Writing About K-pop: History and Context

One of the first things I wanted to do with my book, Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop, is to recognize K-pop’s history and development.  Placing K-pop within a historical context is crucial to the way we ultimately understand it. K-pop is often seen in present-day terms. It is described and treated…

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Teaching K-pop, Part 3: Content, or Look Ma! No Books!

In Part 2, I talked about how to help students develop knowledge and skills (assignments) and how to evaluate what they know and are able to do (assessments). Finally, in Part 3, we get to what many of us consider to be the fun part: deciding what material to cover and activities to do in…

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Teaching K-pop, Part 2: Assignments and Assessments (ew!)

In Part 1, I considered student learning outcomes, the foundation of good course design, and how they relate to my learning goals in teaching Korean popular culture. In Part 2, I cover how I determine to how to evaluate what students know or can do by the end of the course (assessments) as well as…

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Teaching K-pop, Part 1: The Most Important Thing

Before deciding on all the cool content to include in my course, KORE 320: Korean Popular Culture, there is one thing that I had to do, something that forms the foundation of the course. Figuring out this one thing made designing the course easier and will make for more effective learning for students. It was…

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What K-pop Can Teach Us About Engagement for Online Courses

One of the most common concerns about moving courses online is that engagement is lost. However, it could be useful to draw on the kind of engagement that is central to contemporary Korean popular music (K-pop) culture. Most articles you may read about the need to teach online courses (as opposed to the emergency remote…

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Engaging Engagement in Online Courses

In discussions about remote learning and future online teaching that many educators may face in the fall, concerns about engagement dominate. They often include the unchallenged claim that online instruction cannot replicate the engagement found in face-to-face teaching. But is that true? Many erroneously equate the emergency online teaching that most institutions relied on this…

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Mission Impossible: Curating the History of K-pop

Some of us are using this unprecedented time to work on projects that have gotten away from us. My latest project, KPOPCULTURE, a never ending quest to create a history of K-pop, is one such project! From KPOPIANA to the Kpop Collaboration Project, I have been working on projects that seek to document and describe…

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How to Grade Faster and Foster Student Learning

Grading is an age-old source of frustration for instructors, with many feeling torn between evaluating student performance and fostering student learning, as they struggle with less time to do either. However, one does not have to forgo student learning to attain more efficiency in grading. In her piece “How to Grade Faster in 2020,” Deborah J….

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Disciplines and Active Learning

Active learning represents a significant set of strategies that can increase student engagement with course material. However, how does disciplinary context factor into the way we use these strategies? Active learning remains a major trend in higher education. Several of the most-read topics for The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Teaching Newsletter revolved around active learning…

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PROJECT UPDATE: The Music of SHINee

The Music of SHINee is a digital exhibit, part of the digital humanities project KPOPCULTURE. It provides an overview of the music of K-pop group SHINee, including promotional tracks as well as deep cuts and song credit information. Research is one of the most inefficient processes on the planet, and mine is no exception.  While…

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PROJECT UPDATE: K-pop Producer Yoo Young Jin

The new exhibit on KPOPCULTURE, Yoo Young Jin, provides an overview of one of K-pop’s most influential music producers. Not only has Yoo worked on some of the most recognizable and enduring K-pop songs, he has also produced his own material. The exhibit provides an overview of his most popular work as well as a…

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Creative Activity as Undergraduate Student Research

Many institutions, including my own, include creative activity from art, music, theatre and other disciplines as part of undergraduate student research. Given the creative nature and output of these disciplines, what can this look like?