Cecilie Dibbern Lydersen

Musikkvitenskap - masterstudium

John Howland

Er læringsutbyttebeskrivelsen faglig oppdatert og relevant? Following our June 2019 five-year evaluation, after considerable staff and programråd dialogue, in 2020 the programeder and studieveileder closely worked through the updating and revision of our læringsutbytte across the entire course catalogue of Musikkvitenskap. This has expanded, naturally, with new courses in fall 2021, including the work of a new førsteamanuensis and following the retirement of a senior colleague. Bidrar alle emner og sammenhengen mellom disse til at studentene oppnår læringsutbyttet for programmet? Yes, we believe so, though see additional information noted herein. Er læringsmiljøet i studieprogrammet godt? Yes, we believe so, though see additional information noted herein. Across 2020–2021 we had highly consistent meetings, input, and reports from the referansegruppe representatives and the programråd committee. Er det utfordringer som tilsier at studieprogrammet bør gjennomgå en periodisk evaluering tidligere enn planlagt? No, our last five-year report was received in June 2019 and we are still in the process of implementing program development in response to the program's input. GENERAL FOR MASTERSSTUDIUM &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Despite 2020–2021 being a high mark for Covid-era stress in university coursework (especially due to all-digital courses) and a sense of loss of a student community, our subject reports (emnerapporter), staff surveys of courses, and referansegruppe reports all indicate that on the whole the quality of our instruction and course offerings remain high and valued by our students. That said, 2020–2021 did have some unusual student complaints that required certain unusual staff responses. As such, staff is planning to implement more comprehensive/representative surveys of course qualities, and new annual staff-student dialogues about the design of the program, the role of humanities in society, and education, livsrelevans, and arbeidslivsrelevans (see below). The relatively small number of individual course complaints we received were dealt with on a timely and case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, staff was aware in particular that it was more challenging than usual for some degree-completing students to hold to a timely progress with their M.A. oppgaver submissions.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The studiebarometer information (based on a 83% response rate) consistently rates our M.A. program higher than the UiO musicology masters with the exceptions of an equally low rating in tilknytning til yrkeslivet. (UiO had a 40% response rate; UiB had too few responses for data.) Please see our plans for improvement actions below.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In terms of opptak, the Covid-pandemic has seemingly affected norms in strange ways: 2020–2021 was marked by above-average high enrollment; fall 2021 was considerably below average – so much so that HF briefly recommended reducing our opptaksramme. We successfully argued that this was both unmerited and short-sighted. There is a vital interconnection between our årsstudium, BA, and MA programs. Each has helped to feed into the enrollment of the next level. A majority of our MA-intake is traditionally built from BA-continuation into the MA. This interdependence is demonstrated across our 2018–2020 intake numbers: in 2018–2020, our M.A. student-intake numebrs were consistently 60–90% dependent upon our degree-completing bachelors. In sum, the BA graduating pool is the backbone of our MA-program strengths, and reductions in BA intake – due to intake or pandemic/budget reductions – will affect the health of our MA program. While there are two disconcerting years (one being the fall 2021 pandemic year) with lower than usual MA intake, 3 of the last 5 years have shown student numbers that were near, at, or above our intake limits.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In terms of opptak, the Covid-pandemic has seemingly affected norms in strange ways: 2020–2021 was marked by above-average high enrollment; fall 2021 was considerably below average – so much so that HF briefly recommended reducing our opptaksramme. We successfully argued that this was both unmerited and short-sighted. There is a vital interconnection between our årsstudium, BA, and MA programs. Each Each has helped to feed into the enrollment of the next level. From a 2017–2021 perspective, our five-year total BA-plus-årsstudium program numbers are largely constant in the 35–40 range (40, 29, 35, 46, 35), with 2018 as a lower exception. And from 2014–2016 (36, 37, 33), our BA-plus-årsstudium intake is likewise essentially stable. Note especially that a majority of our MA-intake is traditionally built from BA-continuation into the MA. This interdependence is demonstrated across our 2018–2020 intake numbers.

Please see the above response which covers some of this second question area. In recent years, we have had a range revisions and offerings, with regular staff/staff-meeting dialogue about improvements, new contributions, and dialogue about student evaluations. Part of this new attention to staff cooperation on cross-course program development is reflected in both an occasional staff teaching forum and an increase in our staff meetings. We have further seek to enhance student awareness of MusVit’s activities, offerings, and research with two levels of faglig forums for students (B.A. and M.A.), staff, PhD candidates, and occasional guest lecturers. These offer regularly discussions ongoing research among students and staff, as well as societal and work relevance of our field.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Across fall 2019–spring 2021, MusVit has implemented a number of responses to our summer 2019 five-year review. These activities have focused on diversified and more regular writing training, initiatives for awareness of arbeidslivsrelevans training, integrating course-related social engagement where possible, etc. These ongoing initiatives and adjustments respond to staff-desired improvements, student feedback, programråd input, departmental cross-program integration desires (for staff, students, and budgetary efficiency). That said, 2020–2021 involved an unusual series of student complaints concerning the program design that required certain unusual staff responses. These complaints – which staff strongly believe reflect the opinions of a small but engaged number of students – centered on, in brief, demands for greater breadth in topical offerings and what they saw as a need for more direct connection to contemporary society. In part these complaints were a response to major and unavoidable instruction-understaffing constraints at MusVit that resulted in our six 2020–2021 fordypning courses being entirely concert-music and historical-focused. Following staff and programråd discussions, MusVit organized a March 2021 allmøte where: (1) the programleder clearly outlined the parameters of musicology as a field, the alignment of – and unique strengths of – our program within Nordic and Western musicology university programs, the instructional limitations of a small program staff, and the relevance of humanities studies to arebidslivsrelevance/livsrelevans; and (2) an open response dialogue among the students grounded by their own prepared questions. Staff followed the latter and have used this input for further program design work. Recent related programråd advice includes the annual use of an internal spring-term allmøte such as this.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Additional commentary includes: • Staff have been increasingly concerned about receiving a broader representation of student evaluation input. Staff has discussed changing our quality-survey system in 2022–2023 to an in-class online survey model, with 2–3 surveys per term, following a standardized model. The goal is to have course quality surveys gather 90+% contributions from attending/registered• Staff is planning to implement new annual staff-student dialogues about the design of the program, the role of humanities in society, and education, livsrelevans, and arbeidslivsrelevans (see below).• Fall 2021 witnessed national downturns in humanities and musicology enrollments overall as a possible reflection of Covid-era changes in the economy and related/similar societal factors. Staff feel this indicates the program, department, and HF needs for greater attention to articulating the value of humanities studies to society.• Staff recognize that our presumed post-Covid return to "normal" university life still has a lingering reduction of student participation in activities among the MusVit community. We will work with the student representatives to rebuild this community.• Better student awareness and knowledge of our program's arbeidlivsrelevans remains a central program goal. Several initiatives are noted herein.

NTNU:TIA:REST

Det humanistiske fakultet

Faculty of Humanities

In 2020-2021,&nbsp;a range of challenges and goals were noted. First and foremost, was the new challenge with dropping incoming student numbers, which is part of a national downturn trend in humanities and music/musicology degree enrollment. For the masters program – despite healthy spring 2022 applicant numbers (17) – we took in only 6 students for our maximum 13 places. Ongoing revitalization goals are discussed below, but in 2021-2022 recruitment was again restricted to digital applications&nbsp;like our peer institutions – thereby forgoing the opportunity for directly engaging with our facilities, program community, and potential peers. We tried to offset this with digital promotional videos particularly crafted for a fall 2021 digital åpen dag, these may have helped to attract some students, but clearly other factors were at play beyond acceptance offers (after which we cannot contact applicants). We further held regional school visits, and have had some expanded efforts in social media presence.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We previously noted our long-term problems from understaffing and work-schedule constraints, especially in terms of available staff for BA and MA oppgave advisement and assessment. While we have not created an opportunity to replace Irene Bergheim's position (retired 2013), HF has allowed for us to seek a replacement for our program absence of our current Instituttleder, and we have secured temporary staffing for permanent employees with official teaching reductions.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Though many areas of student participation in activities among the MusVit community have returned to pre-Covid norms, we recognize that the health of our community (see recruiting discussions) will depend on further building of more universal regular engagement, participation, and intellectual curiousity from our students in non-course activities staff and the student union organize. We will work with the student representatives to rebuild this community. Such efforts continue to include better student awareness of and participation in our program's arbeidlivsrelevans efforts. Initiatives are noted herein but our recent annual seminar on this for MA students had *zero* MusVit participants despite multiple reminders of our guest speakers and the event.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As noted last year, MusVit has implemented an annual staff-student dialogue meeting (spring term) to address up-to-date needs to articulate the design of the program, the role of humanities in society, and education, livsrelevans, and arbeidslivsrelevans.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As planned, we have sought broader representation of student evaluation input through a switch to an in-class quality survey model. The improvement seems to be working well, with circa 90+% contributions from attending/registered.&nbsp;

There is a vital interconnection between our årsstudium, BA, and MA programs. Each has helped to feed into the enrollment of the next level, and student satisfaction – within the program and upon completion – feeds into regional applicant awareness/promotion. From a 2017–2021 perspective, our five-year total BA-plus-årsstudium program numbers are largely constant in the 35–40 range (40, 29, 35, 46, 35), with 2018 as a lower exception. And from 2014–2016 (36, 37, 33), our BA-plus-årsstudium intake is likewise essentially stable. Intake for fall 2021 and fall 2022 though was historically low, reflecting a national trend. This development threatens the HF-allowed size of our student intake, which in turn will affect staffing and the diversity and breadth of the instruction and topics we can offer. And the health, size, and student-satisfaction of each level – from årsstudium to masters – affects each subsequent level.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Staff and Programråd have recently discussed issues around student musicianship preparation/skill levels, including such issues and notational knowledge and different musical literacies (e.g., the spectrum from concert music to ear-trained and digital popular musicians). Such concerns reflect growing international trends (see https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/3/22/music-concentration-changes/ and https://www.rcs.ac.uk/fair_access/transitions/t2040music/), but our students, staff, and external representative find a central attraction for our program is our identity as a broad, practice + humanities based music studies program. Solid musicianship training is thus central to our national and institutional mission, though all agree that our future must include ways to integrate strong ear-trained and digital popular musicians.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Several recruiting issues and recent efforts have been mentioned above. As a complement, this section offers several recent staff, student, and Programråd goals. We seek an expanded social media and web presence that will offer outside windows into the strengths of our community with regular updates and both student and staff involvement.&nbsp;	&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In terms of studiestart improvements, in the last two years (post-pandemic), MusVit has had quite active study-start weeks. This includes a MusVit gathering for the university ceremony, multiple student + staff mixers, coordination with the student union’s fadderuke activities, seperate information/orientation meetings for new and continuing students, and other various events.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With regard to læringsmiljø, we believe our recent survey-based emnerapporter reflect a more broadly representative student satisfaction with the program, and observations of, and input on, student life concur, with a post-pandemic norm finally arriving. That’s not to say there is full satisfaction, there are areas of the student population whose present opinions align with earlier demands for greater breadth in topical offerings and what they saw as a need for more direct connection to contemporary society. Student awareness of arbeidslivsrelevans within their training and the program overall – despite strong efforts – remains low, and this may in part be due to low student participation in non-course program activities that address such topics and/or intentonially work to build an appreciation of our rich, and diverse community (and its diverse perspectives and viewpoints).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In terms of the statistics from completion, drop-out, and performance, our ongoing challenges seem to involve a mix of issues. The pandemic has almost certainly lowered student performance and engagement, breaking the cycle of new students aspiring to the performance levels of their older in-class peers. Some staff have experienced needing to rebuild course work and participation cultures. The pandemic period witnessed greater thesis completion period, some of which continue in small ways. This is both psychological and life-related. Nonetheless, the program has always had a small, minority of students who face individual challenges. While there are dropouts, pandemic-era or earlier, we continue to have a number of students who maintain a loose connection after coursework to advisers and program peers and ultimately work to completion on the schedule they needed outside the standard framework.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In terms of student experiences of the program, it is common in course surveys and from student representatives to hear individual complaints about course workload or overall schedule workload, but on the whole – particularly as seen in the greater opinion responses of our in-class surveys – my sense is that the program maintains a reasonable workload balance that nonetheless presents a positive education challenge (a higher education ideal).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In sum, I believe MusVit offers an admirable topical breadth within our constraints (small staff, scheduling rotation, program design), especially when all staff are available for teaching.&nbsp;&nbsp;It would be helpful to have greater institutional and university support in this area. MusVit efforts for creating awareness of international study opportunities are communicated in staff-student meetings, at relevant points in courses, and individual staff-student and førstekonsultent advisement. Note that MusVit has a highly international and diverse staff, and our course subjects, course literature, research methodologies, and our research advising reflect this internationalization. Nonetheless, while we do have a small number of student who ultimately pursue international studies during the course of their NTNU degrees, the overwhelming majority seem to have little intention to do so. Building a Nordic university culture of such internationalization must also be a larger, NTNU-level effort.

The above sectional responses speak much to issues of studieprogrammets fagmiljø og forskning, and the connections between both. Our program has a small international staff who collectively offer a highly admirable breadth in our field from historical musicology, concert music to popular music, engaging social and ecological activism and social and health sciences, and considerable efforts at dialogues an education in equality, diversity and integration. Yet our size constraints require that we function as a well-curated educational boutique rather than an understocked/incomplete “supermarket.” We do this, and we do this well even though there may continue to be flares of student complaints about the program supposed lack of addressing certain topics (often due to unseen internal programming or staffing constraints).&nbsp;Lastly, as noted above, the health of our enrollments proportionally affects our abilities to function as a “well-curated educational boutique.” We need the continued support of HF to both solve staffing issues and to maintain our current intake caps so that we can work in parallel to return our student recruitment to the long-term intake stability experienced up until the disruption of the pandemic.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In terms of research, in brief: our staff remain quite productive in international-quality research activities that produce notable publication points and non-point but high-profile professional activities, nationally and internationally. Despite the fall in masters intake numbers, our completing students have done well both on the job market, in disseminating their work, in achieving personal satisfaction from their degrees, and in pursuing other degrees.

Thomas Richard Hilder

There were no specific set tasks from the previous evaluation. Overall, the evaluation emphasised continuing struggles owing to lack of staffing and high workloads among members of staff, the need to make our programme more work-life oriented, the need to improve recruitment and student participation in extracurricular activities. This academic year we went through the process of hiring a new temporary (3 years) associate professor in musicology, a new postdoc and PhD research fellows as part of the WoVen project, and two new PhDs. We also organised for two new specialisation courses to be taught for the next academic year on work-life related topics: museums and festivals.

