Undergraduate Research and Affective Learning: Examining a Contemporary Music Research Project

In this article, I describe and discuss a specific research project that I have assigned in my Music History III (1900-present) class for the past three years. The project pairs each student with a composer and assigns a work by that composer for the student to study and analyze. The primary resource for the project is the composer herself, who completes an interview with the student. In assessing the success of the project, I have chosen to investigate its impact on my students’ affective engagement with contemporary music. To accomplish this I administered surveys containing Likert-type items and open-ended questions to students in my 2015 and 2016 classes. I have also observed a variety of additional benefits to the project, including improved writing and presentation skills, increased understanding of career paths in music, and heightened awareness of contributions by female and non-white composers.