...and our class decision making proved it.
The reason for this kind of assumption is based on my personal experience.
Don't get me wrong, I believe we did accomplish a lot but not all that we could and the process of reaching to the final agreement was painful and poorly organized which probably arose from the fact that there were no set rules as who is to direct the whole process and who's opinion is to have more impact.
In terms of how I handled this conflict situation I can say it was a mix of different approaches. At the begging I looked at what was happening and started collaborating with others in order to hear their opinions and try to come up with the best solution. Pretty fast we came up with two proposals that all of us agreed. The third proposal was a cause of many different opinions about how should we deal with multiple choice questions and essay questions. It seamed like the most beneficial way of resolving such situation of conflict with many different opinions. This problem only became more evident when I heard the different opinions not only within the group I was discussing it but when most of the class got engaged in the discussion and when it became obvious that there are few issues that we will never reach a 100 % consensus.
Faced with this situations and with time running out I used compromise and accommodation when it came to voting. I accommodated the will of the majority and compromised so that decision is made on time.
To put it into perspective I felt that the essay part needed to be changed in a way that we should be given 3 or more questions and given the opportunity to chose one. This, in my opinion, is far better than only being limited to one question and if your knowledge on one module is weaker the chances are greater you will find one questions within the three that you would feel more confident about and that you can answer appropriately, which is not the case payed little attention to a one or two modules.
Only thing I should have done differently is to try to be more assertive and patient with the fact that people have different insight in how to solve problems, however when you are facing time constraint and more than one person who strongly opposes your argument you can only choose go with majority vote and regret that they were not open-minded enough to listen to an opinion that benefits all.
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4 comments:
Coincidently, both of us followed the same path in class decision making process. I collaborated most of the time and compromised at he last few minutes of the class. I strongly agree with your opinion of having essays to choose from in the exam. However, I am glad that we all agreed on some issues.
i think that the way that you handled the situation was great and probably the way most people should have handled it. listen to other peoples thoughts and take them into consideration because the outcome effects all of us and even if you dont get exactly what you want in the end vote for the majority so we could at least resolve something. i9 do however disagree with the essay part because the essays would be harder if he tells us what they are and we get to choose. its a good thing that we all made the right choice as far as the curve and the drop. hopefully you did well...
I'm sorry Mirko, but I don't think you should call what happened in our class the other evenning democracy. I think it was more of an unorganized brain storming of ideas than it was a democracy.
There is no way that a good democracy could be annoying, because democracy is nothing else but the representation of the choice of the majority.
And as you have seen during our decision making, several students did not participate in the process, but just conformed to the final decision.
I also just compromised to what others wanted, it didn't really matter to me what had happened toward the end of class because by that time we had already agreed to drop the lowest test and curve the first exam. After i realized this i just agreed to what others had said. If many people had acted in this way, it is possible that we could have gotten a lot more accomplished
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