CFP: DLFteach Toolkit, Volume 5 – Digital Pedagogy in Music & Sound Studies

The DLF Digital Library Pedagogy Working Group invites proposals for practical, adaptable teaching materials that use digital methods in music and sound contexts which will be published as part of the #DLFteach Toolkit. We welcome contributions from faculty, instructors, librarians, archivists, technologists, and community educators across musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, composition, performance, sound art, podcasting, and related areas.

While digital pedagogy has gained traction across disciplines like literature, history, and art history, there remain relatively few practical resources tailored to music and sound.¹ Building on prior Toolkit volumes, this collection seeks to fill that disciplinary gap by gathering concrete, classroom-ready approaches for teaching with digital methods in music and sound studies, particularly for those new to digital humanities and digital pedagogy. It will offer accessible strategies and resources for introducing digital methods and tools to students, focusing on developing key competencies and literacies that are grounded in best practices and research. Additionally, it will provide models for activities and assignments that build the skills necessary for students to engage in digital humanities research and scholarship.

What we’re seeking

Classroom-tested lessons and activities with clear outcomes, concrete steps, data/tooling notes, assessment ideas, and accessibility considerations. Open-source technologies are preferred. Topic suggestions include:

Assignment design and scaffolding
Integrating digital work into music courses
Encoding and structured data (MEI, MusicXML)
Audio, score, and corpus analysis with visualization
Data and metadata (creation, curation, description)
Minimal computing
AI and machine learning in teaching
Ethics, rights, and accessibility
Community and public-facing work, including decolonizing practices

How to propose

Submit a 250-300-word proposal that states your audience/context, estimated time, learning outcomes (2-4), activity overview, methods/tools/data, assessment approach, and accessibility/UDL considerations. Also include any software or hardware that will be required to implement or support the lesson. Indicate any collaborators. Authors of accepted proposals will draft full lessons (1,200–1,800 words) following the Toolkit template. All lesson content will be published open access under CC BY 4.0. See examples of past #DLFteach Toolkits lessons throughout our first four volumes.

Review & selection

Proposals will be peer-reviewed for clarity, feasibility, accessibility, reusability, and contribution to a diverse set of repertoires and contexts. You may opt in to serve as a reviewer (COI policy applies).