iMuSciCA: Interactive Music Science Collaborative Activities for STEAM Learning

Abstract

iMuSciCA supports mastery of core academic content on STEM subjects for secondary school students alongside with the development of their creativity and deeper learning skills, through engagement in music activities. To reach this goal, iMuSciCA introduces new methodologies and innovative technologies supporting active, discovery-based, collaborative, personalised, and more engaging learning. In particular, iMuSciCA delivers a suite of activity environments and tools on top of core enabling technologies integrated on a web-based platform. These include: a 3D environment for designing virtual musical instruments; advanced music generation and processing technologies to apply and interpret related physics and mathematics principles; gesture and pen-enabled multimodal interaction for music co-creation and performance; and 3D printing for realizing the virtual instruments. The educational deployment of the iMuSciCA workbench is built around a suite of interdisciplinary project/inquiry-based educational scenarios for STEAM, integrating innovative methods in teaching and learning. iMuSciCA is pilot-tested and evaluated in real learning contexts in secondary schools from three European countries. The chapter presents the innovative STEAM pedagogical framework, the implementation of the advanced activity environments and core enabling technologies, the design aspects of the educational scenarios and exemplar lesson plans, and the overall evaluation framework that is adopted in successive pilot testing in secondary schools of three European countries.