From the first beeps and bleeps of Pong in 1972 to the world’s most-subscribed massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, video games are part of our lives and culture. This presentation will highlight the successes and failures of teaching an online video game music course to the student-at-large.
From the first beeps and bleeps of Pong in 1972 to the world’s most-subscribed massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, video games are part of our lives and culture. This presentation will highlight the successes and failures of teaching an online video game music course to the student-at-large. Video Game Music offered a unique pedagogical approach by allowing faculty and students to meet in-game through various MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), and to interactively explore music of various regions within the gaming world in real-time. This was the first music course, and possibly first university course ever, to offer in-game class meetings in real-time.
As educators (especially music educators) we are constantly re-evaluating our teaching approaches and techniques to find innovative ways to incorporate the National Standards, and technology into the curriculum. Depending on what level of academia you teach, you may have additional standards or requirements which must also be addressed. For example, your additional standards may include Writing Across the Curriculum, STEM, STEAM, and/or specific student learning objectives (SLO). The objective of the course was to create an avenue that could be used to meet these goals, while creating a unique and interactive learning environment for the students that could occur outside the classroom. Thus, Video Game Music was born!