Decisions...Decisions...

During the class activity on decision making, while there were several methods being used by each student (or groups of students) to come to a final decision, I personally comprised to deal with the chaos. I compromised not because I necessarily wanted to, but because it came to a point where I felt I had no choice when we were running out of time. At that point I felt that if I didn’t just go along with everyone that there was a strong possibility that we would have absolutely no resolution. I specifically compromised on the point of having one essay option on the second test. I personally felt that having two to three essay options would’ve been more beneficial than having only one. The benefits of having options are pretty obvious and self explanatory. However, the majority of the students did not feel this way. Many thought that the professor would make the essay questions harder if he offered more than one option. I wasn’t worried about the difficulty because the way I figured it, the professor knows we only have but so much time to complete the entire exam. Therefore, with all the other parts of the exam basically remaining the same (with the exception of the number of right answers now being provided to us on the multiple choice questions), I strongly doubted that the professor would make the essay portion that much harder. It just wouldn’t be fair, and it would’ve been highly unlikely of the professor.

In retrospect, in order to get a more desirable result, I should’ve collaborated more with others to bring my opinion across. This would have been a better approach because I would’ve been able to bring some reassurance to something that was a major concern for everyone.

An Egg-cellent Way to Plan

Our goal for this activity was to build an egg-protected device out of 8 straws and 2 feet of masking tape within 10 minutes. The purpose of the device was to protect the egg in such a way so that, when dropped into a container from a height 10 feet, the egg would not break. There were specific guidelines that had to be followed in regards to the characteristics and design of the device. For instance, one caveat was that no more than 50% of the egg could be covered with the material provided. We took all of these components into consideration when building the device – all the while focusing on the time limit.

Our planning process flowed in a sort of informal and natural way where everyone just got together and threw out different ideas to jump start the task. We didn’t write up a perfect step by step layout, but we verbalized exactly what we would do. For instance, at the onset of our 25 minutes of planning, we reiterated the definition of our goals and objectives. This was a fundamental step in guiding us towards completing the ultimate goal of the exercise. The goal: build the device within 10 minutes using only the materials given to us. The objective: name our egg; develop and draw a design of our contraption; develop a plan to build the contraption within 10 minutes. Each team mate took the initiative to play the role that best suited them in the exercise. For example, one person stated that she was good at drawing and so she was designated to sketch the design. The majority of the team had some creative input in the design of the device. Interestingly enough, our final design was very different from the initial one. It turned out that we had to improvise once we saw that it would be impossible to secure the most commonly used resource – the scissors. While we didn’t initially develop alternative strategies, we were able to quickly generate an alternate design for our contraption when we realized this and pulled through with a device that fulfilled the goal.

Ultimately, my team performed extremely well. No one was overbearing or tried to outshine the rest of the team. Everyone was very cooperative. We all worked together according to our plan and successfully achieved the goal. The only component of the planning process that we could’ve been more effective in was developing other alternative strategies as a “just in case” safety net. That way, we wouldn’t have to totally revamp our thinking and planning at the last minute. Instead, with this in place, if plan A doesn’t work, we can easily move to plan B without interrupting the flow of things.