WEEK 6 PART 2
During the week 6 seminar, we had the opportunity to listen to Rebecca Ly's presentation on gamification, which is the basis of her research for the Master of Music (Music Education) degree. I was lucky enough to be closely involved in Rebecca's research as I was one of two guitarists one the panel who assessed various participants progress in using Rocksmith as a guitar teacher.
It was fascinating to hear the thoughts of the participants, as Rebecca shared the results of the interview that she had with each participant after myself and another guitarist assessed their playing.
Although the testing was a few months before Rebecca gave her presentation in TME, I could still remember the level of achievement of each participant. The most interesting piece of feedback about Rocksmith that Rebecca shared was:
"Teachers are scary"
I found this remark intriguing as private music lessons (i.e. 1:1) can leave students feeling a sense of pressure to impress and live up to their teacher's expectations. I feel that one way of overcoming this can be for teachers to have more frequent conversations with their students about how the student feels about their progress, what they're enjoying in the lessons, what they aren't and what they'd like to learn in their lessons. I feel that creating a student centred teaching studio will reduce this sense of teachers as being "scary."
Some more results:
The ultimate question:
Do digital based games work in Music Education?
- Studies are still preliminary
- Limited data on the topic
- Video games have proven to work in other fields (e.g. surgeons practising surgery, children practising reading with dyslexia)
Rebecca's findings so far:
- Ubersoft claim that you can learn to play guitar in 60 days
- Participants enjoyed the game but wanted a teacher as they don’t understand the technique
- One of the participants got a guitar tutor after the 60 days and left Rocksmith
- One participant thought teachers are scary!
Personally, I have heard similar outcomes from other digital based games such as Guitar Hero and Band Hero. For example, I have a friend who was inspired to learn drums as a result of guitar hero and he committed himself to lessons and really developed his skills. This is supported in Rebecca's research (i.e. the game Rocksmith is commonly a catalyst for learning in a more formal setting).
For more information, check out Rebecca's Twitter page and website using the links below:
Just to clarify, what is gamification?
Taking game elements (e.g. competition, rewards) to achieve an end goal.
Other examples...
Rise of the rhythm (Heather Birch) - designed for primary school recorder playing
Here are some interesting results...
Gamification vs standard syllabus:
- Over 6 months, the gamification group had slightly better results than the standard syllabus group
- Over 12 months, students learning without the gamification syllabus (i.e. the standard syllabus) had higher end of year results.
Why? Gamification focuses on external goals i.e. extrinsic motivation
Rocksmith - Beginner's Guide
Reference List: