For the last three years, we have had the privilege of coordinating an international songwriting project between Canadian and Irish college students. What began as a simple idea — pairing emerging songwriters from two different countries — grew into an experiment in creativity, cultural exchange, and collaborative practice. The results were not only the recorded songs, but also lasting insights into how music can build bridges.
Project Design
The project was part of Florida International University’s Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) initiative, a program designed to enable students and faculty to engage with their diverse peers worldwide in collaborative teaching, learning, research, and innovation online. As faculty members representing Seneca Polytechnic (Toronto, Canada) and Dundalk Institute of Technology (Dundalk Ireland), we were paired to create the first COIL collaboration of its kind: a music one.
Canadian and Irish college students were placed in small groups of two or three. Each group was tasked with writing and recording an original song together, working remotely across time zones and using digital tools to share drafts, ideas, and feedback. Groups were given some basic guidelines for the finished project – the song must use one of the four titles we provided, and it should include a minimum of two verses and two choruses – but otherwise they were free to develop the songs according to their own genre and thematic interests. Our aim was not only to produce songs but to immerse students in the process of co-creation. The COIL was part of the formal assessment for each module, and we used a shared rubric to grade the outcomes.
In designing the collaboration, we emphasized three learning goals:
- Collaboration skills: learning to negotiate creative ideas with partners who have different perspectives.
- Cultural exchange: discovering how place, identity, and local music scenes inform songwriting.
- Creative process: practicing flexibility and openness when writing in a virtual, cross-cultural environment.
The Practice of Collaboration
The songwriting process varied from group to group, but common themes emerged across them. Many students began by sharing playlists or talking about their influences — everything from Irish traditional music to Nashville country to contemporary pop. This exchange helped them understand not only stylistic differences but also the role music plays in their personal and cultural lives.
Students then worked through the familiar stages of songwriting — brainstorming ideas, writing lyrics, experimenting with chord progressions, and refining melodies. However, doing this across borders required new strategies. Some students used shared Google Docs for lyric drafts, while others leaned on Zoom writing sessions or exchanged voice memos via WhatsApp and Instagram. Recording was often done separately, with each student contributing vocals or instrumental parts that were later combined in a shared digital audio workspace (DAW). Beyond an initial shared class held over Zoom, we asked the students to schedule their own meetings and manage their own time, in order to give them real-world experience in communicating with others and managing collaborations themselves.
What stood out was the adaptability students developed. Time zone challenges and differences in college calendars meant students had to communicate clearly about anticipated timelines. Language differences (including regional dialects or idioms) sparked discussion about lyrical intention and clarity. And when creative disagreements arose, students had to learn negotiation — finding ways to preserve individual artistic voices while serving the song.
Outcomes and Reflections
At the end of the project, each group presented its finished song. The diversity of outcomes was striking: some leaned toward acoustic folk ballads, others toward upbeat pop tracks, and a few blended country storytelling with more traditional Irish melodies. We never had a group fail to submit something, indicating the positive role that group work can play, as the students seemed aware that they had responsibilities not only to themselves but also to their peers. While group dynamics of course varied significantly, some of the students formed good friendships with their international counterparts, and we have encouraged them to keep collaborating beyond the classroom.
Beyond the songs themselves, students reflected on their learning. Several Canadian students commented that their Irish partners encouraged them to embrace lyrical storytelling and emotional directness. Irish students often remarked on how Canadian partners brought fresh chordal or melodic approaches. Students from both sides of the Atlantic spoke about how being paired with colleagues with very different genre interests and musical influences encouraged them to take risks and try new approaches in their own songwriting practice, with excellent results. Both groups spoke about the joy — and challenge — of letting go of control to co-create.
One theme that resonated across student reflection journals was the discovery of songwriting as dialogue. Rather than seeing songwriting as a personal, solitary creation, students began to view it as a conversation; a space where identities, cultures, and creative instincts connect.
