How do you get a whole class of about 60 to all agree 100% on a decision?
It takes a lot of ideas, some conflict, a group leader, and one goal.
In the class activity, we had to all agree on how to count the first midterm grade, and what to change about the upcoming second midterm. It started out a bit chaotic, with suggestions yelled across the room. But luckily shortly, someone stepped up to lead the class into coming up with this decision. She guided us by coordinating the classroom and making sure each person who had something to say got their voice heard. She wrote down each suggestion and then went down the list, eliminating those which most people did not agree to. I thought she could have not erased each idea so quickly, especially when deciding about what to do to change the next midterm. She could have left the ones where only a very few amount of people did not agree and those that wanted that suggestion cold try to persuade them for a change of mind.
Many of those that gave a suggestion were competing to win and get their ideas "passed." Most other remained quiet and were in avoidance, not giving any suggestion or voicing out their opinions. Perhaps it was because they thought there was no way of reaching that 100% agreement.
I compromised and accommodated to others in this process. When deciding on what to do with the second midterm, although I thought having an open book test could usually mean a harder test, I thought it would be helpful to those people that don't do well on tests under pressure and even though they studied, they might forget the material at the moment. I didn't like the idea of taking out the essay but since there are a lot of people that got a lot of points taken away from the essay part and there are also people that struggle to write an essay, especially those whose English is not their first language, I didn't disagree to "no essay."
In the end, we did reach our 100% agreement. We decided to drop the lowest of the 2 midterms and the higher grade would account for the 40% of our final grade, with extra credit to be added onto the higher grade. The second midterm was pretty much undecided upon with a suggestion, so we just left that to the professor to decide how he wants to make the test. Reaching a conclusion took a lot of effort, to get the whole class in agreement. Lucky for us, we had a leader to help guide us.
P.S. No one got hurt in the process!
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Rosita, I too compromised and accomodate on this decision making process, but when I saw that the class couldn't reach an agreement on not having the essay on the second exam, I opted to change my position to the one of "compete-to-win" and raised my hand to give another option, trying to push my alternative in classmates’ minds and pull them together to vote for it. It didn't pay off because my option, to have the possible essay topics previously assigned before the exam got also ditched out. :(
ReplyDeleteIt's definitly hard to get everyone in the class to agree upon one rule. But i had faith during the decision making that every one will eventually agree upon one because student love to take advantage on making their grade better. free rider for the most of us.
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