Week 1: Building the Framework

Hello everyone, and welcome back to my senior project blog! This week, I primarily focused on establishing the foundation of my project. At the beginning of this week, I started talking with my on-site advisor Basel Hussein, a researcher at NYU CREATE Lab. During our meeting, we defined my project’s goals and the key milestones that I aim to complete each week. 

Meanwhile, I began reading through my course texts to establish a connection between learning an instrument and rhythm games to help set the basis of my project’s research question. To start, I split my research into three parts: (1) the physical challenges beginners have to overcome to learn an instrument, (2) motivation’s role in learning an instrument, and (3) how rhythm games can help. 

To identify the physical challenges that beginners have to overcome to learn to play an instrument, I read “Common Challenges for Beginner Musicians (and How to Overcome Them),” a post by Philly Music Lessons, a music school made up of music instructors. From this post, I defined that finger and hand coordination are the two key challenges that beginners have to overcome to learn an instrument. 

Afterward, I moved on to the motivational aspects of learning an instrument. I read “Intrinsic, identified, and controlled types of motivation for school subjects in young elementary school children” by Guay et al. and Motivation: A Literature Review by Emily Lai to define the two types of motivation: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Additionally, I read “On What Motivates Us: A Detailed Review of Intrinsic v. Extrinsic Motivation” by Morris et al. to emphasize the significance of motivation in learning an instrument, as beginners need to stick to consistent practice to develop finger and hand coordination.

After researching motivation, I moved on to how rhythm games can help. I began to define what a rhythm game is and how its mechanics work, as they have been shown to develop finger and hand coordination and share some similarities with playing an instrument. I found some plausibility in using rhythm games to learn an instrument by reading “Revolutionizing Piano Practice: A Game-Based Learning Rhythm Game to Motivate and Support Learners” by Athalia et al. In this text, the researchers applied the Game-Based learning theory to an experiment where they created a rhythm game specific for teaching the piano. In their results, they found a 100% success rate, meaning that using rhythm games successfully enhanced players’ motivation for practicing piano. 

After completing my preliminary research, I began arranging the materials and documents needed for my project’s experiment phase. To recall, since my project works with minors, I started drafting some consent forms for students and parents interested in participating in my experiment. I have also drafted an email to my high school’s directors requesting permission to use the school’s iPads to install the rhythm game, as my experiment would need the use of multiple iPads

For next week, I plan on creating a strict set of rules that students must follow in order to take part in my experiment (i.e., they must stay on the rhythm game) and trying to recruit high school students to take part in my experiment. I will also continue to stay in contact with my high school directors to refine the prep for my project’s experiment and create the chart needed to track the high school students’ finger and hand coordination progress and their motivation.