Type I: Engaging African Americans in Computing through the Collaborative Creation of Musical Remixes

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

The Georgia Institute of Technology proposes a project to engage and retain African-Americans in computing using music composition for the contextualization of computing practices. African-American participation in computing is relatively low compared to other ethnic groups. Recent research has shown that the relationship between computer games, once thought a "silver bullet" for CS education, and an eventual interest in computer science is not as strong as many have assumed, especially for African Americans; therefore, there is a need for more culturally-motivated approaches. Currently existing approaches for directly motivating African Americans in CS address pre-computational topics or are used for recruiting students into high school programs; however, there are no current approaches in addressing culturally motivated core CS topics for high school students. This project represents one such approach: the development of an audio composition environment, called EarSketch, which enables students to create computational remixes (i.e. musical compositions that are comprised of code snippets that manipulate small musical samples and beats). This approach with its focus on hip hop remixes may (a) sidestep the cultural issues that computer games have had in the engagement of minorities and therefore be more successful in engaging these constituencies; (b) make computational music more accessible to those without classical training by operating on the more accessible hierarchical level of "loops" and "beats" as opposed to the finer-grained note and event level of classical Western composition; and (c) allow students to create culturally relevant artifacts that have a deep meaning to them. The EarSketch curriculum will be initially deployed in summer workshops for high school students with a final piloting in a high school CS course at Lanier High School. Students will learn how to remix music in digital audio workstation (DAW) software and how to write code to algorithmically generate remixes within this environment, approaching remixing from the perspective of computing concepts aligned with the CS: Principles national curriculum (e.g. creating computational artifacts, using abstractions and models, and working effectively in teams). EarSketch is designed to motivate students to learn and apply computational concepts in order to achieve musical goals such as the creation of additive, repetitive, and varying textural constructs. The curriculum also borrows from ideas of pair programming and leverages social media as a means of sharing and collaborating while adding the unique feature of students creatively reusing and remixing each other?s works, as is done with musical remixes. An EarSketch social media sharing site will enable students to share their creative works and remix other?s work, by reusing, altering, and augmenting code, samples, and beats.