Sonic Pi for TBL Teaching Units in an Introductory Programming Course

In this paper, we present our experience of using the Team Based Learning (TBL) methodology and the Sonic Pi language in an introductory programming course. Sonic Pi is a code-based musical creation and performance tool, also widely used for computer science (CS) educational purposes, since every musical concept corresponds to a notion of computer programming. This aspect makes it extremely effective in adapting to different learning objectives and environments, and in tuning the topics with learners interests and attitudes. Specifically, we designed two TBL activities aimed at first-year undergraduate students in CS, the first focusing on anticipating a new advanced CS topic and the second on a learning objective of the Introduction to Programming Course.