Coding Music Together: How Elementary Computer Science Students Collaboratively Translate Musical Ideas into Code

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Saturday 9:45 am
  In Poster Session: Learning Together: Collaboration, Teaching Strategies, and Identity in Classroom and Community Contexts

Abstract

This study investigates the complex relationship between collaborative group dynamics and creative coding in the context of an open-ended music+coding activity with elementary students. Drawing on collaborative learning theory and creative computing research, we examine how students adopted collaborative structures as they tried to create music+coding artifacts in a web-based platform. Using written field observations across two different student groups, we analyzed the two groups' collaborative and creative efforts to complete the activity. Findings indicate that musical composition and coding were not separate tasks, but intertwined processes shaped by peer interaction and creative ideas. Our findings offer insights for software design, which should support flexible and fluid collaborative arrangements and scaffold support for collaboration in open-ended creative coding.

Authors

• Chelsi R Miller, Northwestern University

• Cameron Luke Roberts, Northwestern University

• Michael S. Horn, Northwestern University