The Long And Winding Road: exploring the

landscape of Digitisation in (Higher) Music

Education
10 September 2020

The Long And Winding Road: exploring the landscape of Digitisation in

(Higher) Music Education

Part #1: Function, Social Role and Accessibility Recent posts

by the Digitisation Working Group: Sandrine Desmurs, Marina Gall, Enric Guaus, Mimi Harmer, Luc Nijs, Matti
Unfolding the concept of the student
Ruippo, Till Skoruppa and André Stärk.
as a researching artist
25/05/2022
Introduction
For quite some years, many Higher Music Education institutions (HMEIs) have taken the Entrepreneurial Bootcamp at the
path of digitisation, a path that emerges as it is being walked. This has led to a Royal Conservatoire The Hague
heterogeneous landscape of tools and practices that are implemented with various 3/03/2022
degrees of success.
Traces, tracks - Thoughts on
The sudden advent of COVID-19 has caused an earthquake, the consequences of which learning and teaching in future
will be felt and dealt with for a long time. Not only has it exposed some weaknesses in
Higher Music Education
different trodden paths, it also points to new possibilities to redesign the landscape and 3/03/2022
foster new directions, without restraining pathWnders and pioneers.
Technology and Inclusivity in Music
In our view, redesigning the landscape and supporting HMEIs to travel it, requires some
Education
kind of topographic map. The Digitisation Working Group of the Creative Europe project
10/01/2022
“Strengthening Music in Society” (SMS) at the European Association of Conservatoires
(AEC) hopes to offer some guides for an exploration of this new terrain..

Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched a call to map the
Share ! " #
landscape of ongoing digitisation projects. The call, inviting to provide information on
existing digitisation projects through a questionnaire, was sent to all members of AEC
and of partner organisations EAS and EMU, and was also distributed widely using the Translate webpage
team’s other networks. Evidently, the advent of COVID-19 has drastically changed the English
situation, boosting digitisation in unforeseen ways. Indeed, in the wake of the lockdown,
an avalanche of tools, strategies and re]ections have been shared and discussed on
websites, on social media (public) and in institutions (private). In a previous post, we
have already shared some re]ections on this.

The COVID-19 crisis forced the implementation of strategies that may or may not be
used in the future. In other words, this crisis is pushing HMEIs further in digitisation at all
different levels. In this way, COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst for the progression of
digitisation.
In summary, music schools and conservatories will change after this crisis, digitising
activities related to research, teaching/learning and administration. But digitisation is
not easy. It is a process that must be designed according to individual institutional
requirements and it can never be carried out in a fully effective way in an emergency
situation.

In this post, we present the overall research and explain how the Wrst set of labels have
been designed.

Goals
This work of the group aims to map how digitisation has permeated HMEIs. To do so, we
designed a questionnaire, inviting students, teachers and administration staff to share
information about digital projects they have been involved in. Based on this information,
we will establish a conceptual framework that allows mapping the current landscape of
Digitisation in (Higher) Music Education and, in this way, building an understanding of the
why, what and how of digitisation.

To establish this framework, we adopt two strategies. A Wrst strategy is top down. Here,
we use existing categories to organise the different projects according to their function,
social role and accessibility. A second strategy is bottom up. Here, information about the
goals and the expected results of each submitted project was transformed into a series
of keywords. Next, these keywords were translated into a series of categories.

Both strategies will lead to creating the envisaged framework, which – according to us –
may help institutions to understand the opportunities and challenges of digitisation and,
consequently, to walk the long and winding road of digitisation.

Please note that the goal of this framework is not to impose a certain road but to help
institutions choose which road to take.

Top down mapping

The questionnaire invited respondents (students, teaching and administration staff) to
organise their digital projects/practices according to the following sets of labels:

Function Social role Access

· Mobile
· Music in the community/music in society · Visual
· Diversity · Digital
· Artistic
· Accessibility · Global
· Research
· Entrepreneurship · Synchronous
· Learning/teaching
· Learning and teaching · On the web
· Administration
· Internationalisation · Social
· Widening participation in the arts/music · Open
· Massive
Table 1: Sets of labels presented to respondents

We believe that systematic re]ection based on these three sets of labels, can help with
creating a speciWc digitisation plan beyond individual tools. For instance, perhaps some
institutions already have a digital solution for the administrative coordination of
internationalisation processes, but they need to optimise the aspects related to the
dissemination of the artistic results of these international collaborations (perhaps
synchronously). This is just a simple example, but it illustrates how different viewpoints
may help decision-making in relation to the digitisation roadmap. In the next sections, we
elaborate on the different labels.

