This collaborative project between a liberal arts university and a performing arts conservatory is developing curricular materials illustrating the science and mathematics of digital sound using examples drawn from theater, film, and music. It is engaging students' interest in science by enabling them to explore connections between art and digital media by creating a textbook supplemented with interactive on-line tutorials, worksheets, MATLAB exercises, programming exercises, and application-based projects. The project is creating modules that move from higher to lower levels of abstraction and from concept to practice. It is making the curricular material accessible to students of different backgrounds and teachers of a variety of courses in computer science and production aspects of the performing arts. These materials are being assessed through direct observation and questionnaires to determine how students move between concept and practice and find better ways to link the conceptual textbook material with art- and real-world projects. Workshops are being held for college-level teachers of digital media from computer science and art disciplines to refine and disseminate the curricular material.
