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MyGuitar247 and Discovery Learning

Here at My Guitar 247 our focus is constantly on the importance of a rich, rewarding and engaging learning design.  We want to make our members’ learning experience fun and engaging.  We want our members to enjoy their accomplishments on guitar.  We want to provide a tool that will serve our members throughout their journey toward becoming a professional-caliber player and performer.

One way we do this is by making sure to incorporate important learning theories and methods in the instructional design of our lessons.  This is especially important in our online design, and we’ll ocassionally share important components of our approach through these new articles.  One of the foundations of our lesson design is often labeled Discovery Learning, a method of inquiry-based instruction.

Discovery learning, as a theoretical method and approach to instruction, originated in the 1960s, but is similar to the many of the ideas of one of the founding fathers of American education, John Dewey (1859-1952). Discovery Learning holds that a learner is successful when he or she has the opportunity to practice discovery.  That is, curriculum and lesson plans are designed so that a student can get practice at “finding out” not just what to know, but how to know it – and also when to learn it.  The theory behind Discovery Learning is that when a learner practices this type of inquiry-based discovery, then the learner excels at retaining information in a way that allows her to solve all sorts of problems in the future.  The mantra of this philosophical movement is that we 'learn by doing.'  And so, Discovery Learning is a applied through methods of instruction design which encourage students interact with their environment by exploring and manipulating objects, wrestling with questions and controversies, or performing experiments.

Here at MyGuitar247 this is achieved by liberating each member/learner to select any lesson, at any time, and to progress through the challenges of that lesson at their own pace.  Members can stay “in the curriculum” for a while, proceeding by stepwise plan, but can also “jump out” into the freely searchable categories of lessons any time they want – all in order to discover something new.  And in addition to that, member learners can discover with the other tools provided by our service.  For example, you can try out a jam track to play along with, experiencing the power of play in the learning process (after all, there’s a reason we say and write, “let’s play some music”).

We hope all of our members enjoy the benefits of an approach to online musical education that is rooted in Discovery Learning.