Music videos become tool to boost learning, test scores | Tennessean

"Sixth-grade math teacher Christina Nuchols watched recently as one of her students walked through the hall singing a song about decimals" reports Cindy Watts, entertainment writer at The Tennessean.

Garth Brooks manager Bob Doyle and researcher Lana Isreal developed an educational musical math program called Muzology that just won the National Science Foundation Award. Tuesday July 31, 2018, in Nashville, Tenn.
Photo: Larry McCormack / The Tennessean

Her students at Whittle Springs Middle School, a Title I low-income school in Knoxville, are often the ones who don’t do their homework, Nuchols said.

But due in part to Muzology, a new program that sets math principles to popular music, Nuchols’s students are excited about pre-algebra.

The program was tested in Knoxville and as of this school year, is being used in Cheatham County Schools, Fayette County Schools, Saint Matthew Catholic School and has recent interest from schools in Memphis...

Professional songwriters recruited
Pioneered by researcher and CEO Lana Israel and Garth Brooks's manager Bob Doyle on Music Row in Nashville, Muzology uses music videos to boost comprehension and test scores.

The web-based program works to trigger memory, emotion, motivation and attention — four critical areas of the brain related to successful learning. Israel, who earned her doctorate from the University of Oxford in England as a Rhodes Scholar, assembled a team of professional songwriters and producers to ensure the artistic aspect of the learning tool was contemporary and relevant...

Connection between arts and learning 
Over the course of the 2017 academic school year spanning use by thousands of students, in-platform pre-test scores averaged 45 percent. After watching a Muzology video, the first-time students attempted an in-platform post-test, the average score increased to 72 percent with the most frequently occurring post-test score being 100 percent.
Read more... 

Source: Tennessean