Web pages based on the world of music for learning oscillatory and wave physics

This study addresses the question of how engineering students respond to the use of certain elements from the world of music in the learning material in the form of web pages. The study was carried out with two different groups of students, taken from a compulsory subject in general physics and an elective subject in acoustics. In the first case, three topics were taught in the traditional way, but in the case of the last topic (oscillations and waves), the students had to learn it autonomously, by means of “class notes” in the form of web pages, whose explanations always embarked from situations taken from the world of music. In the second case, the driest part of the subject (also oscillatory and wave physics) was taught using similar web pages. The students assessed different aspects in questionnaires. The assessment was generally positive, but the results also revealed some of the limitations of these resources, due to the fact that music does not arouse the same interest in all the students and that some students still prefer traditional teaching methods.