Effectiveness of Telepresence Learning Environment for Opera Singing:
First Results from a Case Study
Teresa Rojas-Rajs
Multimedia Applications Laboratory, Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Spain
trojas2010@gmail.com
Francesc Alpiste
Multimedia Applications Laboratory, Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Spain
alpiste@ege.upc.edu
Pedro Lorente
Audiovisual Cluster, i2cat Foundation, Spain
pedro.lorente@i2cat.net
Francisco Iglesias
Audiovisual Cluster, i2cat Foundation, Spain
francisco.iglesias@i2cat.net
Joaquín Fernández
Multimedia Applications Laboratory, Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Spain
jfernandez@ege.upc.edu
Josep Monguet
Multimedia Applications Laboratory, Polytechnic University of Catalunya, Spain
jm.monguet@gmail.com
Abstract: this brief paper shows the first results of a case study on a remote learning telepresence
environment, specialized on lyric singing at higher education level. Opera eLearning study uses
high bandwidth for delivering quality audio and video experience, and has been reviewed and
evaluated by singing teachers, chorus and orchestra directors, and other professional musicians.
Besides the exhaustive material recorded in video, which allows contrasting each of the singing
lesson against a set of categories, usability testing and a user acceptance questionnaire has been
applied. The analysis of results shows that the environment can be effectively used for masterclass
lessons.
Introduction
Nowadays remote learning systems are wide spread across the World Wide Web. Several solutions offer
virtual classroom through videoconference with students, also sharing documents, forums, and other asynchronous
means of delivering learning contents.
Regarding music education there are interesting examples in blended learning solutions, mixing presence
tutoring with the availability of contents, community support and automated review of exercises, like VEMUS
(Virtual European Music School, 2009). This and other projects had advanced on supporting the execution and
evaluation of the student in automated manners, like controlling gestures, measuring pitch and tone, involving
sensors, visual aids and computer-assisted feedback. Such researches are crucial for the future of music education,
and are maturing to the stage of even deliver standards for further applications, like the Symbolic Music
Representation (i-maestro, 2009). From the musical point of view, the instruments selected are winds, strings,
percussions or piano.
These kind of multimedia systems can fulfill the help required in the daily practice by computer-assisted
games and motivating feedback (Percival, Wang & Tzanetakis, 2007). All users can benefit from them, but user
with special needs, children, starters and lifelong learners are key users, since in this stage of the musical learning
the main objective is to obtain the proficiency in execution due a consistent repetition and check up.
In the other hand, one-to-one tutoring is at the core of learning process at the conservatory level; in a
recent study (Gaunt, 2008), teachers have characterized such relationship like parental, friendly, collaboratively
curious or like a doctor and patient. Teachers seek transmitting the skills acquired in their own professional life and
experience, and are strongly committed to achieve students’ own development, literally to “develop a personal
artistic voice” (Gaunt, 2008). Even more, when it comes to music at advanced higher education or graduated level,
the council and support given by an experienced teacher is not oriented to teach the instrument: this knowledge is
supposed to be mastered already to a high degree of proficiency. Therefore the teacher is devoted to review beyond
the technique the interpretation of musical repertoire, conducting the expression (Karlsson & Juslin, 2008), the
emotions and artistic quality of the performance, often using images and metaphors that make easier for the student
to understand the feeling required (Woody, 2006). For the present study is important to denote that a very common
practice, the masterclass, that involves one teacher reviewing the work of one student with other students attending
as observers, it is also a one-to-one tutoring (Gaunt, 2008), since it does not involve a proper peer review, that is, the
other students are usually not allowed to participate in the evaluation process.
Several sceneries justify the need for a remote class. Some opera singing teachers are active musicians, so
they have seasons of concerts and travel a lot; the need to continue the tutoring with their students is a good chance
for remote learning sessions. Offering a masterclass remotely could mean that students that may not be able to travel
can reach an important master. Such virtual classroom involves requirements on audio and video quality: fast speed
synchronous communication, excellent view, and a high quality sound approach. According to “experiential
telepresence” definition (Draper, Kaber & Usher, 1998), the present study implements a telepresence environment,
because promotes that the users feels to share space with distant interlocutors loosing awareness of the distance, and
emulates the remote space, specially in the sound experience for the teacher.
