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To help students to see the relevance of the module to their own musical life, they create a checklist of things a professional would check-out at a gig, or in a studio or during an interview. The checklist contains the core attributes a professional would be using to evaluate a situation.
For example – when an event manager is at a gig they will be checking out the venue for capacity, health and safety, sound quality, the bar etc. A musician at a gig may be checking out the performance, the structure of the set, the arrangement of the songs, the musicians involved, the choreography etc.
Ensure that students are fully aware of the meaning of each item on the checklist before you create it. Otherwise, this may lead to surface learning.
Discuss the event to be analysed and ask students to contribute to a list of essential elements. You could ask them to do this in small groups or as a whole group discussion.
Now establish which are the more important elements and ask the students to say why. You could ask them to vote for the top 10, then they have to justify why each one is important and rank them in order of priority. (This is a good piece of critical thinking).
Next, ask students to watch a video of a performance or read a report of an event and analyse it using the checklist.
Students now keep the checklist (as a photo in their phone for example) and use it when they go to a gig. Ask them to report back each week on the checklist.
You can also refer to the checklist when students perform, or design an event or write a contract proposal etc.
This can work well with large groups. You may need small groups for feeding back on their use of the checklist.
Students are aware of the crucial vocational elements related to the module and can identify themselves in themselves and others.
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