Pedagogical Insights
From an educational standpoint, this project suggests several takeaways for teaching songwriting in cross-cultural contexts:
- Process over product: While the songs were important, the deeper value lay in the collaborative process — students learning how to write with others, not just for themselves.
- Tools matter: Providing students with accessible digital platforms (shared documents, DAWs, communication apps) removes logistical barriers and lets creativity flow.
- Cultural humility: Students flourished when they approached collaboration with curiosity rather than defensiveness. Teaching cultural humility — listening before speaking, asking before assuming — proved essential.
- Reflection as practice: Building in structured (and graded) reflections allowed students to articulate what they learned, making tacit knowledge about songwriting and collaboration explicit.
This process has also helped both of us grow as educators, as preparing and running the COIL is a form of collaboration in itself. In addition to our students’ learning, there are several takeaways for educators interested in collaboration:
- Teaching with (different) others: The two of us come from very different career and academic backgrounds. Linda is an experienced songwriter in the Nashville country scene, while Kayla was in her first semester of full-time lecturing — and her first semester ever teaching songwriting — when we started planning the collaboration. Nevertheless, from our very first Zoom meeting, each of us felt we had met someone who shared our enthusiasm and passion for teaching. And while we approach teaching songwriting very differently, we discovered some shared practices, such as having students “write to the title”.
- Putting yourself out there: Our connection began because Linda put herself forward as someone who was interested in potentially creating a COIL collaboration, and Kayla responded. Both of us chose to be open to the possibilities offered by the COIL program, even before we met each other and realized this could work. Without willingness to take the first step, despite not knowing the end of the journey, this collaboration never would have happened.
What’s Next for Us?
Unfortunately our COIL project is currently on hiatus, as during summer 2025 Kayla changed jobs due to her contract ending, and setting up a more formal link between Seneca and a new institution simply takes time. Academic precarity is a real threat to collaborative work of this nature and can prevent educators from building the long-term links that are necessary to sustain healthy, successful collaborations. We are optimistic, however, about continuing the work, as we have found it incredibly valuable both for ourselves and our students. We encourage other teachers of songwriting to consider taking the leap — it’s completely worth it.
Linda Moroziuk is a multifaceted music professional whose career bridges the worlds of performance, songwriting, scholarship, and education. A former performing artist, she has built a respected creative practice as a signed songwriter with album cuts recorded by artists across Canada and the United States. Her work reflects a lifelong dedication to music, collaboration, and the craft of writing songs. She holds a doctorate in Ethnomusicology, enriching her music with cultural insight and research-driven curiosity. This blend of academic and industry experience informs her nearly two decades of teaching in the Music Industry Arts programs at Seneca Polytechnic, where she has spent 19 years shaping emerging artists and music professionals. In addition to her teaching, Linda serves as Program Coordinator, guiding program development and curriculum design to ensure students receive an education grounded in innovation, creativity, and real-world relevance. Her leadership includes initiating an international collaboration program in songwriting—an initiative that connects students with global partners, expands their creative perspectives, and prepares them for the increasingly interconnected music landscape. Bringing together artistic achievement, scholarly depth, and a passionate commitment to student success, Linda continues to champion the next generation of music creators.
Dr Kayla Rush is an anthropologist of art, music, and performance, and an Assistant Professor in Music at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, Ireland. She earned her PhD in Social Anthropology from Queen’s University Belfast in 2018. She has previously held a Marie Skłodowska-Curie research fellowship at Dublin City University (2019-2022) and an assistant lectureship in music at Dundalk Institute of Technology (2022-2025). She currently serves as blog editor for the Association for Popular Music Education. Kayla’s current research examines private, extracurricular, fees-based rock and popular music schools in global perspective. Her broader research and teaching interests include cultural politics, arts and education policy, accessibility and inclusion in education, emotion, cultural labour, and globalization, decolonization, and recolonization in popular music education. She is also a recognized teacher and practitioner of creative ethnographic writing, with a particular interest in ethnographic science fiction.