Music higher education institutions are already delivering remote classes and educative content through
high quality videoconference and broadcasting (Manhattan School of Music, 2009). High-bandwidth availability
allows improving videoconference’s quality. Such is the case of the use of Internet2 (Internet2, 2009) in Miami for
orchestral higher education level (NWS America's Orchestral Achademy, 2009) . Our case study would be the first
experience only devoted to opera singing, and is using the Géant2 European network platform (Géant2, 2009).
The Study
Opera eLearning project included a case study focused on remote learning of lyric singing, which has
delivered 14 masterclasses, 4 of them between cities in Spain and 10 between Sabadell (nearby Barcelona), and
Amsterdam. As part of the project, prior to this masterclasses several pilot tests has been developed inside Spain in
order to define the proper audio and video settings. A few lessons learned from the pilot stage were the definition of
a minimum standard for the microphones and speakers, to dismiss the possibility of using headphones, to confirm
the absolute requirement of use a piano accompanist at student´s site due the communications delay, and how the
immersive sound emulating the space on the rooms could be optionally used to improve the listening of the teacher,
although stereo configuration allows to deliver the class as well. The system is intended to be used soon in a opera
singing graduate course, and also includes a Web Platform with the common tools (forums, documents, messages)
that won´t be discussed beyond in this paper, but is an important part of the whole blended learning proposal of
Opera eLearning project. The recorded sessions compressed in MPEG-4 format are between the published
documents for further student’s revision. In the recording and publishing process we had followed most of the
instructional strategies for video-assisted music education mentioned by Anderson & Ellis (Anderson & Ellis, 2005).
At the masterclasses two teachers, ten professional opera singers as students and six pianists participated.
Two kind of repertoire has been reviewed, opera and lied singing. In each session there were observers at free
demand, which included students, and until five evaluators. Evaluators were opera singing school directors,
orchestra or chorus directors, or audio engineers. All evaluators have wide experience (over 25 years) and works
nowadays at the more recognized institutions related to opera from Catalonia, in Spain.
Goals and Methods
Opera eLearning had the goal of design a remote learning environment for opera singing at the graduate
level. It was an exploratory case study (Yin, 2003), where previous hypothesis are well defined but we were
committed to find additional information trough data recovered. It was a common work in engineering, because we
were testing an artifact. In this sense, we could also define the study as a validation or verification study, from the
usability point of view (Rubin, 1994).
The hypothesis were user oriented: the model of remote singing learning room (1) was enough for the
teacher to fully evaluate the student; (2) allowed the student to understand observations and emulate the teacher’s
sound; (3) observers could use the information received as well and (4) a high quality, immersive and space
distributed sound could improve teacher’s listening. The main question to be answered, at last, is prove if it was
possible to deliver proper masterclass remotely with this artifact.
During all the classes we had video and audio recording; for the analysis, categories of research were
defined, which are listed in the following table. Such categories can be reviewed against each of the hypothesis.
Category
Learning objectives
Subcategory
Technique
Expression
Sound quality
objectives
Classroom
effectiveness
Tones
Dynamics
Harmonics
Class support
Communications fluency
Specific information about subcategories
Collocation
Air Support (“Appoggio”)
Articulation and diction
Conducting (“piano”, “forte”, entrances,
coordination)
Emotion and feeling
High, low and medium frequencies
Changes between piano and forte
Harmonics, timbre and color
Seamless remote teaching and learning
Speaking, singing and visually communicate
Table1. Research categories defined for Opera eLearning Case Study
A questionnaire has been applied to teachers, pianists, evaluators and students as part of their participation.
