In-Person or Virtual? - Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on the Teaching Habits of Voice Pedagogues.
Kristen Murdaugh, Josipa Bainac Hausknecht, Christian T Herbst
PMID 33243666WHAT IT FOUND
Voice teachers found virtual lessons acceptable for rhythm and diction but struggled to assess tone, resonance, and dynamics.
Most were only moderately satisfied and agreed virtual tools cannot replace in-person teaching, with significant variation in how well specific platforms handled acoustic quality.
Key findings
01Participants rated memorization, rhythm, and diction as the most assessable features in virtual teaching, with average scores of 81, 76, and 74 respectively.
02Dynamic range, resonance, and tone received the worst ratings, indicating these purely acoustic features are difficult to assess virtually.
03There was a general consensus that virtual voice lessons cannot replace customary in-person lessons, though opinions varied widely.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study is a survey of opinions, not an objective measurement of audio quality, so it reflects what teachers feel they can hear rather than what the technology actually transmits. The list of voice assessment terms was derived only from North American English-speaking institutions, which may not represent global terminology or cultural differences in voice evaluation. The survey used continuous sliders rather than standard Likert scales, which may have contributed to the 76% completion rate and could affect how participants interpreted the 0-100 scale. Participants were surveyed only 34 days into the average period of virtual teaching, so their skills and adaptations may not reflect long-term practice.
Declared interests
The study was approved by an ad hoc committee of the Mozarteum University's rectorate. No specific commercial funding or conflicts of interest for the authors are declared in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the low ratings for tone and dynamics as proof that these features are impossible to assess virtually. The study reports teacher perceptions during the early stages of the pandemic, not an objective analysis of audio fidelity, and ratings varied significantly between different platforms.