Acoustics Education Research Articles

The acoustics program at the Institute of Acoustics, Tongji University, China.

The acoustics research at Tongji University began in the mid-1950s. The Institute of Acoustics (IOA) of Tongji University, which is one of the earliest institutions engaged in acoustics research in China, was formally established in 1984. The IOA has decades of experience in acoustics education, including offering a master's degree program for approximately 40 years, a Ph.D. program for 35 years, and a postgraduate program for 25 years. The IOA is one of the oldest acoustic research facilities in China with outstanding acoustics laboratories. Research at the IOA is performed in many areas of acoustics, which focus on detection acoustics and marine acoustics, laser ultrasonics and photoacoustics, medical ultrasonics and bioacoustics, architectural acoustics, environmental acoustics, noise control, functional and microstructural acoustic materials, aeroacoustics and aeronautical acoustics, and vehicle acoustics. This paper presents acoustics education at the undergraduate and graduate levels of Tongji University and its outstanding acoustics research facilities in detail.

Explaining and teaching acoustics through comics, interactive web pages, and video games.

Comics and manga have long been seen as childish literature, even if sometimes referred to as an art. Webpages discussing matters like Mathematics or Science are usually considered popularized content and not as tools with which research can be built. Arcade video games are often not considered serious games that can be used for learning or team building purposes. In this work, we present examples of comics, interactive web pages, and arcade video games that can be used to learn the basics of vibro-acoustics or to focus on more specific topics such as the acoustics of porous media. The reader can experience most of these visual narrative examples following the provided links. An objective of this collection is to make them better known and to stimulate further initiatives on these topics in acoustics education. To this effect, recommendations from various use cases of these visual narratives for different levels of education are also given.

Effective educational practices, assessment, and applications in acoustics and vibration at the University of Hartford.

The University of Hartford is home to two unique undergraduate engineering majors in acoustics, both sharing a core course layout of acoustics, vibrations, and projects. The Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with an Acoustics Concentration and the Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Acoustical Engineering and Music programs allow for two complementary tracks within the acoustics field, providing cohesive plans of study on many facets of listening and design. All Mechanical Engineering majors (regardless of concentration) are required to take Vibrations I and a course in Engineering and Environmental Acoustics. The department philosophy for this inclusion is that acoustics and vibration design considerations are an essential component for the development of the complete mechanical engineer. This paper outlines program educational goals and outcomes, along with pedagogical adjustments made based on continuous assessment and evaluation of select courses, including recent changes to adapt to measured deficiencies. The paper also details the historical development of the acoustics program, components of the Vibrations I and Engineering & Environmental Acoustics courses, and example research and design projects based on work in these courses. Among the included projects are modal analysis, community room acoustics assessment, and an open access computational room acoustics simulator for use and collaboration with colleagues in acoustics education.

LeMo: an assembly kit for musical acoustics education

Musical acoustics is a scientific field essential for an in-depth understanding of musical instruments and sounds. As such, it is relevant to wide audiences involved with music, including musicians, composers and even casual listeners. This work describes a twofold approach for introductory, hands-on education in musical acoustics. First, a concise classification approach for acoustic instruments is described. The approach consists of classifying instruments based on their fundamental acoustic properties of vibration generation, resonance and radiation. Then, an assembly kit of modular instrument components is described. The kit contains stand-alone resonator and radiator modules of various types, allowing the assembly of different fully functioning instrument prototypes. Students and general audiences, guided by educators, may use the kit to learn and experience the acoustic behaviour of musical instruments, as well as specific acoustic phenomena.

Acoustics for architects: A potpourri of undergraduate and graduate level teaching styles, tools and in-course projects.

Acoustics is one of the basic environmental comfort factors both in indoor and outdoor spaces. Students of architecture need to confront this theoretical field at some phase of their education. The main focus of this study is to provide a discussion platform of tools and teaching styles in architectural acoustics education of future architects, by depicting approaches that can motivate students and provide them a long-lasting understanding of the phenomena. Accordingly, a long-term experience in acoustics classes with undergraduate and graduate level students, mainly from departments of architecture of two prominent Turkish universities, is exemplified. Course contents of architectural acoustics programs are described, different models and methods of teaching are discussed, and last, selected projects, specifically those having an academic output, are presented. The study also aims to highlight some techniques and approaches that can be employed in acoustics education with limited technological tools, simply by active inclusion of the design background and creative thinking of the architecture students in this applied research area.

Human-centered design in acoustics education for undergraduate music majors.

