The Royal Conservatory Launches Free Online Music Instruction Tool

The Royal Conservatory, together with Concordia University and Queen’s University, launches iSCORE, the first bilingual online module designed specifically to support music study and instruction.

“This innovative teaching tool, developed by leading educators and researchers, fills a need in the music education community,” says Angela Elster, Vice President Academic, The Royal Conservatory. “iSCORE helps facilitate communications between music teachers and students, regardless of distance or time, ensuring a thorough online learning and evaluation process.”

iSCORE supports music-making with a wide range of features:

• A personalized homepage enabling students to establish goals and priorities;
• An embedded recorder and online portfolio allowing students to record and save practices and performances;
• Curated links to composition and sequencing tools;
• An internal messaging system and calendar to plan and schedule lessons and rehearsals;
• Interactive and personalized plans, reflection forms, and feedback from teachers.

"The beauty of iSCORE is in its potential to transform student learning," says Dr. Rena Upitis, Professor of Arts Education, Queen's University. "By engaging students through the digital technologies and social media that are so important to them, iSCORE also engages them in what really matters most: learning."

The product comes with lesson plans as well as a collection of research articles on the benefits of self-regulated learning. iSCORE is the result of over a decade of research involving musicians, studio teachers, and students of all ages from across Canada.

"iSCORE is an incredibly innovative project,” says Dr. Phil Abrami, Director of Concordia University’s Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance and a co-investigator on this project. “The innovation comes from having taken what we know about the learning sciences, creativity, and musical esthetics and interweaving this knowledge within a rich technology environment."

The project partners thank the Department of Canadian Heritage, TELUS, and The Matthews Family for their generous and visionary support.

For more information about iSCORE, please visit iscore.rcmusic.ca.

About The Royal Conservatory

The Royal Conservatory is one of the largest and most respected music education institutions in the world. Providing the definitive standard of excellence in music education through its curriculum, assessment, performance, and teacher education programs, The Conservatory has had a substantial impact on the lives of millions of people globally. In addition, the organization has helped to train a number of internationally celebrated artists including Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, David Foster, Sarah McLachlan, Angela Hewitt, and Diana Krall. Motivated by its powerful mission to develop human potential through music and the arts, The Royal Conservatory has emerged over the last two decades as a leader in the development of arts-based programs that address a wide range of social issues.

About Concordia University
Concordia University is increasingly recognized for a big thinking approach to teaching and research that examines societal issues from a broad perspective. We are an open and engaged university that encourages its 46,000 students to become active, critical and concerned citizens. Recognizing that research drives big thinking, more than one quarter of our students are enrolled in graduate studies, raising our community’s intellectual temperature and elevating its ambitions. Concordia offers more than 300 undergraduate and 200 graduate programs, diplomas and certificates, and maintains formal ties with over 100 institutions in 33 countries.

About Queen’s University

Established by Royal Charter in 1841, Queen’s University has served the triple mission of research, teaching, and service to the community, province, nation, and broader world. The University strives to be among the best of internationally-known universities in Canada recognized for:  the extraordinary quality of students and programs in the arts, sciences, and professions; the intellectual power and value of research by faculty members and students; and the exemplary service of the University and that of its graduates to the community and the nation and the community of nations. A central part of the University's mandate is to provide leadership by partnering with other institutions to facilitate ethical research, to disseminate the results of research through the development of new products and services, and to provide accountability to its stakeholders.

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