An Also, with music & music education
An individual’s musical literacy is commonly measured from his/her competence and skill in using an instrument or simply his/her sheer knowledge on different musical forms, maybe it’s in the form of an instrument or an individual’s voice. Also, with music & music education often considered only as an extra-curricular activity, it is tended to be taken for granted or overlooked because of the common knowledge of several people considering it as an insignificant factor to one’s self. The researchers, actually lack education in musical literacy, particularly comprehending sheet music, which in fact provides multiple benefits in one’s self. Musical literacy back then, both in the country and in the world, was always been classified as something that can only be afforded and learned by upper-class families. Mainly because in order to acquire knowledge on how to read sheet music and play different musical instruments, one will be needing a music instructor or formal education which doesn’t really come cheap, and pretty much impractical for a family who only earns enough to feed themselves and provide basic education to their children. But with the rapid growth and advancement of the technology present today, an individual could now simply drag a mouse and search through different media and sources, the web for example, tutorials and lessons on how to read, write and comprehend musical symbols and notations in sheet music.
Thus, musical instruction and literacy is still unceasingly imparted to individuals. Unfortunately, even with the said situation, there is still an excessive number of people who are minimally illiterate in terms of music, sheet music comprehension in particular. It is evident that the impact of technology in our lives has been very big as technology continues to change one’s perceptions and views on the utilization of things. This is clearly seen in the present quality of education today, such as the use of computer and devices to conduct research on things needed in the class easily and conveniently, create computer-aided presentation to make learning easier and more interesting and study not only inside an academic environment, but also outside the four corners of a classroom through online classes. A current study shows that the use of mobile devices and mobile applications is continuously growing (Bicen & Kocakoyun, 2013).
Unluckily, the previous generations did not have this opportunity to help and boost their education because of technology’s inferiority back then. That being said, musical literacy, specifically sheet music comprehension could now be learned in the comfort of anyone’s home at any chosen time. Evidently, with the said development of technology and almost everyone using smartphones and mobile tablets, it is not difficult to envision if the researchers’ produce and create an educational mobile application that primarily aims to enhance an individual’s musical literacy. As stated by Statista (2018), the number of smartphone users in the Philippines has increased to 30.4 million by 2017. Learning as we know is a continuous process and an educational mobile application is an innovative way of learning. With the advancement of mobile technologies nowadays, the use of smartphones and mobile tablets this mobile application makes learning fun, entertaining and more engaging, it creates a more flexible way of providing individuals to reimagine learning (Hamm, Saltsman, Jones, Baldridge & Perkins, 2013).
According to Edward (2004), “Colleagues across the nation, music recruiters, ensemble directors, and theory teachers are all reporting an increasing number of entering music majors who are unable to read music notation and produce music on their major instruments from it.” The researchers’ objective is to create a mobile application that will teach an individual to learn to read musical notations or literacy using the Modality Principle. The Modality Principle is “present words as speech rather than on-screen text (Clark & Mayer, 2011)”.
Rather than having a long explanation or a long paragraph with graphics to explain a particular subject, the Modality Principle removes all the unnecessary texts and only selects the main definition of the subject through graphics and audio. The cause of cognitive overload is when the visual channel is presented with texts and graphics. Making the learner feel distracted. What the modality principle does is that it uses audio and graphics to present information. The audio is processed to the auditory channel and the graphics are processed in the visual channel. In this way, the auditory and the visual channel is not overloaded since both channels processed both words and graphics. Allowing the learner to concentrate or focus on the presented information. There was a research study conducted by Moreno & Mayer (1998) where students were divided into two groups.
Each group were taught differently from one another about lighting formation. In the first group, the students were presented with an animation about the formation of lightning with narration. In the second group, the students were also presented with an animation about the formation of lighting with text captions. The results showed that the group with the narration performed better the group with taught text captions. The Modality Principle states that combining text with graphics is ineffective when learning a subject, but it is not entirely true. The principle does not apply in all situations.
“The modality principle applies in situations in which you, present graphics and their verbal commentary at the same time, and particularly when the material is complex and presented at a rapid continuous pace (Clark & Mayer, 2011).” The contribution of this study is to give knowledge to researchers that the Modality Principle can be applied in mobile applications and in teaching musical literacy and this principle can enhance the learning capabilities, in a fast-paced manner, of an individual. This research will prove a new knowledge about Modality Principle that will be more effective when graphics, narration, and music are combined in presenting a particular subject through multimedia.