, the teaching of interdisciplines, particularly those that
involve integrations of science and humanities, may be problematic at many
institutions for administrative reasons if not philosophical ones. Support for the
development of such courses may be hard to find in the first place because
administrative barriers must first be overcome. One of these is the usual housing
of courses in a single department or faculty. Cross-listing, a possible solution,
looks precarious when the example of Acoustic Ecology is used: a course
cross-listed for students in music, psychology, engineering, environmental studies
and architecture – with the possible addition of sociology, geography and
health sciences – is almost certain to cause objections at the Registrar's
office, if not in the departments listed. For this reason, a small college may find
it easier than a large university to mount such a course. Potential budgeting
problems include the allotment of funds to departments and faculties sharing a
cross-listed course, particularly if more than one instructor is involved. Finally,
students may be wary of being graded by instructors who comes from outside their
home disciplines.

Because objections by administrators are likely to result from lack of
familiarity with the concept of integrated pedagogy, the simple desire to teach one
course may suddenly project the planner into the arena of administrative reform.
Course and curriculum designers may need to introduce the concept of
interdisciplines cautiously, citing precedents from interdisciplinary theory (see
Bibliography, below) and from such relatively established interdisciplines as
environmental studies and biomedical engineering. In this way, newly emerging
fields of study can be legitimized, developed, and passed on to students. Whether
motivated by philosophy of inquiry or by the employment markets of the near future,
post-secondary institutions are gradually opening to such possibilities.

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Postscript

In 2001, a second version of the “Introduction to Acoustic Ecology”
pilot was offered in the graduate faculty of Environmental Design, which houses
programs in Architecture, Community Planning, and Environmental Sciences. Six
students enrolled – four in architecture, one in landscape design, and one
with a double concentration in planning and law. The structure was similar to the
undergraduate version, but less time was spent on experiential exercises and more
on investigation and discussion of how Acoustic Ecology could be applied to the
students’ areas of professional concentration. Applications included
municipal planning and zoning, municipal noise bylaws, and architectural
design.

At the conclusion of the course, students reported unanimously that a four-day
intensive block course offering provided insufficient time to gain background and
to investigate problems, and that they would support expanding the content. The
course is now under development for regular scheduling as an offering in the
Faculty of Environmental Design.¹⁷ Ideally, it
will be open to selected graduate students in Music, Cognitive Psychology and
Health Sciences as well as those in Environmental Design, in order to encourage
multidisciplinary interaction as well as an interdisciplinary approach.

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Appendix: Sample audialization exercise

Rationale: The following list of sound “images” is designed
to develop auditory memory (recall of sounds heard in the past) and imagination
(auditory imaging of unfamiliar sounds; essentially speculative and analogous to
visualization of scenes described in words). Both processes, though different in
nature, may be classified under the heading of “audialization”. The
development of both memory and imagination in auditory contexts is applicable to
encouraging attention to the heard environment: ambient noise, aural signals,
foregrounding and backgrounding of sounds, auditory distracters, and conscious
listening.

Audialization exercises may also stimulate memory of emotional states, so a
quiet and safe environment is important.

Instructions to students: Please close your eyes and rely on your ears.
As you hear the description for each sound, take a moment to “hear” it
in your memory or imagination, as you would visualize an image described to you.
Many of you will visualize at the same time – that’s typical, and
it’s fine.

Sound “images” (to be read aloud by the instructor)

1. Opening and closing a car door.



2. Opening and closing the door of a house you lived in as a child.



3. A dog walking on linoleum.



4. A school playground.



5. A familiar body of water.



6. A familiar recreational facility.



7. A gathering storm.



8. A language (known or unknown) other than the one you commonly speak.

NB – These are examples only. The list may be altered or extended
according to the instructor’s objectives. It is advisable to avoid mentioning
sounds that can trigger anxiety in individuals with a history of trauma associated
with noise: for example, particular care must be taken if the class includes
refugees from war zones.¹⁸

Commentary: It is helpful (and enjoyable) to encourage discussion of
the group’s experiences after the exercise, as long as contribution to the
discussion is optional.

Images 2, 5 and sometimes 8 are particularly evocative of positive childhood
memories, while 6 may raise awareness of noise levels in everyday life. In my
experience, most students enjoy sharing their stories

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Notes

^{1. name="note1">}For discussion of the current
methodological dynamics of the field, see Henrik Karlsson (2001), "The Acoustic
Environment as a Public Domain" in Soundscape vol.1, no.1.

^{2. id="note2" name="note2">}Block courses at the
University of Calgary are held one week before the regular schedule of classes for
Fall or Winter Term begins. They run for four or five days of six-hour classes, and
are best suited to subjects that require intense focus and experiential
components.

^{3. id="note3" name="note3">}For further
information about the Acoustic Ecology movement and the Vancouver Soundscape
Project, see the website of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE).

^{4. id="note4" name="note4">} For an example of
Truax’s work, see his Acoustic Communication (2001).

^{5. id="note5" name="note5">} WFAE Website
text.

^{6. id="note6" name="note6">}Each of these
disciplinary background groups will henceforth be described as “sets” 1
- 4, to distinguish them from project groups (“groups”).

^{7. id="note7" name="note7">} Audialization is
directly analogous to visualization: it is the imagining of a sound stimulus in a
specific ambience.

