3 months of MUSIRIS with 20 students: what has changed in the lessons

“I first wanted to see whether it works in real lessons”

New software often sounds good on paper. The decisive question only comes afterwards: does it really fit into everyday teaching?

For the test, the teacher added 20 students to MUSIRIS and used the platform in her regular lessons over three months.

It was not about trying out every feature once. MUSIRIS had to prove itself in everyday use.

Recording assignments after the lesson. Passing on practice goals. Understanding what happens between two lessons. Finding information again. And above all: having to organise fewer things in different places.

That is why her verdict after three months is interesting: she did not just try MUSIRIS briefly, but used it over a longer period with a larger group of students in her regular teaching.

Less time spent on organisation

A big difference shows in the many small tasks that come up around a lesson.

• What should the student practice before the next lesson?
• Which note belongs to which piece?
• What was discussed last time?
• What should be looked at again?

Such information is quickly written down. The problem tends to emerge over time. Part of it is in notes, part in messages, and other parts are remembered from the last lesson.

With MUSIRIS, it all lives in one place.

For the teacher, that above all means less searching and less duplicated work.

She does not have to gather information anew every time or wonder where she noted something. What was recorded in the lesson stays connected to the respective student.

The time saved comes less from a single spectacular feature. It comes from many small things that are simply faster in everyday life.

“I now see things I did not see before”

Even more interesting to her than the time saved is the information about her students.

Because a lot happens between two lessons.

As a teacher, you normally see the result: the student sits in the lesson, plays their piece and you hear what works and what does not.

What happened in the days before, on the other hand, often stays invisible.

• Did the student practice regularly?
• Which task was actually worked on?
• Where were the difficulties?
• What did the student spend a particularly long time on?

Through the documentation in MUSIRIS, she gets an additional insight here.

That also changes the preparation for the next lesson.

Instead of first having to find out in conversation what has happened since the last lesson, she can go into the lesson with a certain picture already in mind.

This is especially helpful when a student says: “I somehow did not manage it.”

Then the situation is no longer quite so vague.

You can look more closely at what happened and where the difficulty lay.

A small difference that can make a big difference in the lesson

This point is especially interesting in online teaching.

When student and teacher only see each other once a week, the lesson is always also a bit of a look back.

• What did we do last week?
• What have you practiced since then?
• What worked?
• Where did you get stuck?

That time cannot be avoided entirely. But the better the information between lessons is documented, the less of it has to be reconstructed during the lesson itself.

The teacher can continue faster at the point where the student actually stands.

And that is exactly one of the things she appreciates most after the three months.

When a piece of information is suddenly worth its weight in gold

In the conversation she also describes situations that show why such information is more than pure documentation.

A student can give a completely different impression in the lesson than the previous week would suggest. Sometimes a task is not yet done even though it is clear that work was put into it. In other cases it becomes visible that a certain passage keeps causing difficulties.

Such clues are valuable for lesson planning.

Instead of only noting that something does not work, the teacher gets additional information about what happened before.

It is precisely in such moments that documentation becomes a real teaching tool.

Because these stories are ultimately more interesting than any feature description.

Not everything needs explaining

Another point she highlights after three months is usability.

A piece of software can have many features. If you have to read a manual for each of them first, it quickly becomes extra effort during lessons.

With MUSIRIS, she finds the workflows intuitive instead.

Much of it explains itself from the context.

Creating an assignment, setting a goal, sharing information and later returning to it – the individual steps fit together logically for her.

That is especially important in lessons.

Because there you do not want to think about where a particular setting is located.

You want to teach.

Thought through instead of complicated

What she also notices is how the individual areas work together.

Practice, lessons and communication are not completely separate from one another.

An assignment from the lesson can later be linked to practice. Notes stay with the respective student. Information does not get lost after a week.

Over time, this creates a kind of history.

Not as a detailed documentation of every single minute of teaching, but as a comprehensible story of the learning process.

For the teacher, that is exactly what helps.

She does not have to remember everything.

And she also does not have to try to piece together from various messages and notes what actually happened afterwards.

Especially interesting for new online teachers

After three months, she would recommend MUSIRIS not only to experienced teachers.

On the contrary: she sees a particular advantage for teachers who have not been teaching online for long.

Anyone new to online teaching has to figure out many workflows themselves.

• How are assignments distributed?
• Where is lesson content documented?
• How do you keep an overview of several students?
• How do you find out what happens between lessons?
• And how do you prevent information from eventually being scattered across messengers, notes, emails and various files?

A system from the start can help keep this structure from becoming complicated in the first place.

That is why the teacher sees a benefit for newcomers in particular: MUSIRIS already brings many of these workflows together.

That does not mean experienced teachers get no benefit from it.

But those just starting out may be able to save themselves a lot of trial and error.

If data protection plays a role too, you can find the basics in GDPR in online music lessons and the organisational side in GDPR for online music schools.

After three months, the decisive question is a different one

At the start of a software test, you ask yourself:

“Can I use this?”

After three months, the question sounds more like:

“What would I miss if I no longer had it?”

With MUSIRIS, for the teacher it is above all the overview, the information between lessons and the time saved in everyday life.

She has to search for information less.

She sees more of what happens between lessons.

And she can therefore respond to her students in a more targeted way.

These are not features that have to look particularly spectacular on a product page.

But in daily teaching, exactly these things can make a difference.

A tool that runs along with the lessons

Perhaps this is the most fitting description after three months:

For her, MUSIRIS is not an additional system she has to maintain alongside her teaching.

It runs along.

After the lesson, assignments are recorded. During the week, a picture emerges of what the student is doing. Before the next lesson, information is ready that she can draw on.

The longer this works, the more valuable the history becomes.

Because after a single week you only see a snapshot.

After three months, something else has already emerged: an overview of how a student is developing and how one’s own teaching responds to it.

The conclusion after three months

20 students, three months and many lessons later, the experience is above all one thing: practical.

The teacher saves time on organisation, gains additional insights into her students’ practice and can find information from past lessons more easily.

Particularly important to her is that MUSIRIS does not feel complicated.

The app should not add another task to the teacher’s list. It should help organise the tasks that come up anyway more simply.

And that is exactly why she would recommend MUSIRIS to other music teachers too – especially those just starting with online teaching and wanting to establish a clear routine from the beginning.

If you teach music yourself and want to try out whether MUSIRIS also makes your everyday life easier, you can start right away.

MUSIRIS is free to register for.

You can add your first students, organise your teaching and try out for yourself how the platform fits into your everyday life.

Register for free with MUSIRIS now