Instead of a traditional lecture structure or the newer model of flipped-instruction, inquiry-based class structure asks the students to explore concepts from given exemplars and extrapolate their own conclusions regarding the rules and logic for a given topic. The instructor’s role is meant to guide them through this process while providing non-intuitive knowledge such as terminology and historical context.
As you can see from the navigation sidebar, this online textbook is divided into a simple hierarchy: Chapter - Topics - Parts
Each chapter of this textbook highlights a conceptual grouping and is divided into any number of topics. These topics provide the instructional foundation for the inquiry-based model and are therefore divided into three parts:
The ultimate goal is to help students take the lead in their education and gain ownership of technical concepts.
The source code for Inquiry-Based Music Theory is hosted in a GitHub repository. This allows the textbook to be easily shared, adapted, and modified by anyone, an Open Educational Resource.
The website is built using Jekyll static site generator and is hosted on GitHub Pages. The content is created in Markdown, a simple mark up language written in plain text.
Interactive musical notation and midi play back is added to the site using abcjs to render ABC Music Notation.
This book was inspired by and partially adapted from Open Music Theory.
Kris Shaffer, Bryn Hughes, and Brian Moseley, Open Music Theory, Hybrid Pedagogy 2014+ (github repository).
Open Music Theory was built on resources authored by Kris Shaffer, Bryn Hughes, and Brian Moseley. It is edited by Kris Shaffer and Robin Wharton, and is published by Hybrid Pedagogy Publishing.
Rather than create “a fixed tome of knowledge, shared across institutional boundaries, with the authority to dictate pedagogical decisions and arbitrate student success,” OMT strives to be a critical textbook: “multi-authored, physically hackable, and legally alterable.”
For more details on the pedagogy and open-source ideology behind OMT, please see About Open Music Theory and Kris Shaffer’s articles “Open-Source Scholarship” and “Push, Pull, Fork: GitHub for Academics.”