The focus of this study was the development and implementation of various interactive and presentation tools for use in a college-level music fundamentals course for non-music majors. The study centered around three primary areas of investigation: (1) student attitudes regarding the effectiveness of multimedia-aided instruction; (2) student achievement with regard to certain topics in the music fundamentals course relative to the incorporation of both commercially produced and concept-specific produced software by the author; and (3) student response to certain music selections using the Digital Affective Response Technology (DART) software program.

Two sections of the music fundamentals course (n=110) and (n=105) were taught with the use of a presentation tool incorporating text, audio, video, and graphics at each lecture. Students enrolled in the second section also used outside-of-class software programs. A survey instrument was administered. Over 90% of the 166 students completing the survey indicated that the use of in-class multimedia materials was either somewhat helpful or very helpful. None of the students reported that the use of multimedia in the classroom was not helpful. The use of the Practica Musica software as an outside-of-class learning aid was perceived as either somewhat helpful or very helpful by 88% of the students. The software written by the author was reported to be somewhat helpful or very helpful by 81% of the students.

Statistical analysis of a pretest/posttest instrument indicated significant gains in achievement by students using instructional software outside-of-class. This was demonstrated in two areas: written note identification and written key signature recognition.

The DART software program was a dynamic measure of individual musical preferences. Students indicated preference toward music selections with conjunct melodies, higher amounts of repetition in construct, and low proportions of syncopation. Student opinions, however, varied greatly when asked to judge particular music selections as "good" or "bad" and the response time rating occurs approximately at an equal rate. Preference for selections between these two areas took a significantly longer period of time.