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MA in Music Industries by distance learning

Jun 18, 2011 | 1 comment

Earlier this year, we launched the MA in Music Industries. It’s a course I lead and teach with some of my colleagues at Birmingham City University’s School of Media. It’s been going well so far, with a small group of smart people doing interesting research and study about the music business and popular music culture.

Some of those students are full time, and a couple are doing the MA part-time over two years. But ever since we started the course, we’ve been working to make it possible to deliver it by distance learning as well.

It’s not just a case of putting the course material online – or of simply linking to articles and writing instructions for essays and assignments. It’s important that the experience for distance learning students is as interactive, immersive, collaborative and involving as it is for students who turn up to classes, work in the same room together, and occasionally go to the pub as a group.

The academic culture and the student experience are, for us, really important aspects of the overall process of studying for a Masters degree.

So we’ve given that a lot of thought, and we’ve managed to get that course – and a few others, including an MA in Social Media, an MA in Online Journalism, and one in Creative Industries & Cultural Policy – to the point where we can now deliver it in a way that allows students all over the world to study with us – and with each other – without having to move to the UK.

And we’re taking enrolments now for students starting in September.

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Mastering St Patrick’s Day

Mar 17, 2011 | 1 comment

Compulsory Guinness with @craigfots

I was in at the university today for a meeting with the other award leaders on the Masters programmes in our department. We were talking about (among other things) upcoming events for the Professional and Academic Cultures programme we run alongside the specific modules for the degrees themselves, and there’s some good stuff coming up.

The ‘Come Dine With Me’ event last week was really popular, and our students (who come from all over the world) brought dishes to share. We’ll definitely be doing that again.

Also, next week, Dave Harte is going to be talking about student use of social media which will be an interesting topic on a number of fronts – and there’ll be a screening and discussion of the film Catfish.

In the meantime, I’m preparing next week’s class for Music as Culture, in which we’re going to be talking about the different cultures and cultural understandings that exist within the record industry itself.

Of course, it was St Patrick’s Day today, and as Craig (pictured above) – a good friend who also happens to be one of my MA Music Industries students – was in the library today working his way through a pile of reading, we took half an hour out to pop to the pub on campus and have a pint of Guinness.

It’s the rules, you know.