Only teachers and some pianist charged for their services, but students got the classes for free. Observers and tech
staff present in the room were requested to answer the questionnaire as volunteers. We recovered 195 entries,
including qualitative and quantitative data. Five point Likert-Scales were used, with 1 indicating the lowest (‘‘bad’’)
and 5 indicating the greatest sound quality (‘‘excellent’’), or with 1 indicating the lowest (“nothing”) and 5
indicating the greatest classroom effectiveness (‘‘very much”). Subcategories have been mapped into constructs for
the questionnaire. Learning objectives achievement has not been asked with Likert-Scales to everyone, but
commented by teachers and evaluators with free text fields. All questionnaire´s participants had a free text field for
the classroom effectiveness category. The questionnaire was filled after each masterclass when possible, or after a
set of three of them.
In this brief paper we will discuss how effective the classroom seemed from the teacher´s and student´s
point of view, measured by the class support construct. Further results will be developed using other variables of the
questionnaire and exploiting in a deeper review the qualitative data from recordings.
Tools and Material
“GÉANT2 is the high-bandwidth, academic Internet serving Europe’s research and education community”
(Géant2 2009), equivalent to the Internet2 in the U.S. Communication software selected was Ultravideoconferencing (McGill Ultra-videoconferencing, 2009) for audio and DVTS (Digital Video Transport System,
2009) for video, sending separately PAL video signal and audio channels (DV 720×576 at 25 FPS, which consumes
30MBps on each direction, and 96Khz/24bits per channel, requiring 2MBps each). From students’ classroom to
teacher’s site five audio channels were sent (emulating Dolby 5.0), and two channels from teacher’s classroom to the
students (stereo). Although around 80 Mbps were used, availability of 100 Mbps is recommended. In the pilot phase
prior to the case study several communications technologies were tested, including HD video which consumes 1 GB
bandwidth.
All telepresence classrooms have been installed on single rooms, whether large classrooms in a university,
auditoriums and even a TV studio. Nevertheless we had no control on the acoustics of the room, minimum
requirements of ambient noise < 40 dB and a pink noise test have been done previously at each site. The masterclass
zone included the piano, lighting, one or two plasma monitors, speakers and a video camera. Teachers delivered the
masterclass sited at the piano, while singers stood next to it, so each camera should be accommodated to take a mid
shot of the teacher at the piano and a wide shot of the singer including the piano accompanist. Video cameras
reached a computer (double processor at 2.40 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Windows Operating System) through the IEEE
1394 port for the DVTS video communication.
Only professional, condenser, pre-amplified microphones were used. Teachers used a tie clip microphone
for the voice and an Omni polar pattern microphone for the piano. At student´s classroom two of such microphones
where assigned to the piano, while a stereo microphone (composed by two cardioids polar pattern microphones) was
used for the singer. Two microphones were situated far away, at the end of the room for receiving additional
acoustics and harmonics. All microphones inputs entered into a professional audio mixer at each site. The mixer sent
audio channels to a professional computer audio card with AD/DA (24 bit/96kHz) converter and recorder, installed
on a computer (double processor at 3.16 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Linux Operating System) for the Ultravideoconferencing audio transmission and reception. Since audio signal arrives prior to the video signal, we used the
mixer´s delay function to coordinate sound and image, by delaying the sound. Each an audio and a network engineer
supported the classroom; they were located in another area in the room. A third area was designated to evaluators
and observers, who had their own speakers and plasma screen, or have enough visibility to the plasma screen used
by the singers. Teacher´s speakers were distributed around the classroom for the Dolby 5.0 simulation using the five
channels received from the student´s side.
Findings
Questionnaire data has been analyzed with SPSS analytical software. For statistical purposes, pianist
answers were grouped in the “students”, since they were receiving instructions from teachers and shared closely the
space with singers. Figure at the next page (Fig. 1) shows the frequency of class support construct answers grouped
by profile. There is a clear tendency to higher values, confirmed by the descriptive statistics for the whole
population that results on a mode of 4 with variance of 0,775, with a rank and a median of 4 as well. Only 22.1% of
the answers were in the lowest three values (1 to 3). Students were 13.3% of the sample, while teachers contributed
with 5.1%. Students keep the median at 4, with a variance of 0.695, while teachers have a median of 5, with 0.143 of
variance.
