What happens when a class full of different individuals are asked to create a method that would aid in improving their grades in a democratic setting? I certainly thought that there would be a lot of agreements as to which direction we should all take as a class. I believed that simple ideas such as removing the essay portion of future exams, simplifying the multiple choice questions, curving the exam grades, and many others that would obviously make attaining an A easier were going to be unanimously voted "yes" among the students. I was very confident that agreements would be made early and that I would be out of class within twenty minutes. Unfortunately, as soon as the professor gave his students the power to make decisions, the room exploded with arguments in favor of opposing and contradicting ideas. Chaos occured, and finding common grounds seemed very far away.
In the midst of chaos, I observed many different behaviors among the students. Some approached the fight with the "compete to win" focus by yelling very aggressively and taking advantage of the unanimous decision rule by objecting when the entire class was accepting. Others followed the "compromise" focus by playing the roles of mediators in the front of the class. Then there were students like myself who followed the "avoidance" behavior as we realized early on that this is one fight not worth struggling for because reaching a consensus, no matter the effort, was not going to happen until the last minute of the class. Had I forseen the disputes earlier, then I would have tried the "collaborating" behavior to help the negotiate an idea that could satisfy everyone before the differences split the class as drastically as it did. This would have been a far better strategy because it would have saved a lot of time and effort for many students in the classroom that day.
I was actually surprise to see you sit back and not say much during this exercise. I thought that you would had more compete to win attitude and voice your opinion more... but maybe since your friend took the initiative you felt that you didn't need to step up to the plate. All in all, I was surprise to see that not just you but many people were in avoidance and letting the few battle it out.
답글삭제I also thought we will be able to reach to an agreement in less than 30 mins, but instead it took us the whole class finally make a decision!
답글삭제I think we will be able to handle a similar situation much better in the future since we dealt with this now.
I agree that using the collaborating behavior would have saved a lot of time and effort in class. The decision making process was so hectic since there were so many different methods being used by students in order to come to a decision. Maybe next time we have to do the same exercise, the class will have a better idea on how to handle it.
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