As we know there are several behavior models during the decision making process:
“Compete to win” behavior. There were several students in our class (I would say one or two) who very actively and , may I say, aggressively promoted their ideas.
Avoidance behavior. Some students, including me, didn’t participate in the decision making at all.
Compromise behavior. Most of the students worked as mediators, trying to get at least any result (if we wouldn’t have agreed, the professor wouldn’t give us any extra points for the test at all).
Accommodation behavior. Probably some students who get the highest grades in the exam didn’t really care about the decision, so they didn’t actively participate.
Collaboration behavior. Those were real negotiators who provided us with their ideas and respectfully listen ideas of the other students. I think it was the second larger group of people in the class after the compromise behavior.
As I mentioned above, personally I chose the avoidance behavior. Well firstly because I was really not in the mood of talking and negotiating. Secondly, I feel really uncomfortable negotiating the ideas in the large groups (30-40 people are too much for me). I am sure I would have feelt morally better had we discussed this in the small groups (3-5 people). I would have probably used collaboration behavior , or maybe even “compete to win” one. Also, as the theory says, on the subconscious level I felt that it would be hard to proceed with the idea that everyone liked. Personally, I would have voted for the standard multiple choice question, I am actually shocked that the class decided to keep the test almost the same way it was before! But, oh well, can’t change anything now.
hey,
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you weren't the only one who felt overwhelmed by the amount of people in the discussion. Looking around I've noticed that a lot of people did withdraw, simply not to yell over someone. However I wish you would say something because I too, wanted a standard multiple choice. Also keeping the exam as is, is simply not taking a full advantage of the situation. Although we could have gotten more, we still came out with more then what we went in with.
You’re right, not all people are comfortable negotiating ideas in larger groups. I observed that almost half of the class weren't participating as much; maybe because they felt the same way. I agree with you, I also pointed that out in my blog, that if we have broken up into smaller groups or teams of five we might be able to come up with more ideas and proposals like the Jell-O innovation activity. I actually didn’t want to play around the test format as much because since we had experienced it, we can equip ourselves on what we need to know for the next exam and what to study more which is the little details we tend to overlook. I do see your point that a conventional multiple choice is what most people are used to compared with the multiple multiple choice.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the atmosphere in the class during the decision process was a bit intimidating for many of the students...It was really sad that almost half of the class has chosen avoidance as a way to cope with conflict, when we had our chance to make our best.. It's sad that such adults like as were yelling at each other instead of proposing constructive ideas and expressing them in the best way...
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