An Interdisciplinary Learning Experience: The Creation of a Robot Dance

Students are engaging technology as a means to convey their creativity, artistic design, and appreciation of the Arts. In this paper, we share our experiences regarding an interdisciplinary project between students in an Information Sciences and Technology course and students in a General Education Arts course. Students were tasked with creating the digital musical scores and writing Java applications for the robot movements. The design and implementation of the choreography would be the bridge between discipline areas. The final product was a robot dance where the movements of robot couples were synchronized to the rhythm of the music. Active-learning exercises were utilized to expose students to a variety of music theory, animation and programming components that together provided the foundation for this project. Students used the respective software applications to realize a design in music or choreography and implement a solution. Iterative development coupled with various forms of visual and audio feedback enhanced the student learning experience.