An acoustics course for undergraduate music majors should take advantage of the natural affinity between acoustic science and musical practice. In this study, current students and recent graduates of one university's music school were surveyed with the goal of assessing their unique needs in an acoustics curriculum. The results of the survey are reported, and several curriculum recommendations are provided based on the principles of human-centered design. In particular, the acoustics course can harness musicians' intuitive understanding of sound by incorporating musical instruments into classroom demonstrations. Also, acoustics instructors should strive to introduce students to acoustical software, which is also used in the music industry. Finally, the survey findings suggest that the contemporary shift toward active learning and technology-based instruction in acoustics pedagogy is beneficial to music students.

Possibilities of acoustics education for speech therapists by using an interactive speech synthesizer “Voice Pad”

Possibilities of acoustics education for speech therapists by using an interactive speech synthesizer “Voice Pad”

An overview of the upcoming Special Issue on Education in Acoustics

The current special session includes presentations by authors who have submitted (or will be submitting) papers to an upcoming special issue of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America on education in acoustics. Quoting from the call for papers for the special issue: “The scope of this Special Issue would include all types of papers that would be of interest to people who teach courses in acoustics (at all levels), or who might write textbooks on acoustics (at all levels), or to people who enjoy learning and relearning the basics of acoustics.” This talk will provide an overview of the special issue and highlight some of the issue’s content not represented by speakers in the current special session.

Reflecting on universal design for learning in hybrid and in-person acoustics education

When transitioning to remote (Spring 2020) and hybrid (2020-21 academic year) learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, educators worked quickly to make lectures, coursework, and assessments accessible remotely. As educators return to in-person instruction, accessibility has become an even more essential and evolving part of effective course design (Kim, 2021). The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework aims to maximize learning for all students through flexibility and choice (CAST, 2018). However, to broaden UDL’s impact, these strategies should be transparent to students (Super et al., 2020). This presentation will discuss the use of exam wrappers for students to reflect on UDL practices and their own learning in an undergraduate acoustics class. Exam wrappers are a reflective exercise where students analyze their study strategies after a summative assessment (Lovett, 2013). We will present how UDL practices were implemented in a Speech Science course. Then, we will review lessons learned from using a custom exam wrapper where students reflect on their study habits after exams that assess their application of anatomy and physiology to speech acoustic output. The exam wrapper also aims to obtain formative feedback on UDL practices. This work can inform strategies for UDL implementation and student reflection in acoustics education.

Comics and acoustics education: A drawn example around the decibel

While having been the object of various criticisms and considered to be a childish litterature for a long time, comics are now a legitimate art form, the ninth art. Comics are also considered as a fully fledged tool for disseminating and explaining science. More and more researchers advocate for a larger use of comics in science, and creating comics is generally found to have a positive effect on students. This presentation will first briefly recall main facts concerning comics, and their use in dissemination and education. The genesis of an educational “comics paper” explaining the origin and history of the decibel, together with examples from acoustics and other domains will be then thoroughly described. This “comics paper” will be put into perspective with its companion “classical paper,” in order to appreciate the transition from an almost exclusively written form to a predominantly drawn form.

Acoustics education accelerated by interactive simulators and research imaging system experiments

Learning acoustics traditionally involves abstract principles, equations and a limited number of specific exercises. We have developed an eight module introductory course in which students can engage with the ultrasound imaging curriculum experientially by interacting with real time GUI-based physics simulators. With only an introduction to the concepts, students with minimal mathematical background can quickly understand how the principles work by varying different simulator parameters over a wide range of examples and observing the output changes. Advanced students who know the simulator equations can learn the subtle interplay of different variables on outcomes on a deeper level. These simulators accelerate learning even more when the equations involve complicated integrals or equations which have to be evaluated numerically. Display options offer different ways of visualizing the acoustic and image data. Laboratories using a Verasonics ultrasound research imaging system provide hands-on learning of signal processing, transducer operation, and image processing.

Framing undergraduate education approaches in speech and hearing sciences—Liberal arts, vocational, or skill-set oriented?

Human communication is complex and the academic disciplines associated with speech and hearing sciences are necessarily interdisciplinary. In the past few years, the role of and models for undergraduate education in this discipline have been debated within the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and the Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CAPCSD). Traditionally, these undergraduate programs are collectively referred to as Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) education, and historically they employed a broad educational perspective based in the liberal arts and sciences. However, many programs today have evolved to focus more primarily on pre-professional education in the clinical fields of speech-language pathology and audiology. From the standpoint of education in acoustics, how should we frame our undergraduate courses to provide the necessary broad general knowledge and skills while satisfying an expectation of vocational preparation from students and other clinically oriented professional organizations? In this talk, I argue that a skill-set oriented approach may be more suitable to prepare CSD undergraduates for a variety of career paths.

