Faculty Interview Brian Moore-UNL

Brad Severa Author

03/24/2022 Added

8 Plays

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Dr. Brian Moore, Music Education and Music Technology-UNL

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[00:00:05.572]There's actually two parts to the why.
[00:00:07.107]The first one was
[00:00:07.941]I wanted to try to find some way
[00:00:09.709]of improving the pedagogy of instruction.
[00:00:13.129]I'm in the School of Music,
[00:00:14.698]so we have lots of content
[00:00:16.316]in which students
[00:00:17.100]are asked to engage with
[00:00:19.252]music recordings,
[00:00:21.087]sometimes it's music production.
[00:00:23.006]And we wanted to find ways
[00:00:24.196]for them to really have
[00:00:25.075]the experience be more interactive.
[00:00:27.627]And so developing our own materials,
[00:00:29.629]authoring our own textbooks
[00:00:30.980]and those types of things
[00:00:32.599]was really the starting point.
[00:00:34.467]It was a great second benefit
[00:00:36.469]that the cost of the materials
[00:00:38.271]to our students was virtually zero dollars.
[00:00:40.940]Given what we've done
[00:00:41.691]in the School of Music,
[00:00:42.509]there have been
[00:00:43.343]no cost at all to add the students
[00:00:45.028]for any of the materials
[00:00:46.496]that have been developed under the
[00:00:48.048]OER umbrella.
[00:00:52.502]Well, I'll put it in two categories.
[00:00:53.987]Is there for the students,
[00:00:55.705]I think, you know, could be for everyone.
[00:00:58.291]Obviously, it's always
[00:00:59.359]what is the content what's the
[00:01:00.860]what's the approach there.
[00:01:02.729]Depending upon
[00:01:03.480]how the materials are collated
[00:01:05.031]and put together.
[00:01:06.232]That's,
[00:01:06.750]I think, a large issue for students.
[00:01:08.518]Can they find things easily
[00:01:10.220]just because it's out there
[00:01:11.237]and it's digital
[00:01:12.288]doesn't mean it's easy to get hold of.
[00:01:15.091]From the faculty perspective,
[00:01:16.493]I guess I would say, you know, perhaps
[00:01:19.946]a lot of it
[00:01:20.480]depends upon your perspective
[00:01:22.132]and where you want to invest your time.
[00:01:24.651]There's lots of resources
[00:01:26.102]out there that need to be curated.
[00:01:28.021]And so if you
[00:01:29.823]kind of from a faculty perspective
[00:01:31.341]or in that kind of editor scavenger mode
[00:01:33.927]where you like pulling together
[00:01:35.128]various materials,
[00:01:36.813]that's a great way of doing it.
[00:01:38.598]For myself, I sort of spend the time more
[00:01:41.785]in the initial
[00:01:43.620]curricular creation and development.
[00:01:46.222]So rather than curate I author.
[00:01:48.408]And so a lot of it has to depend
[00:01:50.126]upon what your perspective is and
[00:01:52.078]and where you want to engage your time.
[00:01:54.765]In the School of Music,
[00:01:55.682]the faculty have been involved with this
[00:01:57.000]were very careful
[00:01:58.368]when we take on large projects
[00:02:00.203]or large content pieces.
[00:02:02.222]What's nice about our
[00:02:03.000]subject matter
[00:02:03.857]is that there are some things
[00:02:05.208]that are going to be pretty stable
[00:02:07.710]from year to year to year.
[00:02:08.728]So it's worth my time
[00:02:09.746]investing in
[00:02:11.030]that particular piece of music.
[00:02:12.899]Something else, it might not be worth it.
[00:02:14.784]So it's just making
[00:02:15.802]those instructional decisions,
[00:02:17.570]balancing your time and your energy
[00:02:19.823]and what the potential is
[00:02:20.990]for the outcome of the project.
[00:02:26.362]I think the biggest
[00:02:27.330]surprise for me for converting to OER
[00:02:30.466]was how easy
[00:02:31.651]it was to integrate
[00:02:32.785]inside of Canvas
[00:02:33.953]as our learning management system.
[00:02:36.823]It, the,
[00:02:37.983]did a lot of research
[00:02:38.908]and testing on this,
[00:02:39.742]so I ended up using Pressbooks
[00:02:41.995]as the primary authoring environment
[00:02:44.480]for the OER projects
