
In this post, Charlie Farley from the OER service interviews Dr Nikki Moran, Senior Lecturer in Music at the Edinburgh College of Art. Nikki is lead author and presenter of the University of Edinburgh’s Coursera MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), Fundamentals of Music Theory, engaging 300,000 active learners and recruiting around 500 new students per week. Fundamentals of Music Theory was the first open e-textbook published on Edinburgh Diamond, the University’s Open Publishing Service, as part of a pilot project in collaboration with the OER Service. This post belongs to Learning & Teaching Enhancement theme: Open Textbooks.
Charlie: The creation of your open e-textbook was part of a pilot project, and the first open textbook published on the University’s open publishing service, Edinburgh Diamond. Could you share how that came about?
Nikki: Lorna Campbell (OER Service Lead) approached me looking to pilot making an open e-textbook with student interns using a Student Experience Grant. She identified the Fundamentals of Music Theory MOOC, as the content was out there already, open licensed, and in popular use. At that time, I was heavily involved in the development and the launch of a new on-site course as part of our BMus curriculum.
The content overlapped substantially with content we cover in the MOOC, and I was using some of the materials trialled already in those MOOC video lectures and working on a design where we could re-use those as part of a flipped classroom design. We had students who’d come through the on-site course in its first instance and because the MOOC had been online for quite a while there were also tried and tested materials with this global population of learners.
Charlie: Could you talk a little bit about the students who worked on the project with you?
Nikki: They worked with Lorna and the OER team through the Student Experience Grant. I was aware of the Information Services internships, but this opened my eyes to the possibilities for students to experience professionally valuable training. The number of students who applied to work on that project was breath-taking. We deliberately appointed students with international perspectives. The MOOC is entirely global – learners from every continent – and there’s an important communication consideration about music literacy and different music foundation backgrounds. There are some important and exciting critical considerations. We had Ifeanyichukwu Ezinma, a second-year undergraduate BMus Music student and a MasterCard Foundation scholar from Nigeria, Ana Reina García, a third-year undergraduate MA Music student from the south of Spain and had already been through the course, and Kari Ding, coming from Hong Kong, who was a postgrad MMus Musicology student.
Charlie: I remember there being a lot of discussions on how to take the existing content and structure it into an e-textbook.
Nikki: I handed the students this huge bank of text, written notes, video lecture content, transcripts, in-lecture quizzes, and revision quizzes. I found it fascinating that the students first thoughts were to order the material in a conventional way – as they might have received it as part of a more traditional, non-critical music theory training.
We all came to understand the value of an of an open textbook for this topic. And how everybody needs to come at this from their own distinctive background of musical experience and knowledge in their prior education.
The students helped me to see that it was necessary to draw components that were more directive. We worked on the section dealing with duration and rhythm, as we know from the MOOC that there’s this huge appetite for adult learners wanting to develop and learn this topic.
Charlie: Since its publication in 2021, Fundamentals of Music Theory has been downloaded over 26,000 times from Edinburgh Diamond. What next for the book and its content?
Nikki: I have the 2nd edition ready to go! I was ready to press go on it very soon after the first one, because I’d simultaneously developed a script and recorded new materials to update the MOOC with Tom Butler, and also input from lots of other music colleagues. But some things were changing, and I didn’t want to launch another iteration too soon. I would like for the 2nd edition to be one that can really sit there for a while and not need amendments.
I use the open access materials in a different version to support the on-site students; the 2nd edition changes are also more directly usable for on-site students as well.
Charlie: Do you have any tips or advice you’d share for anyone who might be thinking about making an open textbook?
Nikki: Don’t be afraid. The point of making something entirely open access and open licenced is that you’re not just saying, “you may look at this”; you’re inviting people to take it for themselves and to reshape it.
Be courageous with sharing materials and inviting students to be part of the process. In your academic role, you’re the link to the knowledge community, to the discipline. But it’s also your job to learn more about how what you’re putting out there is landing. Working with students at that point of material development is incredibly helpful. I can’t overstate how immensely valuable those discussion are, and I think you can’t help but learn a lot from co-authoring.
Read related blog posts:
- Open e-Textbooks for access to music education
- Reading Music in the twenty-first century
- Podcast: Reflections series: Grounding exercises and academia at home
- Musical Pathways
Nikki Moran
Nikki Moran is Senior Lecturer and subject area Director of Education in Music, ECA. Her research examines communication in musical performance. Nikki delivers courses to all levels of undergraduate and postgraduate students at Edinburgh and globally via the long-standing Massive Open Online Course, Fundamentals of Music Theory.
STEPHANIE (CHARLIE) FARLEY
Stephanie (Charlie) Farley provides support and training in the creation and use of OER across the University and maintains the Open.Ed↗️ webpages.
Charlie works closely with the Geoscience Outreach↗️ course organisers and students to facilitate the student creation of OERs in collaboration with local schools and community groups. View the OEGlobal award winning collection of student made OERs on our TES repository: University of Edinburgh’s Open.Ed Open Educational Resources on TES↗️
Additionally, Charlie leads the 23 Things for Digital Knowledge↗️ programme, and the ISG Playful Engagement↗️ themes and goals.