Working with people of that magnitude and coming up to a decision was not easy. It takes motivations and leadership skills to come to a productive agreement. I personally handled the chaos during the decision making exercise by collaborating and compromising.
At the beginning of the process I was a collaborator. I stepped out of my seat, came to middle of the class room. I started to talk with the other guys about the proposal we wanted to make about the midterm one and midterm two. My proposal was to have essay questions (2 0r 3) during the review session or get couple of essay questions to chose from on the second midterm, and to have conventional multiple choice questions (MCQs). I also wanted everyone who was negotiating in the center of the class room to go to their seat and tell people around their seats what we agreed on and asked them what they think of the agreement (assuming whoever came to the front with their thoughts wanted to be team leader of his/her proximity). Thus we would be able to get a 100% agreement by writing down our proposal on the board. While I was negotiating with my colleagues about my ideas, they proposed their ideas: to drop the lower of the two midterms, curve both midterms, doing an optional extra credit assignment. I liked their ideas; they were terrific. But I did not like the idea of having multiple multiple choice questions, which would include the number of right answers. I understood from their explanations how it is better than conventional MCQs, so I agreed with them, but I still prefer conventional MCQs. My argument was that to reduce the risk of having more points taken off from conventional MCQs, we could get more MCQs questions (so each multiple choice question would worth less). If we have more conventional MCQs and anyone gets one wrong that will reduce less points as getting multiple MCQs. Also, we get penalized for circling wrong choice(s) of multiple MCQs! That completely sucks! However, I agreed to their proposal only for the sake of myself and my fellow classmates’ sake who did not do very well on the first midterm. Furthermore, I did not understand, and probably will not understand, why some people did not want to have essay topics during the review session or get couple of essays in the second midterm to choose from! Some argued that if we know the essay topics or get couple of choices in the midterm professor will make the essay questions harder. How hard could it be if you know the topic before hand? Is it going to be harder than the essay that you will have to write without any prior knowledge of the topic?
Having learned that something is better than nothing, last ten minutes was time of compromise. As I was unable to make those “leaders” understood the benefits of my ideas. It disappointed me to see that many students wanted to have essay questions during the review or have couple of choices in the exam to answer from.
Now that I know the pattern of communications, and reactions of classmates, first I would get opinion of other students from proximity of my seat. Then negotiate with other “group leaders” what we want. Thus I will have a strong base to agree or oppose with others’ ideas.
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1 comment:
yes,I feel your pain.
We both had to compromise and I am sure other people did the same. It is just hard to do that when you are sure that your idea would benefit others as well and they are just failing to see it.
My advice is to try to advocate your proposal more and in a way that would have help other students understand the benefits of it.
Like yourself I faced the same problem and had to compromise at the end for the sake of others but that is democracy and we need to make a stronger case the next time we want to have our ideas accepted by everyone.
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