The application will be a music theory application aimed at providing users with a more informed understanding of music and music theory. In order for this to be possible the application will provide learning games by which learners can practice music theory. The application will be MIDI based and will use the MIDI keyboard as the interface to the application, rather than a keyboard or mouse. This will make the application more unique and engaging to the user whilst also promoting and developing the users understanding of music. This will ensure we match with the expectations set out in the needs analysis of the users.
Design and Learning
The main feature for learning will be the games which are played in the application related to each element to learn. The games will follow some form of narrative which allows development through the learning, and this will help to make the games more fun for the learners. The learner will be given a question based on a topic of music theory, for example reading the staff and notes, which they will then have to answer using the MIDI keyboard as their interface. If they get the question right the narrative of the game will progress acting as a positive reinforcement for behaviourist learning, whereas if they get it wrong the narrative will not change (a negative reinforcer) and they will be asked the question again. The use of the MIDI keyboard as the interface for these games means that there will be a greater development in pratical learning as well as theoretical, as the learner will be carrying out both whilst using the program.
By having this interface it also means that the learning tool better caters for the all the main types of learner, visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Visual learners will be able to learn through the on-screen imagery, hints and help given throughout the tool. Auditory learners will be able to hear the note or sound they are trying to learn and compare it through the sound of the MIDI keyboard. Finally the inclusion of the MIDI keyboard will cater for the kinesthetic learners as they will be working practically with the keyboard to use the tool and find the answers. This demonstrates our design to be a well rounded tool in terms of the way people learn, and also shows that it should be easy to use for any type of learner, another expectation outlined in the needs analysis.
Features
Below is a diagram of the features we plan to include in the product covering persitent features, technological features and variable features (features that are not persistent):
Context in which the tool would be used
The most common use for this application is likely to be alongside some form of music tuition be it individual or curriculum based. It will therefore be software or an online tool which will be used by schools in the majority to support musical learning and aid development of understanding. It would be good for the tool to be online based as this is more accessible to any learner whether they are at school or not, but by incorporating the MIDI keyboard element to the software it makes more sense for the application to be software based which can be purchased and installed onto a computer, particularly as part of a school's computing system.
The tool should be used alongside external music tutoring as it can act as supporting material to the external teaching and visa versa. In this situation it would be expected that the tutor would select elements which the learner would have to go through in the application to support the current learning, and the results of this learning would then be given back to the tutor as feedback so that the progress of the learner could be gauged. However it would still be possible for the application to be used in a self-tutoring situation if necessary but progress of learning may be slower.
Feedback
As well as allowing for feedback to be provided to the tutor on a students learning, the learner will also get feedback from the system throughout the tool. In particular a scores section incorporated into the features of the tool will allow the learner to view how successful they have been on each section and so they will be able to gauge where improvements need to be made in their learning.
Look, Feel and Related Work
When first looking at the design of the tool we instantly felt that colour should be incorporated to make the learning of muscic theory more interesting. The first kind of aesthetic we therefore considered was a weather based aesthetic including a rainbow based key colour format. The aesthetic would then develop to look similar to that chosen by Vimeo shown below:
Both bitesize and Zoombinis are very successful e-learning tools and so it could be suggested that the similar look and feel of these games played a part in their success. It would therefore be good to design our tool to have a similar look and feel to these. In particular it seems that these tool rely on a character type that can act as the learners guide to the tool. In bitesize the character is the fish, whilst in Zoombinis the character is the Zoombini. It may be particularly important therefore to consider incorporating a guiding character into our tool to make it more consistent and to allow the learners to relate to the tool more easily.
In terms of related music theory learning tools there is elearning music theory as described in this post: http://beckyvidat.blogspot.com/2010/02/idat-211-elearning-music-theory.html. There is also a whole range of small applications available online varying in quality. Most however are much more powerpoint based pieces writing out the theory and requiring little or no interaction from the learner let alone making this engaging. For example musictheory.net is quite similar to Elearning Music Theory. It has very basic interactive training tools (shown right) and a lot of reading based learning elements that require no interaction at all. Although this site does provide a large range of different theory based tools and information it has a very poor quality of engagement and has no end target or encouragement. In testing this tool I became instantly bored with it and so this would definitely not be successful for teaching younger audiences. This overview is very much similar for all the other music theory pages I have come across. Athough there are a few music theory games out there to teach music theory in a more fun way these seem quite outdated or are not particularly engaging. For example there are a whole range of music theory games on http://www.musictechteacher.com/ but these are inconsistent in theme and varying in engagement. I therefore feel that there is a definite space for a tool such as ours which takes a new and more dynamic approach to learning music theory.Related Literature
To come soon...
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