Ocean acoustics research in India: Potential for collaborations

This talk will provide an overview of the research carried out in ocean acoustics in India. The topics of special interest for international collaboration identified by some of the institutions involved in ocean acoustics research will be highlighted. The status of underwater acoustics education in India will be reviewed. Two institutions located in Chennai, India (National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras) are heavily involved in ocean acoustics research and their research activities will be discussed in detail. The ocean acoustics research at these two institutions has a strong field experimental component involving international collaboration. Past and ongoing research with international collaboration will be highlighted. Challenges faced by these and other institutions in fostering collaboration with international counterparts will be discussed. The scenario of ocean acoustics education and training in India will be surveyed and outlook for the future will be discussed.

Activities and future tasks of education in acoustics for ordinary people

Activities and future tasks of education in acoustics for ordinary people

Survey on education in acoustics at science museums

Survey on education in acoustics at science museums

Graduate research and education in architectural acoustics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The Graduate Program in Architectural Acoustics has been constantly advanced from its inception in 1998 with an ambitious mission of educating future experts and leaders in architectural acoustics, due to the rapid pace of change in the fields of architectural-, physical-, and psycho-acoustics. Recent years the program's pedagogy using “STEM” (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) methods has been proven to be effective and productive, including intensive, integrative hands-on experimental components that integrate architectural acoustics theory and practice. The graduate program has recruited graduate students from a variety of disciplines including individuals with B.S., B.Arch. or B.A. degrees in Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Architecture, Electronic Media, Sound Recording, Music and related fields. Graduate students under this pedagogy and research environment have been succeed in the rapidly changing field. RPI's Graduate Program in Architectural Acoustics has since graduated more than 120 graduates with both M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Under the guidance of the faculty members they have also actively contributed to the program's research in architectural acoustics, communication acoustics, psycho-acoustics, signal processing in acoustics as well as our scientific exploration at the intersection of cutting edge research and traditional architecture/music culture. This paper illuminates the evolution and growth of the graduate program.

East Carolina University Engineering: A new option in graduate acoustics education

East Carolina University Engineering: A new option in graduate acoustics education

Graduate acoustics education in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin

While graduate study in acoustics takes place in several colleges and schools at The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), including Communication, Fine Arts, Geosciences, and Natural Sciences, this poster focuses on the acoustics program in Engineering. The core of this program resides in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering (ME) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Acoustics faculty in each department supervise graduate students in both departments. One undergraduate and nine graduate acoustics courses are taught in ME and ECE. Instructors for these courses include staff at Applied Research Laboratories at UT Austin, where many of the graduate students have research assistantships. The undergraduate course, taught every fall, begins with basic physical acoustics and proceeds to draw examples from different areas of engineering acoustics. Three of the graduate courses are taught every year: a two-course sequence on physical acoustics, and a transducers course. The remaining six graduate acoustics courses, taught in alternate years, are on nonlinear acoustics, underwater acoustics, ultrasonics, architectural acoustics, wave phenomena, and acoustic metamaterials. An acoustics seminar is held most Fridays during the long semesters, averaging over ten per semester since 1984. The ME and ECE departments both offer Ph.D. qualifying exams in acoustics.

Bill Cavanaugh—His BBN years and his influence on architectural acoustics education

Bill Cavanaugh was vitally important to the architectural acoustics consulting firm of Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN) in its early years, during his tenure (1954–1970). He managed its architectural acoustics department, and he hired and mentored many of the best known consultants from that era. He was also enthusiastic and effective in promoting acoustics classes at architectural schools, in the spirit of his mentor Robert Newman, as well as numerous educational outreaches including the celebrated Laymon Miller short courses. This presentation will offer some insight and anecdotes about the early BBN years, with implications for current and future acoustical consulting. Additionally, an overview will be offered of Bill's influence on architectural acoustics education, including the various courses at colleges and universities; the short courses and seminars for architectural firms, government, industry, professional societies, and more; and the origin and continuing good work of the Newman Student Award Fund including its Student Medals, Schultz Grants, Newsletters, and the series of concerts.

Musical acoustics education in Indonesia

As the world's largest archipelago, Indonesia has a vast natural and cultural diversity, and hence a huge variety of musical instruments. Musical acoustics is, therefore, an important field of research and study in Indonesia. However, this subject is still rarely touched in undergraduate education. To help improve the quality of musical acoustics education in Indonesia, we have developed several methods. First, we design a series of final projects for undergraduate engineering students, where they can implement various methods and techniques previously studied in class (e.g., system identification, experimental methods, computational analysis, engineering design) into actual practice. These projects help the students to gain a more comprehensive perspective on the various applications of their knowledge. Second, we form inter-disciplinary collaborations, where the students can learn with musicians, craftsmen, scholars, and conservators. Such collaborations help the students to understand that, by studying the musical instruments, they are supporting the conservation of their own heritage. We have been applying these methods with our students in Universitas Gadjah Mada, particularly in our research on the bundengan, a very unique bamboo-based musical instrument. Our experience indicates that these approaches can be effective to help improve the quality of musical acoustics education in Indonesia.