Browsing by Author "Brooks, Elina"

The objective of this thesis (study) is to find out if a web-based learning concept is effective in a subject matter that is traditionally taught in contact where the core of the learning pro-cess has been direct feedback, individual homework, and correcting student performance. The theoretical background of this survey/study is based on the theories and studies of learning environments, blended learning, and adult pedagogy. In recent years a lot of web-based studying and teaching materials have been created, for example YouTube has many educational videos for specific skills that are available for all. Alongside these kind of medias, entire music education learning environments are starting to emerge. In this study I have examined one of them, a Finnish web-based music school, Rockway. The goal has been to survey what sort of experiences students have had involv-ing the teaching material, user friendliness, and the quality of teaching. The second subject of this study has been finding out how the Rockway web-based learning environment works as part of the blended learning, where information can be acquired through many different channels, or how it works as a sole form of independent music studies. Methods: The research material has been gathered through a web-based e-form, which was sent to users of Rockway.fi in the summer 2017, and the survey ended in March 2018. Alto-gether, 75 Rockway-users answered the e-survey. The research material has been ana-lyzed mainly with descriptively quantitative frequency charts, which the open-ended answer descriptions reinforce. Results and conclusions: The results of the study are encouraging from the view of the web-based music studies development. The students were relatively satisfied with the web-learning service. They felt that they had improved in their instrument skills, and they had received assessment tools for evaluating their own musical skills. The Rockway service was user-friendly. However, a portion of the students emphasized that the web-based in-struction can never fully replace the contact teaching. There is a demand for developing the web-based learning platform that offers more interactive and blended learning environ-ments, where the web-based learning can be blended into contact situations.