Teachers used to make it easier for the students, some recorded sessions includes phrases like: “listen, you
may stop, this is a regular class so you may stop, if something happens or you are tired, you may stop”; “we had
finished now, is a good experience for us to work with this huge distance, from North Europe to nearby
Barcelona…a little nice adventure, because we note that is possible to work this way…some little irritations we have
now must be improved, but for the next time we will know how it works, so we may be more relaxed than today…”.
In their writing evaluations all teachers agree in participate on this kind of class for next experiences, valuing the
sessions as positive and remarking the need to improve any technical detail that may interrupt the telepresence
experience.
Students have expressed feeling compromised to effort, they wrote things like: “I felt that because of the
distance I had to do everything bigger, exaggerated, which it’s very useful for a concert as well”. In the other hand
“I was very insecure about our sound on Netherlands, and in a delicate matter like lied singing, I need a closer
contact to the teacher that I cannot reach from a screen monitor”. Or even stressed, saying in the class: “I am aware
of too many things and I cannot concentrate on my own”. Students that attended to more than one masterclass
tended to declare other kind of things in the second session, pointing to technical details like “piano volume was too
low in the first class, now it´s better”. In this sense, teachers were more experienced because served many sessions,
while students only took one or two. Most of students qualified the experience as positive and also pointed that they
would like to obtain feedback from their regular teachers during opera season, while teachers are not available. They
also agreed in be open to take a formal, curricular masterclass in this manner.
Figure1. Frequency of answers to class support construct by testing profile.
Besides the questionnaire data, first demonstration of effectiveness is that the classes have been executed.
An interesting fact that may be observed in each recorded session is that after a while teachers and students forgot
that they were in a virtual space, relaxed and start to work fluently and deeply, speaking to the plasma monitor and
forgetting about the rest of the people in the room, even trying to reach some functions that are still impossible, like
playing together at the same time.
Conclusions
Regarding the classroom effectiveness from the teacher and student point of view, findings shows the
agreement on the viability of the artifact proposed, with improvement required in specific zones well identified.
What are those “little irritations” that are mentioned by the teacher above? Masterclasses have been delivered most
of the time fluently, although some network issues were experienced in six international sessions, without avoiding
the masterclass to be fully delivered, but introducing some interruptions in the sound. Connectivity matters should
be addressed and perhaps a workaround must be considered if required, for instance we could turn to a stereo, DVTS
only configuration that requires less bandwidth. In some locations, where classrooms where too small, echo could be
heard from time to time, due the audio technician’s delay on adjusting the volume for each teacher or student
intervention. This is not a problem in proper auditoriums, but should be reviewed anyhow. Another theme in terms
of long-term telepresence classrooms is that intelligent agents should take care of functions that in this study were
accomplished by technicians. That’s far beyond the scope now, but is clearly an excellent research line.
Main weakness of this study is the limited number of cases, and the possible bias of population used.
Teachers involved certainly have an open mind about working with technology. It is important to keep researching
over a population that uses this classroom regularly, as part of usual curricula. Also we look forward to be able to
equip permanently laboratories with the telepresence classroom, which may be another weakness of the study, since
some variables could be affected by the different rooms used.
The aim of this telepresence application is not substitute the personal tutoring that is so valued in music
education, but to allow in some cases the remote tutoring. This study has been developed for voice, but other
instruments could be the subject. The idea of a telepresence music learning classroom should be completed with the
computer-assisted tools and aids that were introduced at the beginning of this paper for integrate a whole blended
learning system (part remote and part presence learning), where support for daily practice is enabled, opportunities
for one-to-one tutoring increases and Web platforms enhances the social interaction and information delivery.
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Acknowledgments
Opera eLearning has been possible due to collaboration between the City of the Music of Sabadell City Council,
directed by the singing professor Àngels Civit, the i2cat Foundation and the Multimedia Applications Laboratory. Another main
promoter of the project has been Joan Francesc Marco, nowadays director of the Gran Teatre del Liceu, formerly director of the
City of the Music project. Further information may be found at www.opera-elearning.com. First author is studying the Ph.D. at
the Polytechnic University supported by grant 208288 from CONACYT, the National Council for Science and Technology of
Mexico.