Serious game using augmented reality for supporting the education process of the violin.

Abstract

The violin has for decades posed several difficulties for students of all educational levels. The great time needed for novice violin musicians to be able to master the essentials of the violin is an indicator of this music organ's particularities. In addition to that, it is the structure of the violin fingerboard, which does not have frets, that presents further confusion to the students. Also, the hand and finger position in the fingerboard requires a long time to be adjusted. A number of teaching approaches have been suggested over the years but none seems to satisfy the needs of students nowadays. The purpose of this Master Thesis is to initially scrutinize the educational games developed for and used in the Violin domain and discuss the level that they address the aforementioned difficulties. However, even though they seem as promising examples, they lack features that would allow them to successfully underpin violin learning by facing the majority of the identified problems. To this end, a new, advanced serious game with the technology of Augmented Reality is proposed, named VEARA, that includes the facilitating and positive features identified in existing solutions and incorporates missing elements that will bring forth a new generation of educational games for the Violin. The results show that the majority of the students increased their performance in the violin, were entertained by playing the game while learning, and felt motivated to continue based on the game's scenario due to the variety of activities included. Furthermore, students stated they had a positive attitude in regards to re-using the game in the future in order to learn additional techniques and concepts. The positive results of this study pave the way for games being used in the classroom and expand the game's functionalities that will further increase student's performance and support teachers in delivering the required knowledge.