Themed Learning with Music and Technology

Interdisciplinary teaching and interpretation of technology for various applications provides a challenging and engaging environment for students to enhance their creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. This paper presents results of a joint effort between faculty in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology and the Department of Music to develop projects at various levels of the curriculum that utilizes a themed learning approach to enhance learned concepts. Students utilize technology as a means to convey their creativity, artistic design, and appreciation of the Arts. Since the creation of digital musical scores, animations and software applications share a similar development process, active-learning exercises using a variety of technologies, provide students with an opportunity to enhance learned concepts in both disciplines. While experiencing the project development process, students are learning object-oriented terminology, animation frameworks, computer programming, distributed computing concepts, and principles of music theory.