Music Therapy
Professor/Lecturer name: Rachael Finnerty
NOTE: I took this course during the summer of 2015, and in September 2015 is when this course first becomes available during the school year. There MIGHT be differences between this review and the course in the fall.
Summary:
Music Therapy is a discipline of health care, not entertainment. It revolves around the benefits of Music Therapy for anyone at any stage of the lifespan to achieve a healthcare goal.
The first half of the course talk about different models/approaches towards in Music Therapy and the second half touches upon how Music Therapy is effective to different diagnoses, such as Depression, Parkinson's and Autism.
During the first half of the course, the prof will sing to you, plays the piano/guitar to demonstrate how Music Therapy is used to enlighten mood and facilitate many health care goals, which makes the class more interesting/fun and interactive. The second half is mainly focused on studies on Music Therapy, you must know the interventions, outcomes and significances of all of the studies. It is not hard to know because it's quite straightforward and the prof re-emphasizes numerous times on what they are. She does spend quite a bit of time on certain things to reinforce material, so one might find it boring but others might find it nice to have that reinforcement. You do not need a music or health background to do this course, because she makes everything clear and she assumes no background either fields. If you are in health related fields, then this is going to be second-nature to you! I would highly recommend this to Psych, Nursing, Health Sci students for grade boosters.
It's a very basic introductory course. It touches upon a little bit of everything and there's nothing intense/in-depth about anything. Very manageable.
Class Breakdown during Summer Session
1. Brief history of Music Therapy and What is Music Therapy?
2. Interventions, Approaches and Models of Music Therapy
3. Improvisation (an intervention) & Quiz 1
4. Songwriting (an intervention)
5. Pre-composed music (an intervention)
6. Midterm
7. Biomedical Model and Medical Setting
8. Music Therapy and Mental Health
9. Neurologic Music Therapy
10. Music Therapy and Premature Infants
11. Community Music Therapy & Quiz 2
12. Music Therapy and Autism
13. Music Therapy and Parkinson's Disease
Quizzes, Midterm, Final
Quiz - Class 3 = 10%
Midterm - Class 6 = 30%
Quiz - Class 10 - 10%
Quiz - Class 13 = 10%
Final exam = 40%
This was the original plan of the course, but we decided to combine the last 2 quizzes together on class 11 and made it 20%.
If you attend class, pay attention, write down notes, read the courseware (focus on the studies), you will ace all the tests. I found the quizzes to be a great way to reinforce learning and helped me to keep up with the course. The prof re-uses the test questions in Midterm and Final, so there's no way you can't get be in the A ranges. AT LEAST B's! For example, the final consists of at least 80-90% of questions from Quiz 1-3 + Midterm, and she takes up EVERY question, so you'll know the right answer to 80-90% of the questions on the final!
Unless you don't go to class, then I got nothing to say.
This summer was the prof's first time trying out Multiple Choice Questions tests, so I don't know if she'll keep it that way or back to the Short Answers.
