Week 5 — Skills Check · Minor, Three Ways
Course: MUS 155 Aural Skills I · Kenosis College
Instructor: Professor Hemsworth
Unit: Learning Unit 5 of 15 (Week 5) · two sessions per week
Objectives tested: SLO 2 (dictation-style hearing) · SLO 3 (identify mode, form, and degree by ear)
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-05.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. Professor Hemsworth establishes do before every melodic stimulus, announces each by number ("Stimulus 1"), and performs from a fixed script, the same way for everyone. You will have sung every one of these moves in the studio that same morning: the flip, the three forms, the two sevenths, the two sixths. Scratch paper is welcome for the dictation-style items; nothing is answered during a hearing.
Blueprint
The table below maps the item families to what your ear does and the outcome each serves.
| Items | Family | What your ear does | Objective |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Mode ID | do is established, a short line plays; call it major or minor | SLO 3 |
| 2 | Minor-form ID | a full scale climbs and returns; name the form — the lifted seventh is the tell | SLO 3 |
| 2 | Minor dictation response | two bars over a given do; match what sounded to its solfège, and catch the note that lived outside the signature | SLO 2 |
| 2 | Degree ID in minor | a line leans on the sixth or the seventh; le or la? te or ti? | SLO 3 |
Wrong-answer options come from the real ways ears slip on minor — wrong mode, the un-flipped syllable, the raised note heard but filed low, do parked on the wrong pitch. If you did the flips daily, this check is confirmation, not a hurdle.
Ground rules
Closed to AI, closed to notes, closed to neighbors — it's your ear being certified, and after a week of flips it's ready. Phones face-down except for answering. Listen first, answer after the final hearing. 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 lines and scales accurately from a card. Your partner contacts Professor Hemsworth directly and receives the performance cards (they never pass through your hands); your partner performs each stimulus per its script — announced by number, scripted hearings, pause, answer — 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 5 Skills Check — Minor, Three Ways"
assignment_group = "Skills checks"
points_possible = 8
allowed_attempts = 1
access = opens in session 2; live administration only
published = true
F-skills-check-week-05-qti.xml) ships inside the course's .imscc package — it lands in the Canvas gradebook on import.~ Professor Hemsworth's edition · Kenosis College · built with thecoursemaker.com