The small group lessons were intended to build a bridge between the one-to-one lessons and the horn classes. The horn students were divided into groups of three or four and would meet once a week. All horn students, both bachelor and master students, were involved in the project, which started at the beginning of the 2014–15 academic year. The groups were initially organised according to year of study, but this changed as we had to adjust to the students’ timetables. Three groups met regularly every week, while the fourth group of two master students was to agree a time from week to week. The way of organising the master group did not work well and was quickly changed to allow the master students to join one of the other groups as and when their schedules permitted. As with Ree Wekre’s model, the weekly 60-minute lesson was shortened to 45 minutes in order to allocate time to the group lessons. The surplus 15 minutes were pooled to create a longer group lesson.

During the autumn semester the students were asked to complete diaries with a few questions from me. The questions varied from lesson to lesson depending on last week’s input. Project manager Ingrid Maria Hanken interviewed some of the students after the project had ended. I do not know, and should not know, which students were interviewed. I have only had access to anonymised transcripts of the interviews. This was to allow the students to express themselves freely about the tuition. In this article I will be citing comments from both diaries and interviews.

The aim of the first group lessons was to get to know each other better and to familiarise ourselves with the new tuition format. The students were told about the project and how to provide feedback. As with Ree Wekre’s model, the students should start by giving positive feedback followed by constructive feedback. Each student was given 20 minutes that they could spend as they pleased. They would usually perform something first and then ask for comments. The students gave their comments first, and I offered my input at the end. Ideally, the comments would lead to a discussion. On a few occasions the students chose to spend all of their allotted time performing. Depending on the situation, I would sometimes ask the performing student to provide a self-evaluation and share their thoughts first. The idea was to give the performing student a chance to set the agenda for the subsequent discussion.