Professor Kurpis stuck to his usual way of teaching, and made us experience what it is like to come up with a very important decision as a whole. That was definitely not an easy matter because there are at least 80 people in our class, and everybody has different reasons for what they do or say.
My initial reaction was to be the "avoidance" decision maker. I reacted this way because I did not have any good ideas off the top of my head as to what we should do to improve the next test, and improve the grades of the first test. I definitely realized right away that this was a grand opportunity for us to really improve our ultimate grade and I didn't want to waste it. For the first 10 minutes I was acting out the avoidance role, but it was not because I felt that there was no chance of winning.
My next role was that of the "compromise" decision maker. My idea was to get rid of the true or false altogether, but then people started saying that they liked the true or false and wanted to keep them in the next test, so we compromised and decided to cut the true or false to five questions on the next test.
All in all, I think we all did a great job at negotiating, and we ended up with a very nice array of different things to improve our grades. Congratulations to all!
Many people probably took the avoidance approach at some point during this decision making process, and I admit that I was one of them too. But, like you said, with 80 people in the class, it is impossible for everyone to put in their fair share of input. Doing so require too much time and a lot more organization than we actually had when we trying to complete the task. Still, everyone did contribute by voting at the end and thus led to a collectively made decision package that was approved! As a whole, the class did a great job with this task.
ReplyDeleteI definitely know what you mean about the avoidance. I think that given how large the class is, and that, as of yet, we have only worked in smallish groups in this class, the "avoidance" strategy was an easy one, when having to deal with the overwhelming size of the class. And, also agree with the multiple choice...i really didn't think they were all that easy, and yes, i think what we ended up with was really amazing. Its almost as if we've been handed the opportunity to get a good grade, HA.
ReplyDeleteHey! I also choose the avoidance approach, and the two other people that I responded to also chose this. I mean with the whole class shouting and screaming out ideas, if we add our voice into it the whole class will be in even more chaos. But because about half the class was in avoidance we were able to come to a conclusion at the end. And making a compromise. The outcome was good.
ReplyDeleteI think we did a great job as well. I don't think you can use just one approach when it comes to making a group decision. I think I used the compromise style because I didn't mind the test format. With some many people its hard not to compromise. The decision making process allows one to be all styles at one point. Overall though I think we had an great outcome.
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