e-learning hitting the right notes?

Sam Harold wonders if anybody actually cares about music in online courses.

Music originates far back in the history of human civilisation. The earliest communities used it as a fundamental facet of their expression. Over time, music evolved to form an integral role in culture, completing expression and enhancing audience sensation, following and shaping the ancient civilisations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and India.

In modern times, it has remained an integral component. It is found in film, TV, Radio, CD, and Cassette as well as in more niche areas, such as eLearning projects…

Music is a potent force, but what is its prominence in Elearning? I’d argue it remains vastly underutilised. It is used at a limited level, primarily providing some form of stimulation alongside the learning itself for practical purposes. Readily available music is cost and time-effective. But is it necessarily the most ideal?

Typical stock music needs to have the uniqueness to elevate a media, but this is not necessarily its most significant detriment. For stock music to be generalised, it must adhere to a generic formula, making it less tailored for your specific purposes.

There will always be the concern that music needs to align with your intended message or atmosphere. A scene’s pacing, mood or thematic elements could be completely missed, so when using stock assets, careful consideration must be used to achieve a suitable compromise.

However, custom composition will be essential where distinctiveness and emotional resonance are paramount. Unfortunately, stock music may be all that is possible in many projects, mainly due to the perspective that music is a ‘nice to have’ that serves a minimal purpose in learning.

Whilst not a necessity, this is also the case for other aspects. When it comes to video, interactions, and assessments, we acknowledge their contribution as

important for the benefit they provide. So, if music also provides such a benefit, why do we not give this equal consideration?

Music can:

• enhance the mood through audio representation

• create an emotional connection to the learning

• improve learner focus and motivation with multisensory engagement

• enhance memory retention

• compliment the structure

• improve overall user experience

These benefits must be considered. Whatever your project, consider your choices of music carefully. Whilst stock music can appear less than ideal, it remains a valid enhancement of your learning experience; if time and resources permit, a greater focus can be placed on music customisation and implementation, elevating your project.

Consider the following examples. Music can be used to enhance the feedback you display. Shifts in music could denote a user’s progress through the course, bookending the entry and exit of chapters. When music is paired with user inputs, it can reinforce the user’s conscious choices, such as in drag and drop, button inputs and other activities. Most intuitively, it can serve as a background component, that compliments your visuals, perhaps changing to reflect popups and diagrams.

Ultimately, your authoring tool and budget will inform the concessions you must make. A genuinely dynamic audio experience remains an optimistic ideal, but with music’s importance in other media, are we missing something with our current focus on it in eLearning?