Group discussions during the project and individual interviews afterwards showed that the students were very satisfied with the content of the group lessons and with the execution of the project. They found that the issues being discussed in the topical lessons were clearly articulated and that the objective of each lesson was clear to everyone. The students concurred that it is important to be able to discuss singing technique and interpretative challenges with their peers in a regular forum.

In their feedback the students emphasised the benefits of seeing how their peers were working on the same challenges and that together they could work out how to solve these challenges in different ways. Many of them said that the inclusion of students of different ages and years of study enriched communication within the group. The newest students would often use metaphors in their feedback, while the more experienced students used specialist terminology in their descriptions and assessments. The experienced students found the feedback from the less experienced students exciting because they sometimes expressed themselves in unexpected ways.

The students were particularly pleased with the interpretation lessons with a pianist.

The importance of being able to articulate technical challenges was deemed to be significant in this context. The students reflected on their peers’ performances and said these reflections made them more self-aware as singers. They say that putting into words things that are perceived as abstract and complex is challenging in itself, and they point out that there is a great deal of learning to be gained from being able to express themselves verbally about other people’s performances as well as their own. In this context a common vocabulary means fewer misunderstandings.

The teacher role was new and unfamiliar, especially to the music performance students. Through discussions with their peers, the students’ own challenges became less “frightening”. The students got used to talking about technical challenges in their repertoire, and that openness became an integral element in their learning. The students also say that the camaraderie amongst the singers was strengthened during this period, that they got to know new people and have become more confident about their studies. The platform that they have managed to build during the group lessons has helped enable a form of communication between the students where constructive and productive feedback is a natural element. The students say that the opportunity to discuss technical challenges with their peers is something completely new to their course. The less experienced students in particular say that it is both motivational and dispiriting to see the older students struggle with the same challenges as themselves, even after several years of study. The students also say that this type of co-operation makes it easier to ask each other for advice in other settings.

The situation was unfamiliar to most of the students. They were not used to receiving feedback from people other than their teachers, and they were not used to giving constructive feedback to their fellow students. Some stated that they felt insecure at the start of the project. We therefore introduced a routine whereby the performing students would state how far they had come with learning the piece. This information would define the level of detail in the feedback.

The students would have wished for more time for each performer during the group lessons, since there was little time to try out concrete suggestions from the others.

The students worked actively to find their place in the group. They made it clear that if a group is to work well, each participant must be willing to leave their comfort zone and present themselves without necessarily being in full control of the situation. Many of them enter the situation “as the person they are”, but they also have a responsibility for how they act vis-à-vis their fellow students. Everyone was expected to look after each other and create a good, safe climate, while also being able to provide constructive criticism.

Bjørkøy was present during all the lessons but rarely got involved. The students ran most of the process themselves and were satisfied with the level of teacher involvement. Some stated that perhaps the teacher did not even have to be there every time, while others felt secure in the knowledge that he would step in if individual comments veered off-course.