Week 3 — Skills Check · The Divided Beat, Heard

Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 3 of 15 (Week 3) · two sessions per week
Objectives tested: SLO 3 (identify by ear, without notation) · SLO 4 (judge the feel of what you hear)
Points: 8 (8 × 1) · Group: Skills checks (lowest 2 of 13 dropped) · In class, session 2, live stimulus, closed to AI. Answers go in through the Canvas quiz tool on your own device; every stimulus is performed live in the room.

The import-ready item file is rendered by the build system from _build/banks/lu-03.json; that bank also holds this unit's six pool items, which test the same skills with different stimuli and never appear on the weekly check. This page describes the check — the stimuli themselves exist only as session 2's live sound.

What it is

Eight questions, all ears, about fourteen minutes at the end of session 2's studio. Every stimulus is performed live, from a fixed script, the same way for everyone: announced by number ("Stimulus 1"), played twice with a five-second pause, answered after the second hearing. Every move on it is a drill you ran that same morning — the room split, the counting, the dictation ritual, the shuffle game.

Blueprint

The table below maps the item families to what your ear does and the outcome each serves.

Wrong-answer options come from the real ways ears slip this week — above all simple heard as compound and its mirror. If you did the studio and the daily loop, this check is confirmation, not a hurdle.

Ground rules

Closed to AI, closed to notes, closed to neighbors. Phones face-down except for answering. Nothing is written or answered during a hearing; on the two-bar items you may tap silently along with the second hearing, exactly as in the dictation ritual. The check is group-administered: everyone answers the same live hearings at the same moment, so it runs identically whether the room holds four or forty.

Absent for session 2?

The primary make-up is a live administration in office hours — same script, same hearings, performed for you by Professor Hemsworth. Email her to schedule it within the week.

Self-administered variant (only where scheduling truly cannot work): the check has a parallel set of stimuli held by Professor Hemsworth for exactly this case. Recruit a musician who can play short rhythm patterns accurately from a card. Your partner contacts Professor Hemsworth directly and receives the performance cards (they never pass through your hands — and this week the cards carry feel instructions your partner keeps secret); your partner performs each stimulus per its script while you take the parallel items through the same Canvas tool; your partner signs the attestation line confirming the stimuli were performed as scripted and unseen by you. Process and honesty are the graded substance; the ear it certifies is still yours. If no partner is available, arrange an office-hours make-up hearing instead — the late-work policy's standing path.

Canvas placement block

canvas_object    = classic assessment, delivered via the Canvas quiz tool
title            = "Unit 3 Skills Check — The Divided Beat, Heard"
assignment_group = "Skills checks"
points_possible  = 8
allowed_attempts = 1
access           = opens in session 2; live administration only
published        = true