IDAT 211 - Types of Theory

In order to create a functional elearning tool we need to narrow the type of theory we wish to teach down to a small amount so that it can be focussed on in good detail.  The most obvious option for this is to choose a grade to focus on and cover all the necessary sections within the one grade.  If we were to do this it would probably be best to focus on grade 1 as this would associate well with a students initial learning of an instrument which we could use to our advantage.  However there are also other options, such as focusing on musical foreign terms, and covering all the terms available separated into the seperate grades and difficulties.  This is a nice idea as it is quite different to other music theory elearning tools, but may not be as useful as the whole grade tool, as what would be taught is not as necessary when learning music as understanding time and notations. The same approach could be taken however with these kind of topics, focusing on a single section of theory rather than a single grade and covering a number of grades of that topic.  The following is a list of areas that could be dealt with in a focused way:

• grade 1
• foreign terms
• scales/key signatures
• time signatures
• intervals
• chords

I will need to discuss these with Karla and see what content we are thinking of so we can then start looking at how we intend to design the implementation of the elearning tool