^{8. id="note8" name="note8">}The software, from
UCLA, catalogues and presents all known sound patterns from all languages, giving
International Phonetic Alphabet symbols and sound recordings as well as information
about demographics. I find it to be an excellent tool for developing
students’ awareness of the functions of the human voice, as well as the
auditory aspects of communication.

^{9. id="note9" name="note9">} The idea of improving
or altering soundscapes by reducing noise is controversial within the Acoustic
Ecology movement. One point of view is that the public right to (relative) silence
is crucial, and that public spaces should be designed to be acoustically neutral
with a minimum of traffic noise, music, and other stimuli. Another is that noise is
an intrinsic part of the public space, and that it should be recorded and described
but not changed in any way. For the undergraduate course I chose the former
philosophy, after presenting both, because it would give students an exercise in
speculative planning.

^{name="note10">10.} name="note10">Project paper: L.Cheng, D. Fournier, A. Joncic.

^{name="note11">11.} name="note11">Project paper: J. Chapin, D. Gutfriend, J. Price.

^{name="note12">12.} name="note12">Project paper: J. Heumann, M. McDonald, C. Quillian.

^{name="note13">13.} name="note13">Sound journal entry, C.Harrington, January , 2000.

^{name="note14">14.} name="note14">Sound journal entry, J.Welling., January 3, 2000.

^{name="note15">15.} name="note15">Sound journal entry, S.Halasz., January 3, 2000.

^{name="note16">16.} name="note16">Sound journal entry, J.Welling, January 6, 2000.

^{name="note17">17.} name="note17">Collaboration with Professor Tang Lee of the Faculty of Environmental
Design, who teaches Architectural Acoustics.

^{name="note18">18.} name="note18">It is easy to imagine applications of audialization to therapeutic
situations, analogous to Guided Imagery techniques.

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Authors

Dr. Marcia Jenneth Epstein is a cultural historian, musicologist and
musician with an interest in the effects of sound and music on health and culture.
She teaches in the Faculty of Communication and Culture at the University of
Calgary, and serves as an adjunct professor for the faculties of Environmental
Design and Nursing.

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References

Attali, Jacques (1985). Noise: the Political Economy of Music.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Translation (translator not specified)
of Bruits: essai sur l’economie politique de la musique, Presses
Universitaires de France, (1977).

Bartell, Shirley Miller (1979). “A Model for Crosscultural and
Interdisciplinary Teaching” in Improving College and University
Teaching vol. 27; 34-37.

Belsky, Jill (2002). "Beyond the Natural Resource and Environmental Sociology
divide: Insights from a Transdisciplinary Perspective" in Society and Natural
Resources vol. 15 no.31; 264-275.

Colascibetta, F., L. Campanella and G. Favero (2000) “An Aquarium as a
Means for the Interdisciplinary Teaching of Chemistry” in Journal of
Chemical Education, vol. 77, no.10 ; 1311-1313.

Covington, Wallace, Peter Fule, Thomas Alcoze and Regina Vance (2000). "Learning
by Doing: Education in Ecological Restoration at northern Arizona University" in
Journal of Forestry, vol. 98 no. 10; 30-34.

Dietze, Lena (2000). “Learning is Living: Acoustic Ecology as a
Pedagogical Ground” in Soundscape vol.1, no.1; 20-22.

Foster, J. (1999). "What price Interdisciplinarity?: Crossing the curriculum in
environmental higher education" in Journal of Geography in Higher Education,
vol. 23, no. 3; 358-366.

Frank, Andrea and Jürgen Schülert (1992). "Interdisciplinary Learning
as Social Learning and General Education" in European Journal of Education,
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Ghnassia, Jill Dix and Marcia Bundy Seabury (2002). "Interdisciplinarity and the
Public Sphere" in Journal of General Education vol. 51, no. 3; 153-172.

Hagoel, Lea and Devorah Kalekin-Fishman (2002). "Crossing Borders: toward a
transdisciplinary scientific identity" in Studies in Higher Education
vol.27, no.3; 297-308.

Hamelin, R. (1995). "Chemistry and Environment – a Field of
Interdisciplinarity" in Qimica Nova, vol. 18, no. 1; 68-73.

Karlsson, Henrik (2000). “The Acoustic Environment as Public Domain”
in Soundscape vol.1, no.2; 10-13. Pre-publication copy also available on the
WFAE website.

Klein, Julie Thompson (1998). "The Discourse of Interdisciplinarity:
Perspectives from the Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum " in Liberal
Education vol. 84, no.3; 4-11.

Kline, Stephen Jay (1995). Conceptual Foundations for Multi-Disciplinary
Thinking. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Lombardo, Patrizia (1992). "Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinarity" in
Critical Quarterly vol. 34, no. 3; 3-10.

Meister, Denise G. and Jim Nolan Jr. (2001). “Out on a Limb on Our Own:
Uncertainty and Doubt in Movingfrom Subject-Centered to Interdisciplinary
Teaching” in Teachers College Record vol. 103, no. 4; 608-633.

Newell, William H. (1992). "Academic Disciplines and Undergraduate
Interdisciplinary Education" in European Journal of Education vol. 27, no.3
; 211-221.

Pawson, Eric and Stephen Dovers (2003). "Environmental History and the
Challenges of Interdisciplinarity: an Antipodean Perspective" in Environment and
History, vol. 9, no. 1; 53-75.


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