At beginning, I did not even think of being a leader or any title when i came up. It was just because I lost my patient when people started asking for some "Unreasonable" things and time had not much left. in addition, the first guy who came up in the front was really lonely and he was getting panic. After i came up there, the perspective was very different than when i was sitting in the back. I felt like i was the one who was freezed.
Later, there was one person in the room who rejected all our proposals because he was pretty satisfied of his curved grade. Since Professor said that he would only accept 100%-agreed plan, so there was no way we could skip or ignore that man's rejection. Moreover, there was one lady who just rejected everything we had said, she said " I just did not like it". A deeper meaning of her reason was because people did not even give her a chance to speak her thoughts whiles many others were arguing, complaining with no respect (may be little). then i realized that there were many people who did not even have a chance to speak up their thoughts. Why would i choose compromising is because to get things passed more effectively, the efficient way is to unite all people in the group especially when the group was so large. Then we can make decisions with much less conflict. Those decisions will benefit and satisfy everyone (unless someone is greedy). When small number of people in the group are not satisfied enough, then i choose collaborating method. We will bargain and negotiating back and forth till they agree on the main plan.
Indeed, i saw many people were disengaged from our group discussion. because the classroom was just too noisy. So next time i will firstly talk to leaders and set up some rules in the stage of planning. For instance, everyone has 1 minute to speak up their mind. While they are talking, their speaking shall not be interrupted or stopped by anyone others with any reason (he or she will be muted for the rest of the discussion). More importantly, everyone shall treat others with respect during the discussion and team leaders have to make sure everyone will have a chance to talk. Finally, we vote for whole bunch of objects/suggestions/proposals whatever we agree or not and come up with final solution that represents the whole group's idea.
I agree that this decision regarding our grades would benefit everyone in the class. By not agreeing to it, it would be less beneficial to that person either way, so I don't see why we shouldn't agree to it. Some of the steps in our decision are optional, so people can still choose if they want to participate in the extra credit and curve.
ReplyDeleteSome people were definitely disengaged, and I understand that too. It was just too much going on! I tried to be a part of the discussion though (somewhat in an assertive "compete to win mode"), but at points it was just too frustrating to try to get through.
I also agree that we all should have had some quiet time to speak, without interruption, for those who wanted to be a part of it and voice their opinions. It was frustrating to not be able to voice opinions with so much going on. We definitely needed someone to calm everyone down and control the situation better. It seems to be a hard thing to do though, to try to lead everyone, so I think that anyone who went up there was strong and brave. That's interesting how you said that your perspective was very different from when sitting in the back and how you freezed when you went up there. I would probably have gotten nervous too! Speaking in front of a big class is hard, and the perspective changes once up there in front of everyone. Overall, our class did a good job in negotiating benefits and gaining the 100% approval.