Research

We posit that a key factor in how effective songs are in students' motivation, engagement, and learning is how interactive the song experience is for students. We articulate and tour a continuum of interactivity, illustrated with examples that are grounded in the context of core learning objectives in mathematics and statistics for students in high school or college, but applicable to virtually any subject matter.

Using song in teaching is not a new idea. Songs have been used quite extensively in a variety of arenas, most notable in language acquisition. There is some empirical evidence to support the efficacy of using song in learning a new language. Furthermore, there is some theoretical support for the use of song in teaching. While the theories do not directly advocate for song, the use of song is consistent with the frameworks. This presentation will explore the educational theories that support the use of song in teaching in general, and specifically in STEM education.

This session will provide attendees with an overview of the National Academies study: Branches from the Same Tree. This study examined an important trend in higher education: integration of the humanities and arts with sciences, engineering, and medicine at the undergraduate and graduate level which proponents argue will better prepare students for work, life, and citizenship.

This video poster shares a walk-through talk-aloud demo of an interactive song, starting with the pre-song prompts the user responds to that yield inserted words in the completed song, roughly in the style of the Mad Libs word template game. Some of the student inputs involve making conceptual connections while others involve providing context or examples.

Music has long been recognized as an effective tool to help young children learn, but this teaching/learning strategy is rarely used at the high school and college levels. As a doctoral student of education (and a high school chemistry teacher) I am currently in the beginning stages of exploring topics to research for a dissertation. At this point in the process, the only idea I am passionate about is the general concept of using music to teach and learn STEM-related content. However, below I have included a few areas of possible research interest with respect to this general topic.

Since ancient times songs have been used for teaching and learning. We often think of melody as providing a mnemonic device for recalling information, but songs have the ability to engage students in learning at a much more conceptual level. Dissertation research completed in 2011 shows that especially for middle school students, songs that are rich in content can be used to build conceptual understanding through prolonged engagement, vocabulary building, providing alternative explanations and stimulating the brain through multiple neural networks.

Since 2012 I have used music as a pedagogical method in fisheries/natural resource classes. I began by writing and performing songs based on class materials including concepts, habitats, and species' biology and posting these videos on the web. Questionnaire results indicated that the music videos significantly improved attitudes towards class and studying. I transformed this exercise into an active learning exercise by having students make their own karaoke video. Students had to write the lyrics and sing/rap them but could use video and music from the web for their videos.

Project SMILES (Student-Made Interactive Learning with Educational Songs) is an NSF-funded initiative that created and is evaluating statistics education songs, and, via VOICES (Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song), has expanded to the realm of educational songs in all of STEM. Dennis Pearl, one of the Principal Investigators of this project, helped organize a meeting of key community members in June, which led to a report of recommendations for further research, resource-building, and community collaborations.

If you are a practitioner of STEAM (STEM+Arts) education, have you ever thought about conducting more formal research in this area? Many of us have training in traditional scientific research, and some of our research skills surely are transferable to the realm of DBER (discipline-based education research). However, since education is a social science rather than a natural science, it also encompasses many assumptions and techniques that may not be familiar to STEM professionals.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has launched a study on the mutual integration of the arts and humanities with science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine in higher education. This study is examining the evidence behind the assertion that mutually integrative educational programs lead to improved educational and career outcomes for undergraduate and graduate students.