Adding Background Music

Apr 08, 2016

Hello Community -

I've been hearing and reading mixed reviews about adding background music to interactive exercises.

Brief background, I've built an eLearning course and I'm tempted to add background music when an end-user comes to an interactive exercise built with either Quizmaker or Engage. The music I want to add is all instrumental, for example Classical or Jazz. This would play until the completion of the exercise. The end-user has the option to turn down the volume in the player if they choose too.

The exercises itself does have animated figures, backgrounds and branching scenarios to add some color, but the exercise is all text base. I'd like to add another level of engagement without taking away from the lesson, hence the reason I want to use instrumental music.

I'm hoping I can get some thoughts on this. 

Thanks ya'll

2 Replies
Walt Hamilton
Neil L

I'd like to add another level of engagement without taking away from the lesson, hence the reason I want to use instrumental music.

 

Learners have limited resources to bring to bear on learning the material. They don't need another level to suck those resources away from what matters. Even pictures distract, if they are not illustrating what you want the learners to gain.

I second Matthew's thoughts, and would add that you would hard pressed to find a genre that everybody either likes or is neutral about. why risk it?

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