A lot of my musician friends think that elearning for music is a silly idea. They think that having to go through online courses will not provide the same musical learning experience that traditional lessons can offer. However, I totally disagree with them because all it takes to make music elearning development tools work is to choose and combine the right types of tools, applications and software available to us today.
The technology we have now is powerful and advanced enough to accommodate the challenges of musical education. If you go online, you will see that we have a lot of useful innovations and media that can be utilized as development tools for elearning. We have instant messengers, video calling applications, podcasts, instructional videos, music players and so many more. All of these things address music’s need for visual, auditory and tactile teaching and learning methods.
For example, teachers can record a video of themselves demonstrating how to play chords for a guitar. They can integrate text slides into the video if they want to further describe a theory or a tip to reinforce their demonstration. Students can access this pre-recorded instruction, pick up their guitars, and follow the teacher. They can even pause and rewind the video at their own discretion in case they have difficulty following the instruction in one take. With just a simple video, students were able to use their visual, auditory and tactile sense for optimal learning experiences.
The trick to ensure that music elearning development tools will work is to carefully choose what applications or programs you will need and then combine them to provide learners with meaningful learning experiences. You can create a course that features an instructional video like my example above, a listening quiz using a music player, and an instant messaging so the student can interact with the teacher or other learners. As long as the course designer considers the needs and preference of the students, this process will be a piece of cake!
