iMuSciCA lies in the heart of STEAM learning, since it introduces new methods and cutting-edge technologies for integrating music into STEM activities, simulating the ways in which subjects naturally connect in the real world. At the same time the proposed suite of tools, integrated in the iMuSciCA workbench, are appropriately integrated in blended learning scenarios, allowing thus for more engaging and personalized learning. Collaborative learning and a shift from ‘students as consumers’ to ‘students as creators’ are expected to have a mid-term impact on education. iMuSciCA complies with both trends. The proposed pedagogical scenarios are mainly collaborative, i.e. students are expected to collaboratively investigate, design and compose. iMuSciCA, however, goes beyond collaborative learning and introduces collaborative teaching as well, since teachers from different disciplines are expected to collaboratively implement the proposed educational scenarios.
With music being one the emerging tools for stimulating learning awareness, the iMuSciCA project develops learning skills associated with both the science of acoustics and the art of music creation. iMuSciCA offers a workbench that allows sonification of audio parameters within a virtual sound-simulation environment for designing virtual music instruments. The sounding-body of an instrument, as the fundamental element of both the nature of sound and that of the art of music making, is placed in the heart of inquiry-based teaching practices concerning sound waves. The workbench explore the direct link between a virtual object and its detailed profile of scientific data that govern its sounding behaviour. An advanced virtual 3D modelling environment connected to real physics and signal processing modules supports teacher’s intention to create an immersive experience of sound production and analysis for the students. Bridging the gap between the typology of physics and the reproduction of its parameters in real life, the lesson plans of iMuSciCA follow the needs of an inquiry-based approach upon this particular curriculum.
Although knowledge and skills of people are important and even necessary, they are not sufficient to create a prosperous society where people are satisfied with their lives. It becomes more and more clear that a key factor to prosperous societies is the room they give to human creativity and expression. This is precisely what iMuSciCA projects provides: it combines the knowledge about STEM with the creativity of building musical instruments that will make musical expression possible. Moreover, by bringing contemporary technologies into the classroom (like gesture recognition and the like) musical expression will become possible also for the ones not so gifted in music. This opening to co-creation is just made possible by modern technology, a typical STEM subject. So a double intertwining is incorporated in iMuSciCA as it connects creativity and art to STEM precisely by means of STEM. Art and STEM resonate to each other and show how the creativity of art is fostered into creativity of STEAM. The pedagogy of iMuSciCA and the implementation in pilot testing in real classroom setting reflects the co-creative interplay between art and science in society.
