The mentors conducted the student sessions on the basis of the following thematic structure drawn up by the project managers:
1st conversation: Get to know each other, discuss roles and goals.
2nd conversation: Look back at the previous semester, look forward.
3rd conversation: Integrity and values.
4th conversation: The roles of a musician and artistic context.
5th conversation: Look back at the previous semester, look forward.
By now the digital portfolio had become a core element that the mentors could centre the conversations around. In the first project module the mentoring sessions were primarily an additional device to support the students with their portfolios. In the second module it was instead the portfolio that informed the mentoring sessions. Various reflective exercises were used to cover the four keywords mentioned previously: review, retrospection, outlook and introspection. The students created a summary of all their work over the past six months, and they completed a range of additional reflective assignments in writing.
Reflective exercises designed to follow the thematic structure were recommended to the mentors. The mentors were also free to let the mentoring sessions with each student evolve naturally and tailor them to suit that student over the course of the five meetings.
The students were set portfolio assignments before the first mentoring session. These preliminary exercises would also serve as an introduction for the mentor:
“My musical history”: Write about how your musical history has unfolded up until the present day.
“Musical turning points”: Five musical experiences that have been important in your life. Please explain why and how (own performance, other people’s concerts, recordings, works etc.).
“What I’m interested in right now”: One or more audio recordings that the student is currently listening to or thinking about.
Examples of exercises given to the students by the mentors during the academic year included interviewing someone they were inspired by or writing a short text about that person. Another was to write briefly about three to five persons who were musical role models for the student and describe what qualities they deemed to be important. This could be musical, career-related or personal choices or qualities. Exercises on personal value analysis were used as described in Gjerde’s aforementioned book. Some of the mentors asked their students to present, in their portfolio, an artistic project they were currently involved in – in the form of a journal, for instance. The mentors would follow up on these assignments by instilling further awareness and encouraging the students to reflect during the mentoring sessions.
There was positive feedback from the first project module on the use of semester reviews. The students were therefore asked again during this module to create summaries for both the autumn and spring semesters of everything they had played and worked on in the past semester and to write a short text about key learning points, challenges, positive experiences and potential goals for the coming semester. This was in turn used for further discussion with the mentors about choices and musicianship.