At first I thought collaborating might have worked the best for this decision making on changing our grade points and changing the format for the next exam. Collaborating requires “bargaining and negotiation among groups”, and each group’s insights are equally important in this process. That was how I viewed the class in the beginning when we divided into our group and shared with our teammates about the possible ways to get that higher grade. As time went by, it seemed like all of us were only focusing on our team rather than getting everyone to join in as whole class to discuss this matter. I was thinking to myself then, how was it possible to get everyone to agree on the final decision? It just seemed to be an impossible mission. Halfway through, few people took the role of a leader and brought all of our attention to the front of the classroom. In order to reach to a final decision, we must gather EVERYONE’s consent and ideas. There were 80 of us there, all of us received different grades for this exam, and most of us did poorly. In this case, we all shared different values—the ones who scored lower grade would seek to bring their grades up, and the ones who scored higher held a different belief. Moreover, each of us has different areas of expertise, either in multiple multiple choices or in the essay questions. It is hard to settle this matter to satisfy everyone’s needs.
When the class got embroiled on the matter of what to do with our current grade, whether we should drop it, curve it, and/or have extra credits assignment, I observed the anxiety that filled the room. I observed the leader was trying to get people’s attention, and some helpers were trying to calm people down and let each person talked about his/her idea. Some got really pissed, I could tell by their tone when they spoke. As for me, I kind of took the step of avoidance—sit back, shake my head, thinking it would be impossible to reach to that conclusion on time. I thought it would be more hectic if EVERYONE proposed their ideas because we had limited time in this case.
I think a better way for this decision making process to work is if everyone pays attention to the person who spoke, because since I chose avoidance, I heard that most people just repeated the same problem over and over again without reaching to an agreement. And some were confused on what the proposed idea was, because the terminology of voc being used make it complicated to understand, such as the idea on having multiple multiple choice but on each multiple multiple choice there should state how many correct choices for that particular questions have. But overall, I thought it was pretty amazing that we arrived to a final decision. It was a tough task.