The function of the project/practice in the institution

The Wrst set of labels is based on the role that the project takes within the institution. We
proposed four items, each one representing one of the main activities developed in
music schools:

Artistic: Initiatives using digital tools in the creative process, digital musical
instruments, digital artifacts in live performances, etc.
Learning/teaching: Initiatives related to the teaching/learning process itself, such
as the use of LMS, publication of Master Classes, using digital tools in the
classroom, etc.
Research: Initiatives for developing and showing results of research projects
carried out by the institution, such as the elaboration of online questionnaires,
paper publications, call for collaborations, etc.
Administrative: Initiatives related to the administration of the institution such as the
grading process, Erasmus management, social networks, etc.

The social role of the project/practice

The second set of labels is inspired by the different strands of the AEC SMS project.
These categories are focused on the social impact of the presented projects/initiatives :

Music in the community/music in society: Initiatives for raising consciousness of

the social responsibility of artists and HMEIs, and for provoking governments’
political responsibility to foster cultural organisations.
Diversity and accessibility: Initiatives for encouraging HMEIs to open their
educational offer towards more diversity and to promote inclusiveness throughout
their activities.
Entrepreneurship: Initiatives for embedding entrepreneurial skills in artistic
educational programmes to better prepare students for a future role as a musician-
entrepreneur.
Learning and teaching: Initiatives for exploring and discussing new L&T models
enabling HMEIs to be effective in educating the musicians and music educators of
the future.
Internationalisation: Initiatives related to helping music students and teachers
internationalise their careers and activities.
Widening participation in the arts/music: Initiatives for strengthening student voice
in all that we do and to establish a European network of Higher Music Education
students.

The access to the project/practice

And Wnally, we asked which access strategies have been used related to audience,
technological resources and/or privacy limitations:

Mobile: Initiatives accessible outside the institution, usable with mobile devices,
etc.
Visual: Initiatives including photo, video, FaceTime, etc.
Digital: Initiatives using LMS (Moodle, Blackboard, etc.), digital recordings, scores in
PDF format, etc.
Global: Initiatives developed in collaboration with other musicians/music educators
or institutions all over the world.
Synchronous: Initiatives allowing more than 1 person synchronously connected at
the same time.
On the web: Initiatives using web based softwares/applications (YouTube,
SoundCloud, Doodle, Google Calendar…) for developing the project/practice or
disseminating its results.
Social: Initiatives in which sharing content on social networks is a part.
Open: Initiatives in which anyone can access and/or support accessibility facilities
Massive: Initiatives beneWting from the participants’ contribution by using blinded
peer evaluation, artiWcial intelligence, etc.
Figure 1: Three dimensional cube with each of the presented set of labels on each axis

Visualising the projects in a 3D space

Our next step involves mapping the submitted projects in a 3D space, using three axes
that represent the three main sets of labels (See Figure 1). Each axis is subdivided
according to its labels. As mentioned above, it is not the intention of this work to present
a list of “good practices” but to promote re]ection on (a) different aspects of digitisation
on which to focus, and (b) the design of new digital projects. Visualising the projects in
this way, is a Wrst step towards an in-depth analysis, combined with the second strategy
(bottom up). SpeciWc results of the questionnaire will be detailed in the next post.

access, case study, digital tools, digitisation, distance learning, education, information, learning, learning and
teaching, models, society, strategy, tools

Contact information Navigation menu Social media

Avenue des Celtes /

Keltenlaan 20
Home
About
! " #
1040 Brussels, Belgium Music in Society
+ 32 27371670 Diversity, Identity,

! Inclusiveness
Entrepreneurial mind-set for
musicians
Internationalisation and
transnational mobility
Learning and Teaching
Digitisation
Student involvement in HME
Early Childhood Music
Education