[00:02:45.832]that I did as part of
[00:02:47.490]this last two years.
[00:02:49.052]And there was
[00:02:50.069]there's a nice feature in the Pressbooks
[00:02:51.921]where you can export
[00:02:53.606]directly into Canvas,
[00:02:54.924]and every chapter became its own module.
[00:02:56.726]I did not anticipate that.
[00:02:58.645]That has been terrific.
[00:02:59.963]So I author once
[00:03:02.582]and then students get the book
[00:03:04.067]and two versions.
[00:03:04.918]One, I provide a link to the entire book
[00:03:07.670]on Canvas,
[00:03:08.938]and then I have a second approach
[00:03:10.323]where every chapter's broke out
[00:03:11.641]and out to its own module.
[00:03:13.409]Which makes review
[00:03:14.761]locating things quite easy.
[00:03:16.713]And it's really been a benefit
[00:03:18.348]to have just two different ways
[00:03:20.934]of presenting the material
[00:03:22.318]without doing any extra work at all.
[00:03:29.125]I made a point for all
[00:03:30.326]the courses that I've done, OER on.
[00:03:31.945]We tend to not only use the university
[00:03:34.647]or our college
[00:03:35.882]student evaluations, but also know
[00:03:37.884]developed our own
[00:03:39.269]and students have been
[00:03:40.370]really, really
[00:03:41.154]appreciative of the content.
[00:03:44.240]Nobody ever said it's great
[00:03:46.459]that it didn't cost me anything.
[00:03:47.877]I've never gotten that comment,
[00:03:49.412]which I think is interesting
[00:03:50.430]that maybe it's so prevalent
[00:03:52.198]when that's the expectation of students.
[00:03:54.384]But I do get lots of comments
[00:03:56.331]about they like the
[00:03:56.970]organizational aspects of it.
[00:03:58.371]They love having embedded
[00:03:59.722]videos inside of the textbook
[00:04:02.642]and then the interactive pieces
[00:04:04.110]with the music
[00:04:04.827]that gets a lot of
[00:04:06.841]positive,
[00:04:07.347]you know, comments as well.
[00:04:08.398]So I think the structure
[00:04:09.933]and organization is a real plus,
[00:04:12.452]and then the individual components
[00:04:14.070]that are somewhat interactive
[00:04:15.321]that gets
[00:04:16.639]high marks from students as well.
[00:04:22.228]You know, it's been so
[00:04:22.979]long since I've used a published
[00:04:24.380]textbook, it's hard to say.
[00:04:28.217]I think that there's some
[00:04:29.538]production value
[00:04:31.070]that the professional houses
[00:04:32.672]are always going to have,
[00:04:33.589]and they have a lot easier time
[00:04:34.974]with copyright acquisition.
[00:04:36.776]So there's certain features, photographs,
[00:04:40.613]design work, that sort of thing.
[00:04:42.782]But what I like about
[00:04:44.235]the OER for me
[00:04:45.451]is that these materials are
[00:04:47.036]tailor made
[00:04:48.504]for each semester of students.
[00:04:50.039]So I've had a number of times
[00:04:51.207]to repeat a course
[00:04:52.575]and we actually build in to the textbook.
[00:04:55.194]I always do a chapter called About US,
[00:04:58.314]and I ask the students
[00:04:59.248]to do, you know,
[00:04:59.872]provide their photo
[00:05:00.616]and a little brief bio
[00:05:01.668]and so that actually becomes
[00:05:03.019]part of the textbook.
[00:05:03.820]So it's actually branded for them
[00:05:05.822]each semester
[00:05:07.040]and especially with COVID masking it all,
[00:05:09.709]so many students
[00:05:10.576]really don't know each other.
[00:05:11.778]And so that's been
[00:05:12.595]a kind of a nice way of trying
[00:05:13.880]to, you know, connect
[00:05:15.081]that and make that work.
[00:05:16.349]So
[00:05:17.602]I'm willing to trade-off
[00:05:18.651]some of the polish, if you will,
[00:05:20.153]although I feel pretty good
[00:05:21.237]about how my materials look.
[00:05:23.122]But I feel pretty good about the,
[00:05:25.108]you know, the
[00:05:25.942]the end result,
[00:05:27.377]given the fact
[00:05:27.994]that we're able
[00:05:28.344]to personally
[00:05:28.978]brand this for the students,
[00:05:30.680]which we could never do in a
[00:05:32.215]in a real publishing format.
[00:05:38.821]You know, I think one of the things