This year we filled 6 out of our 13 places for Master’s programme students, 5 in musicology, 1 in composition. This is consistent with the general trend we have seen over the last three years in our programmes but also more generally with enrolment nationally in music, arts and humanities subjects. We are pretty sure that this owes to the continual impact of COVID-19 and are confident that in the following years enrolment will increase again. There was a smooth start to the academic year with orientation meetings and more social events to welcome new students, supported by the linjeforening. We have continued to use the same strategies for recruitment: brochures, digital-based resources on our website, MA recruitment information session with students from our bachelor’s programme. Some of these strategies need to be updated and/or rethought.&nbsp;One of the continuing strengths of our programme is the positive and warm learning environment. This owes to our supportive staff body, provisions for smaller group teaching and individual instrumental lessons, and a well-designed and diverse programme that students are very engaged in. There is a good working ethos among colleagues, good cooperation between academic and administrative staff, and strong trust among students for the staff. We have continued to take in feedback from students in different forms even while ending the reference group format. Care has been taken to make sure our teaching rooms, studio, practice rooms and offices are kept up to date, distributed fairly, and we have recently created a new social seating area and listening room on our corridor. However, we are still experiencing the longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on student participation in extracurricular activities. In particular, participation in events like Faglig Forum are still much lower than pre-pandemic levels. Work needs to be done to build up the sense of engaged student community again.&nbsp;Overall, students appear consistently satisfied with our courses and overall programme. Within the core obligatory courses, small developments have been made, including stretching MUSV3004 out over two semesters to include more seminars. There was a low enrolment on one of our specialisation courses but a much higher enrolment on two of our open courses: Film Music; Music, Nature, and the Climate Crisis. Students have continued to raise concerns about our programme being largely focused around European music and male composers. This year Prof. Bucciarelli taught a course on women in Western music history that addressed this imbalance. Students have also raised the issue that many are not so interested in pursuing performance at master’s level and wonder if there could be focus on academic topics instead of Main Instrument. Overall, we had many students successfully complete their MA theses and thus their studies in the programme.&nbsp;The topic of work-life relevance in our programme is still being discussed. We worked to set up two new specialisation courses with a direct link to the cultural industries: one on music museums and another on music festivals. These will be taught in the two different semesters next academic year that will not only bring together students with people working in local museums and festivals, but will also enable students to work on practice-related projects. We held an annual work-life seminar with master’s students and representatives of numerous cultural/musical institutions in the city, however, no students from our programme turned up.&nbsp;We have a very international staff body that incorporates international research and case studies from a wide geographical area in their teaching. While our student body is mostly Norwegian and often from the local region, our programme has continued to develop an international outlook. This has been experienced as something positive and important for students.

We have continued to struggle with our staff size in order to cover our teaching duties. Since Prof. Breivik retired, Prof. Størvold has taken on more courses in music history and in his specialisms. Prof. Kleiberg was on sabbatical the whole year and replaced by Thomas Nyuyen and Vegar Guleng. Prof. Åse was on leave during the spring semester. Prof. Hilder was back from sabbatical but was on sick leave for much of the spring semester owing to a high workload. We were excited to be able to hire a new temporary (3 year) associate professor in musicology, Prof. Lindblad, who will in the future be able to offer courses on music therapy, music psychology, and music in everyday life. Also, as part of Prof. Bucciarelli’s WoVen project, we have hired one new postdoc, Dr. Korneeva, and one PhD, Mari Holder. Furthermore, a new PhD, Kim Arvid Tran, has been hired to support Prof. Størvold’s research focus on ecomusicology. But as a small staff community we are still vulnerable to high workloads when staff go on leave/sabbatical or are on sick leave. We hope that next year we will have some more stability.&nbsp;Members of staff continue to be active in international and local research and artistic communities. Clear outputs of this work are internationally respected publications, collaborative projects, concerts, and community engagement. Prof. Bucciarelli’s WoVen project has increased the visibility of our programme and increased a focus on opera. Prof. Hilder has received a scholarship for the academic year 2024-25. As our staff body changes, we see a general programme expansion on topics of music therapy, ecomusicology, and music and gender. Over time, this will also need to be reflected in what courses are offered so that our staff can teach in their fields of specialisation based on current and timely research.

The Study Programme Council has suggested we reconsider the name of our programme. “Musicology” might sound confusing or unknown for many school pupils applying for university. Something like “music” could be more catchy and comprehensible.

Musikkvitenskap - masterstudium - MMUSV