EGC Podcast #2: Guitar Hero enhances learning in music education course
Penn State professors use popular game to successfully teach future music educators
Ann Clements demonstrating Guitar Hero at the 2009 Penn State Teaching and Learning with Technology Symposium
To hear the podcast, click here.
When most people think of Guitar Hero, they think of a very popular game that has become ingrained in popular culture. However, Ann Clements, associate professor of music education at Penn State’s School of Music, saw something different – a teaching tool.
Clements has been working with Tom Cody, instructor at the School of Music, on incorporating Guitar Hero into an introductory guitar course at Penn State, Music 112. Many of the students in the class are future music teachers, which makes the project even more interesting. How would they react? Would they find value in Guitar Hero as a teaching tool?
Not really a gamer nor a techie, Clements turned to the Educational Gaming Commons (EGC) at Penn State to help her incorporate Guitar Hero into her course. They set her up with the game, and offered both technical and pedagogical support.
So, Guitar Hero debuted in the class this spring. As part of the class, a three-week Guitar Hero project was assigned where the class divided into teams and used the game’s music composer mode to play and record a simple song. Not only should the song be proof of what was learned in class, but it should be structured in a way that it could be used as an instructional tool for a future class.
The project was a smashing success. The students, Clements observed, came to the lab to do their assignments on Guitar Hero and often stayed far longer than needed. They helped each other out with technical issues, and Clements got to know many of the students far better than she would in a typical classroom. In addition, a survey of students at project’s end found that almost all of them saw plenty of usefulness for teaching in Guitar Hero.
To find out more about the project, Jamie
Oberdick spoke with Clements and discussed more about how she used Guitar Hero
to teach, student reaction, and how the Educational Gaming Commons worked with
them to ensure the experiment would be a success.
