1. Before I had them actually record themselves playing their music, they held the microphone up to the computer speaker and figured out that it would pick up the melody line playing and they could get 100% on each line. They usually played a 'wrong' note or two while they did this, so they would get different scores and not always 100%, so it wasn't so obvious that they were cheating.

 

2. After figuring out they were cheating, I next told them that they weren't allowed to have the melody line playing (it says if they do on the info that includes their score), and that they had to record themselves playing each line. So, they started to play their music at home or in school practice rooms and have their friends come in and play the music for them, or just have one or two people in the section play the tests and save the results in different student's folders on the computer using their names/passwords.

 

At this point, I became so frustrated and disappointed, that I just quit using SmartMusic for this purpose and instead of using it every day in Band, we now only use it once a year for Solo contest.

 

Has anyone else had a problem with students cheating using SmartMusic? If you think your students aren't cheating, you might want to think again! If mine figured it out, yours might too.

SmartMusic Customer Support

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MakeMusic, Inc.

These on-line forums are intended for the exchange of ideas among the users of MakeMusic products. If you'd like individual help from our technical support staff, please contact them directly at http://support.makemusic.com/.

 

Many of my students couldn't have SmartMusic at home because their parents wouldn't pay the $30 fee (and neither would the school) and also a lot of them didn't have internet at home (this was a small rural community and many of them had terrible connections out in the country and had to pay higher prices for internet to work way out there. So I put computers in 4 rooms in the Band area (Practice rooms and my office), and I only had internet access in my office, on one computer. The school refused to put internet access in the other rooms when they could just save their info. right on the computer or an external memory device. It just wasn't possible to have the students access e-mail or internet, so we had to save their assignments either on a disk or directly on the computer.

 

It was a great practice tool and a great idea, and if the students had been hard-working and honest, it would have worked out. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. So now we just have playing tests in front of everyone once a week, the old traditional way. It makes them accountable to themselves and their peers. It also gets them used to playing alone in front of others, which helps their stage fright at solo contest. It also meets one of the requirements for the National Standards for Arts Education: "Students will play alone and with others."  I can also grade them on dynamics and articulation, which SmartMusic doesn't do. Besides, I had to grade the percussionists in person anyway. Their assessment didn't work very well for them. It didn't grade their sticking, rolls, flams, etc. quite right.

 

So I think I will continue to use SmartMusic as a practice tool but not as an assessment tool for now. 

 

 

SmartMusic Customer Support

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MakeMusic, Inc.

These on-line forums are intended for the exchange of ideas among the users of MakeMusic products. If you'd like individual help from our technical support staff, please contact them directly at http://support.makemusic.com/