[00:05:40.323]that has been interesting on the OER,
[00:05:42.709]I actually came into the OER
[00:05:45.595]we've been doing this since 2012
[00:05:47.163]in the School of Music,
[00:05:48.031]we actually, we call it red2go,
[00:05:49.532]we've been trying to work on faculty,
[00:05:51.234]develop materials for, for quite a while.
[00:05:53.603]So it was nice to be able
[00:05:54.654]to kind of come into
[00:05:55.922]what the university is, is doing.
[00:05:58.941]I think one thing
[00:06:00.476]that would be of interest to anyone
[00:06:02.779]who wants to look at
[00:06:03.629]this is
[00:06:04.497]to see if you can find other colleagues,
[00:06:06.632]especially in a department
[00:06:08.151]that might share that vision
[00:06:09.619]and that interest as well.
[00:06:11.421]I know there are some faculty
[00:06:12.605]that work with grad students to do this
[00:06:14.307]I chose to do this on my own,
[00:06:16.893]but I've also been able to partner
[00:06:19.045]with some other faculty within the school
[00:06:21.297]to just think about what we,
[00:06:23.299]is it we want to do with these materials
[00:06:25.168]for our students?
[00:06:26.152]What are we looking at for
[00:06:27.019]the long
[00:06:27.387]term growth
[00:06:27.987]of our undergraduate program especially?
[00:06:30.390]And how does
[00:06:31.607]how do you make all that sort of work
[00:06:33.509]in the in the long term?
[00:06:34.911]I think the other thing
[00:06:36.079]that happened with the
[00:06:37.730]OER with these two projects
[00:06:39.115]that I worked on specifically with
[00:06:40.800]with this grant, is both of these ended up
[00:06:43.653]in full-blown courses
[00:06:46.022]that were all remote.
[00:06:47.240]And that was not my, you know, my
[00:06:50.993]plan to
[00:06:51.711]start with,
[00:06:52.678]but the fact that it worked out
[00:06:53.963]that way has actually been
[00:06:54.931]a great benefit.
[00:06:55.848]And now I'm doing one course
[00:06:57.717]in music
[00:06:58.201]composition and production,
[00:06:59.452]you wouldn't think that's something
[00:07:00.536]you want to try to do online,
[00:07:02.338]but it's worked.
[00:07:03.306]I've gotten good feedback
[00:07:04.457]from the students.
[00:07:05.091]One of my questions
[00:07:05.942]I always ask is
[00:07:07.014]now that you know what
[00:07:08.177]you know at the end of the semester,
[00:07:09.862]would you take the course again?
[00:07:11.881]And the first time I did this,
[00:07:13.099]I had 100% of the students
[00:07:14.302]say yes,
[00:07:14.851]which was some what surprising.
[00:07:17.069]So, you know, great problem to have.
[00:07:19.705]But being able to put it remote,
[00:07:21.541]what it did for us
[00:07:22.492]also was increase capacity.
[00:07:24.594]We teach in some
[00:07:26.479]computer labs on campus
[00:07:27.980]and we're limited by the seating.
[00:07:29.899]The minute I could make it go remote,
[00:07:32.001]I could double the size of the class
[00:07:33.536]without any problem whatsoever.
[00:07:34.921]So I think that the connection
[00:07:36.839]between develop in the OER,
[00:07:38.658]remote instruction of the pedagogy
[00:07:40.343]that way was a really interesting link.
[00:07:42.478]And it
[00:07:43.229]forces you in a positive way
[00:07:45.348]to kind of think about what is it
[00:07:46.699]you're doing as a faculty,
[00:07:48.267]why do you want to do these things,
[00:07:49.952]and what's the long term
[00:07:50.903]benefit to students after the fact?
[00:07:53.272]One last comment on the OER,
[00:07:54.857]because I authored them all myself,
[00:07:57.810]students get to keep them.
[00:07:59.011]So it's been interesting
[00:08:00.530]with the publishing side.
[00:08:01.681]So many students, even in their major,
[00:08:04.083]are renting their books,
[00:08:05.818]then they lose access.
[00:08:07.370]What's nice about this
[00:08:08.387]is they retain the access
[00:08:10.039]even after they leave the university.
[00:08:11.424]So that's been a real plus.

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Faculty Interview Brian Moore-UNL

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