Haptic Technology in Digital Music Learning Context: A State-of-the-Art Analysis

Abstract

Digital media have become increasingly established in learning contexts in recent decades, and it seems impossible to imagine education without them, especially in recent years. Various technological advances can be observed, such as developments in virtual reality and augmented reality. To give learners a realistic impression of the virtual world, as many sensory impressions as possible should be addressed. However, current developments have mainly addressed the visual and auditory modalities, which make up two of the five human senses. Research and developments for the use of the other senses are being made but at this stage they are not yet ready for mass use. Especially the sense of touch based on skin as the largest human sensory organ or tactile and haptic perception seem to be of interest. Particularly in manual or medical areas where motor skills are required, haptic technologies are declared to be supportive and beneficial. One area that has hardly focused on digital learning so far is the music sector. Learning a musical instrument in this context seems to be an interesting field of research, as it not only promotes motor skills, but also cognitive development in both children and adults.
 To give an update on the technical developments in the field of digital teaching and learning in music, and especially to highlight the use of haptic technologies, we will briefly review the state of the art in this paper. It begins with a brief overview of the basics of digital learning and haptics, as well as previous work in this field. Using the method of a scoping review, the topic of haptic technologies in the field of music education will be researched, analysed, and summarised according to defined criteria to give a condensed overview of it. The selected database and appropriate search strings will be used to achieve the aim of the paper. The results help to shed light on current research gaps and give indications for future developments of haptic technology in the music learning context.