Evaluating Web Audio for Learning, Accessibility, and Distribution

Web Audio has a great potential for interactive audio content in which an open standard and easy integration with other web-based tools makes it particularly interesting. From earlier studies, obstacles for students to materialize creative ideas through programming were identified; focus shifted from artistic ambition to solving technical issues. This study builds upon 20 years of experience from teaching sound and music computing and evaluates how Web Audio contributes to the learning experience. Data was collected from different student projects through analysis of source code, reflective texts, group discussions, and online self-evaluation forms. The result indicates that Web Audio serves well as a learning platform and that an XML abstraction of the API helped the students to stay focused on the artistic output. It is also concluded that an online tool can reduce the time for getting started with Web Audio to less than 1 h. Although many obstacles have been successfully removed, the authors argue that there is still a great potential for new online tools targeting audio application development in which the accessibility and sharing features contribute to an even better learning experience.