Storysounds: School workshops and data gathering for research on process-led learning

Unrealtime Expanded (URTEX) collaborated with ootiboo, a school and community project organisation to deliver primary school workshops using Unrealtime, a digital music improvisation software. All activities were co-designed and facilitated with colleague and URTEX co-lead Dan Herbert.
This workshop series provided an opportunity to capture data using action tracking. In each workshop space, computers were set up to capture mouse and keyboard data over time, as well as audiovisual data. These quantitative data will be analysed and combined with qualitative responses by field specialists to evaluate the engagement and creativity of URT users during the workshop timeframe. The wider objective is to evaluate the benefits of process-led learning through music improvisation in young learners.

URTEX for education focuses on developing and evaluating a model for process-led learning through digital music improvisation. The Unrealtine software (URT) has the potential to facilitate group improvisation among untrained learners and allows sound exploration with just a mouse and keyboard, making it accessible for diverse learners. URT captures performance data through action tracking, providing reliable metrics that were previously hard to implement in classrooms. This enables the research team to evaluate young learners’ engagement with technology-aided improvisation.

The project aims to develop and evaluate a new model for process-led learning and data-capturing designed for classroom improvisation. The process has the potential to generate findings with benefits for researchers investigating process-led learning in fields like creativity and technology in education, digital creativity tool design, improvisation
pedagogies, and music performance. The proposed evaluation model can contribute to current pedagogical research on musical improvisation. The free-to-access software has the potential to transform young people's engagement and access to technology and benefit educators and project partners.