Independent study: Distance learning with the Open University

In 2016, at the age of 36, I decided to take a master's degree in musicology, having never really studied academic music before. This was a decade and a half after my previous experience of higher education, an undergraduate degree at music college, where I recall writing perhaps three or four essays at most. Years on, and having held various professional roles in music and music education, I felt it was time to get some academic credentials under my belt. I also wanted to better understand the thought processes behind academia to help me engage better with the academics I met through work.

Getting started

I was looking for a course that would fit flexibly with my freelance workload, so I hunted around for a two-year part-time distance-learning MA. Sheffield University is active in the field of innovative music courses with distance-learning elements. It currently offers distance MAs in music psychology and world music, but both of these would have been too focussed for me. Surprisingly, the only broad-based distance musicology master's I could find was the Open University (OU)'s MA in Music: an entirely online course that approached its vast topic through key themes that could be applied to music of any era or genre. This appealing premise, plus reasonable fees and a lack of other choices, persuaded me to sign up.

I soon found myself coughing up the first year of fees, a little under £3,000. (The second year was more like £4,000, although it was a longer year, running a full 12 months from October to October.) Having paid in full I then did… nothing, for about six weeks after the course began. This was partly procrastination and partly a failure on my part to create proper space in my schedule for study. I panicked and looked up the refund policy. It was too late. My tutor helped me get back on course, and everything was eventually fine, but I imagine this is a common experience for distance learners at the start of their programmes who can't tap into the energy of their fellow students for motivation.

A strong support network

Fortunately, the OU has active online student forums to help mitigate isolation, and motivation was taken care of when I realised I was careering towards my first essay deadline. I dived into the online course content which was cleanly presented and full of interesting links, audio and videos. This was one of the great advantages of the course: all the materials were extremely well crafted, amounting to a giant digital textbook. Somehow I made it through that first year, occasionally begging for deadline extensions, and was delighted to receive a much better overall mark than I had expected. This was perhaps the most motivating moment of all – I had more than scraped through the first year and had consequently been given a chance to shoot high for a good degree classification if I could keep my standards up in year two.

Feeling like a veteran student in the second year, I took part in every forum activity that was offered and realised I had somehow missed many of these in the first year. There was a virtual conference, with students uploading verbal presentations so others could present constructive feedback. There were also several forum debates, managed through comment threads overseen by our tutors. I eked out as much learning as I could from these and was diligent with my wider reading and essay writing. I also attended a couple of non-compulsory study days at the OU's Milton Keynes campus, organised by the tutors to give us a chance to workshop our thesis ideas. These were highly enjoyable, and it was great to actually meet our course leaders and fellow students, with whom I eagerly compared notes.

An opportunity for undergraduates

Having handed in my thesis in October 2018, I was awarded an MA with distinction the following December. Soon after this, the unexpected news landed – OU was cancelling the course, despite it being popular, profitable, and the only distance MA of its kind in the UK, leaving a real hole in the market. Upper management moves in mysterious ways.

Meanwhile, the OU has just introduced a distance learning Music BA which, if the MA was anything to go by, should be worth a look. While I can't help scratching my head at the decision to pull the master's exactly when an undergrad is being introduced, I would still recommend the OU for its broad-based approach to music. And who knows, maybe the MA will return when the BA students graduate and want to carry on studying. Here's hoping – it is too good to lose and certainly made me more knowledgeable and a better critical thinker, which is all you can really ask of a master's.

For more information on courses and fees visit open.ac.uk.