Too often these courses have been thinly disguised Music Methods courses combined with Music History. While it would be nice if students emerged from Music Appreciation with some knowledge of Music Methods and Music History, I contend that deep delving into either, without first 'preparing the way' philosophically, guarantees failure. Survivors of traditional courses, both teachers and students, can tell you what a waste of time that is. An appreciation course should not force feed the minutiae. It is not necessary.
Music is a discipline.
These two goals, to appreciate and to think critically, can only be reached when students have mastered critical terms and begin to use them in their thinking, speaking about, and writing about music. Spiral notebooks probably work best for this. They may groan at the prospect of taking notes. But it is my experience that students of this age can stand some practice at taking notes. To show students you are serious about the notes, tell them that quizes will be given over the ideas in their notebooks, and that they will need their notes to complete some writing assignments for the course.