IDAT 211 - Elearning Music Theory

The topic that me and Karla have decided on for our elearning application is music theory.  This is because we are both quite musical and both agree that music theory could be made more interesting through an elearning application, as it tends to be quite a dry and uninspiring topic that is difficult to learn because it is not engaging.  Previous methods for learning music theory tend to be book based with support from music teachers, and can include a lot of text and technical diagrams that is difficult to understand.  The purpose of our application therefore is to change this through using modern day technology.

Although music theory has been tackled by elearning facilities before, they are most often still quite a formal tool, which can make the process of learning less engaging. An example of this is emusictheory, an online and software based tool that requires payment for full access.  (http://www.emusictheory.com/)  EMusicTheory provides an entire range of theory drills that cover the majority of theory grades.  It also provides access to both students and teachers to enable teacher support and acts as an assignment tool, where teachers can set students particular drills to do and then find out their marks once completed.  The drills involved in this elearning tool however are still quite plain and are just more interactive versions of the original book format of learning used in most cases.  This tool is also purely screen and application based and does not use other more dynamic technologies to run the program.

In order for our elearning tool to be successful it would be better to narrow the type of music theory we plan to teach down to a minimum so that the functionality can be more focused and effective.  We must therefore decide what part of music theory we wish to cover in our elearning idea. Also it would be good to include ways in which we could overcome the problems had by such applications as EMusicTheory as we are not limited in our brief as it is only a design and so can easily incorporate many different technologies and elements if they are deemed useful.