Student Experience Grant: Fundamentals of Music Theory Open eTextbook project

Open eTextbooks for Access to Music Education was a Student Experience Grant funded research and development project that ran from February to July 2021. The project was managed by the OER Service based in Learning, Teaching and Web Services, in collaboration with Dr Nikki Moran and three student intern partners from the Reid School of Music; Ifeanyichukwu Ezinmadu, Ana Reina Garcia and Kari Ding. The aim of the project was to explore the creation of an open etextbook using existing content from the Reid School of Music’s Fundamentals of Music Theory course.

The project provided us with an opportunity to evaluate a range of open textbook platforms and to gain valuable hands-on experience of the process and practicalities of creating an open textbook. This experience is particularly valuable at a time when universities are increasingly moving from print to digital textbooks and are facing rapidly rising textbook licensing costs. Open textbooks have the potential to benefit the University by reducing textbook costs, benefit staff by providing access to easily customisable open textbooks, and benefit students by providing free, high quality digital learning materials.

The project also enabled our student partners to develop valuable digital and copyright literacy skills including an understanding of open educational resources, open licenses and open etextbooks, familiarity with current etextbook applications, and experience of working with existing digital content and educational resources across a range of platforms.