Learning Activities
This course features four required sets of learning activities, powered by Cerego, that allow students to practice your new knowledge and skills in listening and understanding jazz. These sets are embedded within the sections where the information is covered. Here are links to those units; visit them anytime you'd like to practice.
Jazz Facts 1 (Week 1)
Jazz Deep Listening 1 (Week 1)
Jazz Facts 2 (Week 6 - available February 20)
Jazz Deep Listening 2 (Week 6 - available February 20)
We have created this screencast to help you get the most out of the Cerego activities. Please watch it to learn more about the methods and features of Cerego, and recommendations for practicing each set.
how to use cerego
Welcome to our enhanced learning program provided through our partnership with the memory management company Cerego. Cerego will help you study more effectively, and will provide a learning path that is individually tailored to your knowledge about the subject.
To get started with Cerego, simply go to the unit you wish to study. The titles of these units begin with the word “Practice,” and are followed by the particular set. There are links to these practice units throughout the course. Going to each unit will launch the learning application, customized to your progress, directly on site. Each “set,” or group of items, corresponds to the lecture videos and learning goals of the course. Your goal is to put all items in each set into Level 3 in order to get full credit for that portion of the course. You can think of reaching the goal as the equivalent of getting a score of 100 on a test and actually being able to remember your knowledge in the future, in a much more enjoyable manner than taking an exam in the traditional sense!
Research has shown that you will develop memory permanence more quickly when you spend smaller increments of time working on the sets over several days, rather than spending longer amounts of time in one or two sittings. The best way to pace your study is to follow the personalized recommendation that Cerego offers, tailored specifically to you based on your previous study and performance. But for planning purposes, you can expect to spend about 15 minutes on Cerego activities every day or so.
If you are aiming to earn credit for this course, the safest way to practice the sets is to visit them where they're embedded within these edX units. However, Cerego does have an mobile application available for iOS where you can also find the Jazz Appreciation sets. In order to sync progress from your mobile device with the edX site, you will need to return to the edX page and study each set once in that environment, at which point all your progress should appear in the edX progress tab. To guarantee your work is properly reflected, however, we do recommend that you do all your work within the edX course.
As stated in the How Cerego Works video above, Cerego will first present you with the information to be learned, and show you the correct answer for each of the items. Cerego will then begin asking you questions that demonstrate your knowledge of the items. By answering questions correctly, you will make progress towards memory permanence. But there is much more than just questions and answers within the set! You will find notes attached to each item that consist of explanations of the correct answer, additional information about the topic, images, and audio (and in some cases video) excerpts that help vividly illustrate the item you are learning about. This makes each item you encounter a valuable part of your learning experience in Jazz Appreciation.
All of the information contained in these exercises is discussed within the lecture videos on the EdX platform. It may be that the first time you are presented with some of the factual information will be in the context of working with these sets. In the notes for each of these items, you will find a great deal of information about each topic.
Your progress on the Cerego sets will be seamlessly tracked back to EdX, and you can see the grades you have earned in the Progress tab.
Have fun with this streamlined and improved way of learning about jazz!
