What to do, what to do...?

Decision making can be a difficult task for individuals, let along an entire group of people. So what do many of us do when faced with decision making that involves others? Some of us fight to the death and do not budge; some avoid the decision making all together out of laziness, fear, or just simple frustration; some compromise, you give a little, you get a little; others sacrifice to accommodate the group, and then we have others who try and come up with various options. So what happens when you have a classroom full of students in which half did very well on an exam and the other half not so well???

While we tried to come up with a solution to our exam grading system it became clear we had a room full of all kinds of decision makers. Baily, thankfully, took the lead and guided our decision making process while the rest of us fell into one or more of the descriptions mentioned prior. I for one was definitely not going to be the avoider considering the final decision would have the potential to affect my grade. I can safely say I was one of the students who was in the "did well" side of things so I wasn't too boisterous on my demands, so I decided to take the route of the collaborator. I threw out there some suggestions that could possibly help out those who really needed the help but at the same time fairness would be taken into consideration for those who really didn't need the help for a better grade.

I think with the specific demands Kurpis placed on our final decision we did pretty good in coming to a well rounded conclusion. However, after going through the process and lecture, I feel breaking up into smaller groups could have sped up our process. Within these smaller groups each person would have the opportunity to speak. We could have had sub-leaders who would then voice out each groups top concerns. In using this kind of decision making we probably would have noticed quicker where the majority stood on certain suggestions. We also could have established which were the overlapping ideas and possibly combine them to make a better thought out and concise option.

Decision making...it's a work in process!

Ciao,
C.

Eggsperiment...

Who knew handling a little old egg would take so much team work??? Our team work did not go without effort, but we also missed a few of the key points in the planning process. We all had our ideas on what type of contraption would protect George (aka our egg).

Below is an analysis of what went wrong and what went right:

Step 1: We failed to first and foremost pick a leader. I think we may have focused on the team effort too much and forgotten that it is important to have one key leader.

Step 2:
After we found out what our resources would be, we began discussing how we would use materials effectively. We decided not to create our contraption depending on the scissors. We figured waiting for the scissors would take up to much time. I feel this was a smart way to go because in the end time proved to be a very crucial part of the planning.

Step 3:
We came up with two options on how George would be protected. We were in between our options and failed to make a decision prior to receiving the egg. I think this indecisiveness led us to have a weak plan on building the contraption. We didn't truly assess the strengths & weaknesses.

Step 4:
When we finally decided on our preferred option we each took roles to assist in the building process.

Step 5:
Due to the short amount of time we really had no time to come up with new corrective measures. Some of us dealt with prepping the tape. Two of us worked on holding the egg while straws.

I have to say the 3 key issues we had were not picking a leader, lack of assessing weaknesses and strengths, and also TIME. I think if we would have had time to assess our strengths and weaknesses, we could have done a better job.