What can we learn from developments in online music education?
One byproduct of the pandemic was that practically every subject taught in higher education had to be adapted to be taught online. Whilst a number of subject areas like business & management have a legacy of being taught online, there are a number of subjects for which that isn’t the case. There’s also a number of subjects that many people feel, almost intuitively, just can’t be taught well online.
Music is one such subject. Although it encompasses a breadth of areas from composition to performance and from ethnomusicology to theory it’s not the top subject area that springs to mind when one thinks about online education.
However, in recent years there have been moves and developments in subject areas not commonly associated with online education. Music and the arts in general have been moving more towards online education and there’s an argument to be made that developments in the arts are some of the most interesting in online education as a whole. Not least because they are less constrained by the established idioms of other subjects that have a longer association.
In that sense, those of us working in online education would do well to keep an eye on what’s happening across a range of spheres - particularly as we may have unwittingly slipped into a kind of stale online education orthodoxy.
Online music education’s big player
If I was to ask you who the big players were in online distance education in your region, then I suspect a number of institutions might spring to mind. In the UK, the Open University and University of London are the two biggest and notable online educational institutions but others are growing their online student numbers. In the US whilst there are some notable institutions there are a range of higher education institutions (HEIs) with a significant number of online students.
Now I wonder if I were to ask which specialist music education institutions were the most notable for online education who you might point to. Whilst there are a number of interesting developments and moves in online music education (which I’ll talk about later), this is a subject area in which one institution towers over the rest - and that’s Boston-based Berklee College of Music’s online arm Berklee Online.
It stands above the rest for a number of reasons, firstly it was created back in 2002, so it’s very well established and has been in the online education business for some time.
Secondly, it has an impressive portfolio of online education lessons and courses that’s been built over 20 years. Their portfolio is often described in terms of a wedding cake (bear with me!). The bottom layer of the metaphorical cake are short music lessons accessed through platforms like YouTube, the next layer up are MOOCs - which are notable in number and are offered across major platforms such as Coursera, edX and Kadenze, the next layer up is an array of paid credit-bearing courses and certificates that can be used towards bigger awards at the next level up - which comprises of over 15 online undergraduate & postgraduate degrees….and the top of cake is the Berklee on campus degree experience.
It’s worth just pausing here ... .because there are UK HEIs that I know and work with that are at the early stages of seeking to be in a position similar to this with their portfolios. Especially in relation to how suites of shorter credit bearing courses build into higher awards.
Thirdly, and I think most significantly - this is an example of a prestigious HEI with a very strong on-campus offer that has made a significant move into online education. Some prestigious institutions face a key question in terms of online education that is primarily about target audience - do you really want to serve a different audience and give them access to your educational expertise?
In some cases the answer is no, because of factors like fears that online courses might cannabalise on-campus courses, or that students of a lesser academic standard will become part of the student body and negatively impact their institution's reputation. However, what Berklee attest to is that their online arm has enhanced their reputation and made the on-campus experience more and not less attractive.
This question of audiences and who you want to reach is already a key one for those UK HEIs weighing up moves into online education. It will continue to be something the sector will need to confront with the introduction of a new funding system in the form of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE).
Anyway, I digress - but my overarching point here is that there is something for others to learn from online music education’s biggest player.
What’s the bigger picture of online music education?
It’s obvious and fair to say that other HEIs that are either specialised around music or have music departments are not as strategically and operationally invested in online education as Berklee. However, there are some developments afoot.
These include a progressive and significant increase in online modules being offered within degree programmes in some countries. Dr Carol Johnson in her paper “A historical study (2007-2015) on the adoption of online music courses in the United States” noted that
“Findings indicate that online semester-length music courses have been offered at an exponential rate of increase since 2012. As of 2016, 40% of NASM* schools were found to provide online music course offerings in their department.”
*National Association of Schools of Music (NASM) is a US body made up of schools, conservatories, colleges, and universities.
And in another paper focussed on Australian universities called “The australian landscape of online bachelor of music courses pre-covid-19” she notes that:
“20% of Australian bachelor of music (BMus) programs offered one or more core and/or elective music courses for music majors via online (asynchronous) learning prior to January 2020.”
There aren’t as far as I’m aware comparative figures available for the UK. However, the Global Conservatoire initiative is one example of online elective modules being offered to students.
This initiative is notable not simply for online education, but also in terms of collaboration as it is made up of a group of conservatoires in the UK (Royal College of Music), Europe and the US offering their students the opportunity to study online at a different institution.
It’s fair to say that moves into online music education in the UK undergraduate degree space are modest with offerings from Point Blank Music School, Trinity Laban Conservatoire and the Open University - but that is not unusual for UK higher education as a whole.
There are small numbers of online postgraduate degrees with almost all of them being focussed on music education and teaching. This mirrors the wider online PGT landscape as education is one of the top 3 subjects areas for online PGT courses.
However, one interesting new-ish provider is ThinkSpace Education who claim to be the world’s first online postgraduate degree provider in music and sound-design, for film, games and television. One of the interesting aspects of the delivery of their MA Orchestration for film, games & television programme is students having their music performed by a 50 piece orchestra which they can stream or attend in person.
At a high level - this is an interesting example of a student “product” or “design” being made manifest by others as part of an online education offering. One wonders how this idea might translate to other disciplinary contexts for online education…
Online music education as continuing education and outreach
Whilst current music degree offerings highlight modest incremental moves into online education, music education due to its unique appeal also has other educational avenues such as the realm of continuing education and outreach education to primary and secondary school age children.
This is an area of interest for online education and is one in which online courses have been developed either from scratch or as a natural evolution to the evening and weekend class model many have been running for years.
In the UK, developments here are minimal with Guildhall School of Music and Drama having a small selection of online courses and (although not strictly music) The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama developing a suite of courses too.
Further afield there are a number of institutions offering online courses under the banner of continuing education including The Juilliard School, The Manhattan School of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. There are others who have done so through the creation of an online arm such Conservatorium van Amsterdam with CVA Online and Interlochen Arts Academy’s online arm Interlochen Online.
What is notable here across these courses is the dominance of synchronous online learning - which in many ways makes sense or is obviously necessary for the delivery of some forms of teaching.
Partly as a consequence of this and for other reasons it’s been interesting to observe how technologies have been adopted and companies have sprung up to support this. For example, New England Conservatory uses a low latency tool called Soundjack to enable younger students and teachers to play together live in real time from their homes.
Products and companies have sprung up to support online synchronous music teaching with the most notable being Forte. It’s a company that shares similarities with the online video conferencing tools that have been setup post-pandemic that are education rather than business focussed.
In a similar vein, Forte has developed an online video conferencing platform designed specifically for live music lessons and it recently announced a partnership with the Royal College of Music that enables students from certain school groups to access online lessons with RCM verified teachers.
There is of course a strong element of necessity in terms of synchronous online learning being more prevalent in online music education. However, given how dominant asynchronous online learning has become in some quarters this is a refreshing counter balance.
Are there lessons to glean from online music education?
Online music education is evidently developing and has a stand out institution in Berklee Online. This institution offers lessons not just for other music institutions making pathways into online education but also other types of HEIs wanting to get more deeply invested in it.
Amongst the developments are interesting approaches to teaching music and its various facets at a distance. Interestingly, just like in education more widely, the pandemic has resulted in the development of new video conferencing platforms predicated on education, and in Forte’s case music teaching.
These developments all add to the tapestry of online education and it’s in new and different approaches to subject areas - less associated with online learning - where illumination can be found for those of us working in this field and any stale orthodoxies challenged.
