I believe in frequent meetings with my students. I feel that if you only meet the student once a week, it puts a great deal of pressure on those lessons, and you have to perform and be effective, both as a student and as a teacher. With up to three meetings a week it is much easier to monitor the students’ progress, answer questions etc. One student says in the interview:

«In a good week I will see Julius three times, because we have the one-to- one lessons, the group lessons and the horn classes, and on all three occasions I can quickly ask for advice on whatever it may be. So being in contact with him several times a week is more valuable than having a slightly longer one-to-one lesson.»

Each group was initially meant to have 3–4 members, but over the course of the project group sizes have varied between 2 and 6 students. There were several reasons for this: sometimes people were off sick, others would forget the lesson or oversleep, so that the group was not complete. Other times there were more people present because the master students without their own group joined in, or because we had outside guests.

The group dynamic has very much to do with the different personalities in the group, but regardless of personalities, it was clear that the groups with 3–4 students were the most productive. This number gives you enough individual views to spark a discussion, and there is less pressure on each participant than in a group of 2. The sessions with the smaller groups were often similar to the one-to-one lessons where I would instruct the student performing. There was not enough energy for a discussion. The lessons with 5–6 students always generated numerous interesting opinions and enough energy and content to hold a meaningful discussion, although moderating these groups was difficult. The students speaking the loudest also spoke the most. These lessons also resembled the horn classes since there was often not enough time to go into much detail.

The original idea behind the way the groups were put together was, in addition to year of study, to create a good mix of proactive students and students who may have a tendency to hide a little; those who always have something to say and those who are less outgoing. This was difficult to achieve in practice due to timetable clashes, and we eventually ended up with groups based on timetable availability. This turned out to be an adequate solution. It was more important that the groups were of the right size.

Although I had hoped that all the students would be part of a regular group, the result was both regular and more loosely composed groups. The dynamics in the groups differed greatly. The students in the regular groups got to know each other well, came to feel safe, found their roles in the group and communicated effectively (often without the need for moderation). The loosely composed groups were less effective because many of the “guests” had far less experience of this format and had to learn how the communication should be conducted. The atmosphere was possibly a bit more tense, but on the other hand we uncovered many new opinions and new ideas. The students in the permanent groups developed a shared understanding and repertoire and were able go into more detail on topics that could be discussed several weeks in a row. It is difficult to say which of these formats worked better, but I believe that a mix of regular and loosely composed groups would make the most out of both set-ups.