Thursday, March 17, 2011

Decision Making

I think that the decision making from our class was a little chaotic. People were just shouting out thing they wanted. Thankfully there was one person who took initiative to be the leader and speaker, but as the decision making became more hectic, others came up and tried to be leaders as well. There were many people who were cooperating and at least considering what the others thought. Some others were just being narrow minded and went for what they wanted and didn't care about the other options.
     The way that I handled this situation was Avoidance. Honestly, all I cared for was the curve and hopeful potential extra credit. When we were able to get that out of the way then I began to not care because I felt that things would just get chaotic. Just as me and a few other students thought, things just got out of hand and people from all sides of the room were shouting out things they wanted.
    Some methods that I saw being used was Collaborating, where people would try to put two different ideas together. An example of this would be when people said they wanted and didn't want an essay. Although it took much time, we came up with a compromise for the professor to have the choice of making the essay or not and if he did, give us an idea of what would be on essay.
  Another method that I saw was when people were Competing to win. Some stupids just wanted what they wanted and did'nt really care for what others wanted. This approach was okay because I mean if they had enough reason to want something then they can have there own want. The only problem with this approach was that we had a time limit and if a group decision wasn't met by the time end, then we would not benefit with anything.

I feel that the best way to handle this situation was to have a Collaboration method be taken. Using this process would get a little bit of everybody's ideas out there. Although this process can be chaotic, maybe we could've went through one topic at a time and say what the options were and break it down. I liked the idea of having the professor make a decision because in that way, all of us can say what we want. If we come down to 2 or 3 options then we could have the professor make the decision. An example would be the essay. We don't know if we will have the essay or not but its up to the professor. Doing it like this gives the professor the overall power but still he is picking out of the options that we give.

This is the approach that I think would've worked. happy ST. PATTYS day everyone..

2 comments:

  1. Hi,
    I disagree with you that the decisions should be left to the professor, because this would mean that the students have no say. If it were up to him, he would probably only give us the curve and would not add extra credit as an option.

    It's hard to satisfy everyone, especially when there are many issues at hand...but I felt that the process wasn't too bad as in as least the class agreed with the final proposal and that we were able to agree on the multiple choice/short answer section.

    The problem with the decision of yes/no essay was that the class was nearly split on what they wanted so there was no way we would agree fully to have one or to completely get rid of it so I guess the professor has to be the tiebreaker for this one.

    As for everything else, we were able to reach an agreement.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Could you imagine what it would be like if the curve wasn't a win for everyone? The only reason we got a unanimous decision was because no one wanted to be hated in the class room and the curve benefited us all. If that wasn't the case NOTHING would have gotten accomplished if we did things the way we did.

    ReplyDelete