Dissertation
Creativity and Technology in Music Teaching and Learning
Creativity is a capacity all humans possess (Guilford, 1950), one that empowers individuals to solve complex problems and live more enriched lives (Sawyer, 2012). Learning itself has been described as the naturally creative process of generating or combining ideas in unique ways (Sawyer, 2003), suggesting that enhancing creativity should be a central goal of 21st century pedagogy. Within music education, an explosion of music-related technologies has expanded our understanding of musical creativity, highlighting the importance of technological advances which offer new ways of generating musical ideas (Burnard, 2012).
My three-part dissertation explores the topic of creativity and technology in music learning with the goal of developing best practices for fostering creativity among music teachers and learners. Each of my studies investigate three separate but interrelated manifestations of creative music making with technology: the process of digital musical instrument design, interactions in an online music composition community, and the implementation of tablet-based musical instruments for individuals with disabilities.
Dissertation-Study 1: Creativity in a Music Composition Community: An Analysis of Online Comments Introduction
While the permanent impact of the shift to remote education is still unknown, it is clear that musicians at all levels will continue to use a variety of web-based technologies. Noteflight is a web-based platform that centers Western notation (rather that digital audio) and facilitates the creating, editing, sharing, and computer playback of user compositions within an online community of practice. The comment forum on each musical score provides users with a space to share knowledge that is augmented by both sonic and visual representations of music.
The purpose of this study is to examine the interactions of users participating in Noteflight’s online community. For this qualitative content analysis, data were scraped from one of the site’s most popular publicly available scores, resulting in 1,310 comments. A deeper understanding of what is valued by users and what is required for success in this system will have implications for how teachers approach the integration of new hardware and software into the curriculum, addressing both musical and technological skills and understandings as students engage in creative music making.
Dissertation-Study 2: Instrument-Making as Creativity: A Phenomenology of Digital Musical Instrument Design
Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) design is a distinctive form of creativity that integrates both musical and technological knowledge. Understanding the experiences of DMI designers has the potential to impact how music teachers interact with technology, use DMIs in their classrooms, and facilitate creative music-making activities in technology-rich learning environments.
My phenomenological study will elucidate the lived experiences of DMI designers, investigating how advanced designers make creative decisions while leveraging musical and technological knowledge to design DMIs. Forty DMI designers who have presented their work at recent meetings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) will be interviewed. Findings from this study will have implications for teachers striving to balance musical and technological knowledge when incorporating DMIs into their curricula. Additionally my findings will inform the development of learning activities that more effectively utilize technology to support creative music making.
Dissertation-Study 3: Knowledge Development in a Creative Technology Design Partnership Serving Music Students with Disabilities
Co-authored with Dr. Sarah Bartolome
Although research in music education has identified many barriers to meaningful music making for students with disabilities (Jellison & Draper, 2015; Jones, 2015), music technology has the potential to offer users with disabilities modified and expanded ways of accessing and creating music. With an increased presence in the music classroom (Riley, 2013), music education scholars have suggested tablet-based musical instruments (TBMIs) have rich potential for music teachers (Williams, 2014). There is limited scholarship examining TBMIs in music education contexts for learners with disabilities (Hillier et al., 2016). Research in this area will help music educators more effectively utilize TBMIs to support the creative music making of these individuals. In an effort to better understand how TBMIs might serve student musicians with disabilities, in 2018, I founded the Adaptive Digital Musical Instrument Project (ADMIP), a partnership between the Northwestern University Music Education department and a local school for students with disabilities. As a volunteer and primary instrument designer, I worked with the school’s music educator to develop TBMIs that address the needs and abilities of her students and offer meaningful ways for them to participate in creative music making.
The purpose of this case study was to examine the ADMIP and the use of these collaboratively designed TBMIs with students with disabilities. Emergent themes were examined using the Technological, Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge framework for educators (TPACK) (Koehler & Mishra, 2008). This model examines the nature of teacher knowledge and illuminates the complex relationships between pedagogy, content, and technology in the classroom environment. Initial analysis illuminates the importance of sustained collaboration that leverages the collective expertise of music educators, classroom teachers and aides, technology designers, and the student-users. This suggests that the application of a wide range of musical content knowledge, expert pedagogy, and technological proficiency can support the creative agency of learners with exceptional abilities and inspire better instrument designs and more engaging curricula. These findings have clear implications for music educators working with students with disabilities, offering recommendations for ways music technology can be utilized to support creative music learning for this population.