Every student in Professor Kurpis’s classes have engaged in decision making process such as building the egg protection, searching for a particular poster, deciding how much employees you need to open up a pizza restaurant and etc. Those were all the fun time we all had enjoyed in this semester. Different to the usual entertaining decision making we had encountered in the class, we came to a critical moment for a major decision making on Mar, 9 2009 – the day we had to come up an absolute agreement from the whole class on how to deal with our exams.
Since many students are not satisfied with their first mid term exam, Professor Kurpis agreed to let us make a 100% agreement from the whole class on how do we like to adjust the next exam and what to do with out first exam. In the beginning, it seemed like an easy and exciting task, just to say and do whatever I wanted and Professor Krupis could not reject them. However, the procedure in this decision making turned out to be tough since we are not only dealing with a group with 4 to 5 people, we are dealing with the whole class, estimate about 80 students. At the moment, we were allowed only one hour of discussion on the decision making. Time was very critical to everyone. As the discussion started, everyone started to buzz around with their own opinions. All of the sudden, the class became extremely noisy. No one come up to organize the discuss until about 10 minutes later a guy who sat in the front came up to say stuff like letting someone write down our opinions and then we voted for the best one. This guy played a big role in helping us to get together and focus on our attention.
During the discussion, some people wanted only multiple - choices and some people wanted essay part. It’s hard for us to make an absolute decision since everyone got their own capabilities and voices of opinions. There were a lot of agreements and disagreements. I didn’t join the discussion much because most of my thoughts are already told by the others. Many people raise their hands to disagree when I wanted to. Also, I felt like there was too much voice and many people were just combating and arguing on the same thing over and over. There was a moment of time that people were losing control and getting temper in favor of their decisions. I was a little passive in this decision making procedure because I didn’t feel like to reject others’ decisions in favor of mine. I think all the opinions from the other had their usefulness to help students achieve a best grade. But I did rise up my hand to vote for my favorite decision.
We accomplished our decision just at the moment the class ended. The result turned out to be a satisfactory to all of us since it involved everyone’s opinion in it. It was a fair decision because it didn’t favor one person over the other. Everyone in the class played a major part in it. This practice made me understand more about decision making. As the number of people who can make decisions gets larger, it becomes harder and time consuming to make a best decision because no one wants to be ignored and omitted as a part. Therefore, there will be more opinions and more ideas come up when there are more people. And it becomes harder for us to choose the best one out of many decisions.
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The decision making activity on Monday wasn't that easy because it was to much at steak. Some of us got frustrated because our opinion wasn't being considered, and some withdrew. But I am sure that you did not just have one opinion. Who knows we might have missed something beneficiary to all of us. I encourage you to participate more next time because it seems like you trusted the rest of the class more than you trusted yourself. It will always be disagreement and contradiction regarding decisions, even if it is within two people, Not to minds think alike, but that doesn't mean that you should get discouraged. We all felt like we had to compromise, but at least we wanted to be heard and considered. And we all contributed.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought that the decision we made was a good one considering all that was going on and the amount of time we had to make it. I know sometimes people don't want to impose their own ideas over others but if this decision really affects you, it is best for you to voice your opinion.
ReplyDeleteI don't blame you for being passive, it's a large class and it can be intimidating.
I don't think that everyone has to take an active part in the decision making process. That was a very stressful class and some people found it easier to stay quiet.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very large class, and it is sometimes very hard to compete with other peoples voices. Although it is good that you think about other people before yourself, but sometimes it is important to take a stance, otherwise a decision could be made that could affect you in a bad way.
I agree with the comments above. Like if today this is a small class and there is no time limit, of course we can bring up as many ideas as we can. But this is a fairly big class,if anyone has their thoughts speak out, how can everyone be satisfied? It would only cause confussion to the class and make the situation even more chaotic. See, there was already one classmate wanted to leave the classroom with frustration.
ReplyDeleteIf the ideas are similar, why couldn't some of us save our voice and make it a better and easier environment?
Overally, I am quite happy with the final outcome :)
I am also happy with the final outcome of the class' decision making. With a class so large it was expected to take some time for all of us to unanimously agree on what we wanted to change on the exam. But all in all, the class did agree as a whole and everyone (or mostly everyone) got what they wanted.
ReplyDeleteI also decided not to participate because other people were speaking my thoughts for me and I felt it was unnecessary for me to speak and argue with others. I thought it would be impossible to make a decision in 40 minutes with 80 people but somehow we all managed to make a decision. Therefore, I think we did a great job. I am happy with what we got.
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