Because we did poorly on our first exam, Prof. Kurpis decided to offer us an opportunity to get to an agreement on how to improve our grades and modify, if in any way, the next exam. He offered us the whole class period to reach this decision with only one condition: the whole class had to get to an agreement at a 100% level. Everyone had to agree with the decision taken or it was not valid. This was also a way to cover the topic of decision making process.
Overall, the whole class did a good job. However, with a little bit more of organization, we could have finished the second task assigned: modify the format of the next exam.
There are various things we can rescue from this decision making process. First of all, one of the classmates took the leader role and stood up in front of the class directing the whole decision process. This classmate volunteering saved us a lot of time we could have lost trying to decide how to organize the class. Another thing to rescue is that the whole class, around 40 classmates, came together as a group and decided to work towards one single goal. Moreover, since the whole class was part of one group, more information was available; more points of view of what course of action to take to improve our grade. Also, by relying on the group decision making we counted with more alternatives and the cohesion of the group to work together and to reach an agreement was present since we knew whichever the decision made it had to be at a 100% level, in other words, all students had to agree with it in order to count.
There are of course certain things we could have improved: there we two things we needed to decide upon: how to improve our current grade for 1st exam and what changes to make if any for the 2nd exam. We couldn’t reach an absolute decision on the 2nd topic so in order not to loose what we had previously agreed on the 1st topic we left the changes on the 2nd exam to the professor’s discretion. I think we failed on getting an agreement for the 2nd topic because of lack of time and better organization. We tackled both topics as one, when they should have been treated separately. Our ideas got mixed up on the blackboard and the leader many times had to erase them just to end up writing them up again.
We also left behind good options for both topics because of lack of better understanding from classmates. For instance, one of the options for topic number-how to improve our current grade-was a curve. Classmates were asking for outrageous curves so the professor decided to stood up and offered us his curve schedule if this option was chosen; it was a 10 points curve at the most but since we couldn’t agree on a 100% on it we had to leave it behind and instead we went for the extra credit option. However, since we failed to be specifics about the extra credit-how many points, the format, the deadline-professor assigned us an extra credit worth 10 points-the same 10 points we could have gotten without doing any extra work by just agreeing to the curve schedule. I think some of my classmates were so focus on trying to benefit themselves as much as possible from this decision process that forgot about the overall benefit of the class and ended up hurting everyone at the end. The lack of understanding also led is to leave behind another good option on regards to modifications to the next exam. A vast majority didn't want the essay on the next exam, but because it was not the whole class we had to let it go. I raised my hand and came out with a differente option: since we couldn't agree on not having the essay on the second exam and the probabilities the professor would included it were high-after all, it was worth 30 points on the first exam- I offered the class having the essay but had the professor assigned us 5 possible topics for the essay and let us prepare on advanced and then include only 3 out of the 5 possible topics on the exam. People didn't buy it; this option got also dismissed.
On terms of how people handled conflict and which type of method did I personally used to handle the potential for chaos during the decision making process exercise I had two different approaches: at the beginning of the process I opted to accommodate myself to whatever decision the class would reach and let the other classmates offer possible courses of action since- I thought- the chances that my idea would be mentioned by others before having to do it myself were pretty high-at the end, it was a big class and after the professor handed back the exam there seemed to be a general discomfort with the multiple multiple choice questions and with the essay-which were two of the things I also didn’t like about the exam. In other words, I was going to let other people talk and just vote. But when this accommodation approach started to compromise my own benefits-classmates couldn’t decide whether keeping the essay for the second exam- I stepped in and switch from an accommodating way of handling conflict to a kind of “compete to win” approach: trying to push my alternative in classmates’ minds and pull them together to vote for it. So I was personally going with the “compete to win” approach and expecting that my classmates would go for the “collaborating” and “compromise” ways of handling conflict. I did this because my primary goal-not to have an essay on the next exam got ditched when people couldn’t get to an agreement on it. So like in any other situation when you can’t go for the 1st best choice, you go for the 2nd one-in this case, keeping the essay but putting limitations to it and strictly ruling on what and what not to be allow for it. That’s when I decided to finally speak up because I thought, “ what do you rather have? An essay with an open question and not to know what the possible topic could be or have an essay with a closed topic that would come from a bank of 3 to5 topics previously assigned by the professor?” I mean, the probabilities of you doing better on an exam with a closed topic, where you can have the opportunity to write the essay prior to the actual exam are higher than the ones with an open topic. It made sense to me but clearly didn’t make sense for all of my classmates since this option got also ditched out; probably they couldn’t understand the intrinsic benefits of having the essay questions assigned to us prior to the exam and they were only focused on the burden of having to write more than one essay.
At the end, we decided to have the lowest grade dropped and weight the highest grade out of the two exams at a 40% with an extra credit option that would count towards our highest grade and the format of the second exam left to the professor’s discretion. It paid off for me: I went from a 67 on the first exam to a 100 on the next exam (with the help of 10 points extra credit).
Overall, the whole class did a good job. However, with a little bit more of organization, we could have finished the second task assigned: modify the format of the next exam.
There are various things we can rescue from this decision making process. First of all, one of the classmates took the leader role and stood up in front of the class directing the whole decision process. This classmate volunteering saved us a lot of time we could have lost trying to decide how to organize the class. Another thing to rescue is that the whole class, around 40 classmates, came together as a group and decided to work towards one single goal. Moreover, since the whole class was part of one group, more information was available; more points of view of what course of action to take to improve our grade. Also, by relying on the group decision making we counted with more alternatives and the cohesion of the group to work together and to reach an agreement was present since we knew whichever the decision made it had to be at a 100% level, in other words, all students had to agree with it in order to count.
There are of course certain things we could have improved: there we two things we needed to decide upon: how to improve our current grade for 1st exam and what changes to make if any for the 2nd exam. We couldn’t reach an absolute decision on the 2nd topic so in order not to loose what we had previously agreed on the 1st topic we left the changes on the 2nd exam to the professor’s discretion. I think we failed on getting an agreement for the 2nd topic because of lack of time and better organization. We tackled both topics as one, when they should have been treated separately. Our ideas got mixed up on the blackboard and the leader many times had to erase them just to end up writing them up again.
We also left behind good options for both topics because of lack of better understanding from classmates. For instance, one of the options for topic number-how to improve our current grade-was a curve. Classmates were asking for outrageous curves so the professor decided to stood up and offered us his curve schedule if this option was chosen; it was a 10 points curve at the most but since we couldn’t agree on a 100% on it we had to leave it behind and instead we went for the extra credit option. However, since we failed to be specifics about the extra credit-how many points, the format, the deadline-professor assigned us an extra credit worth 10 points-the same 10 points we could have gotten without doing any extra work by just agreeing to the curve schedule. I think some of my classmates were so focus on trying to benefit themselves as much as possible from this decision process that forgot about the overall benefit of the class and ended up hurting everyone at the end. The lack of understanding also led is to leave behind another good option on regards to modifications to the next exam. A vast majority didn't want the essay on the next exam, but because it was not the whole class we had to let it go. I raised my hand and came out with a differente option: since we couldn't agree on not having the essay on the second exam and the probabilities the professor would included it were high-after all, it was worth 30 points on the first exam- I offered the class having the essay but had the professor assigned us 5 possible topics for the essay and let us prepare on advanced and then include only 3 out of the 5 possible topics on the exam. People didn't buy it; this option got also dismissed.
On terms of how people handled conflict and which type of method did I personally used to handle the potential for chaos during the decision making process exercise I had two different approaches: at the beginning of the process I opted to accommodate myself to whatever decision the class would reach and let the other classmates offer possible courses of action since- I thought- the chances that my idea would be mentioned by others before having to do it myself were pretty high-at the end, it was a big class and after the professor handed back the exam there seemed to be a general discomfort with the multiple multiple choice questions and with the essay-which were two of the things I also didn’t like about the exam. In other words, I was going to let other people talk and just vote. But when this accommodation approach started to compromise my own benefits-classmates couldn’t decide whether keeping the essay for the second exam- I stepped in and switch from an accommodating way of handling conflict to a kind of “compete to win” approach: trying to push my alternative in classmates’ minds and pull them together to vote for it. So I was personally going with the “compete to win” approach and expecting that my classmates would go for the “collaborating” and “compromise” ways of handling conflict. I did this because my primary goal-not to have an essay on the next exam got ditched when people couldn’t get to an agreement on it. So like in any other situation when you can’t go for the 1st best choice, you go for the 2nd one-in this case, keeping the essay but putting limitations to it and strictly ruling on what and what not to be allow for it. That’s when I decided to finally speak up because I thought, “ what do you rather have? An essay with an open question and not to know what the possible topic could be or have an essay with a closed topic that would come from a bank of 3 to5 topics previously assigned by the professor?” I mean, the probabilities of you doing better on an exam with a closed topic, where you can have the opportunity to write the essay prior to the actual exam are higher than the ones with an open topic. It made sense to me but clearly didn’t make sense for all of my classmates since this option got also ditched out; probably they couldn’t understand the intrinsic benefits of having the essay questions assigned to us prior to the exam and they were only focused on the burden of having to write more than one essay.
At the end, we decided to have the lowest grade dropped and weight the highest grade out of the two exams at a 40% with an extra credit option that would count towards our highest grade and the format of the second exam left to the professor’s discretion. It paid off for me: I went from a 67 on the first exam to a 100 on the next exam (with the help of 10 points extra credit).
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