First of all, I'd like to express how happy I am that this class experiment is going to result in potentially great increases in our originally abysmal grades.
Looking back at all the chaos, I realize that I handled the situation in a variety of ways. I competed to win (in a more passive way), in the sense that when I heard people making proposals that were just too complicated to be enforced I immediately disregarded their proposal, thus ensuring that it would not get a 100% consensus. I think the entire class, including myself participated as compromisers, especially on the 'extra credit writing assignment' agreement. There were many proposals being batted around concerning the essay section and it seems that we all compromised and even accommodated each other by settling for an extra credit assignment. We all also participated as collaborators in that our final agreements were settled upon due to the fact that we collaborated on what we wanted a our needs were and came up with the final arrangements.
In hindsight, I think the best way to have gotten the most out of this opportunity was to break up into groups. Once in groups, each group can come up with 3 or 4 proposals. Once every group comes together I'm sure we would have found that many of our needs and ideas were the same thus saving a lot of time. Also when in little groups, it would have been easier to explain the arrangements to those who were not sure of what they meant. Not to mention, that if we were able to come to a decision first in smaller groups, in the end it would have been easier to come to a decision because it would be a negotiation between 5 groups rather than 60 individuals.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
An Eggs-cellent Way to Fail!
Planning is critical to success. By planning you prepare yourself for future tasks and by being prepared you put yourself in the position to succeed. However, if you don't plan your objectives and tasks appropriately, you could have failed before you even begin!
There are five critical steps in the planning process. Throughout this activity, my group definitely took all of them into account. However, even though we did take them into account, we did a poor job cooperating with one another which ultimately resulted in FAILURE!
Step 1: Define your goals and objectives...
- This step was easy to follow as the goals, objectives, and constraints were directly presented to us. Nonetheless, we succeeded 100% here.
Step 2: Determine current status compared to objectives
- We all knew our resources however we never took into account our strengths and weaknesses. It certainly would have helped had we delegated a leader because six people presenting their ideas in a free for all was extremely disorienting. However, this was probably tough to do for everyone due to the excitement and time constraints. I think we performed at about 20% in this step.
Step 3: Develop premises and several alternative strategies
- With so many ideas being thrown around, we definitely had at least several strategies. As people shared their ideas, we also discussed the strengths and weaknesses of them which is how we were able to choose a single strategy. I would say we performed 75% in this step because while we performed what is necessary in this step, we did it in a extremely disorganized fashion.
Step 4: Analyze alternatives and make a tactical plan
- We analyzed alternatives and came up with our final strategy. We discussed tactics such as how are we going to get the scissors, how we are going to build the contraption, however we did not allocate jobs and resources. Had we allocated jobs and resources, when it came time to build we would not have ended up fighting for the egg! WHICH WE DID! For this step we performed only 10% because allocating jobs and resources is critical to being organized and without the organization, when it came time to build, my team fell apart.
Step 5: Implement the plan and evaluate results
- Here we performed 100%. We did exactly what we had to do and even made adjustments to our planned strategy. However, because of our failure to meet all the requirements in step 4, our implementation in step 5 suffered. When the time was up, we rushed and panicked and as a result broke our egg before getting a chance at the 10 points extra credit!
This really was an exciting activity. I learned so much regarding planning and working with others. Even though we didn't even get a chance to step up to the plate, at least we had fun!
There are five critical steps in the planning process. Throughout this activity, my group definitely took all of them into account. However, even though we did take them into account, we did a poor job cooperating with one another which ultimately resulted in FAILURE!
Step 1: Define your goals and objectives...
- This step was easy to follow as the goals, objectives, and constraints were directly presented to us. Nonetheless, we succeeded 100% here.
Step 2: Determine current status compared to objectives
- We all knew our resources however we never took into account our strengths and weaknesses. It certainly would have helped had we delegated a leader because six people presenting their ideas in a free for all was extremely disorienting. However, this was probably tough to do for everyone due to the excitement and time constraints. I think we performed at about 20% in this step.
Step 3: Develop premises and several alternative strategies
- With so many ideas being thrown around, we definitely had at least several strategies. As people shared their ideas, we also discussed the strengths and weaknesses of them which is how we were able to choose a single strategy. I would say we performed 75% in this step because while we performed what is necessary in this step, we did it in a extremely disorganized fashion.
Step 4: Analyze alternatives and make a tactical plan
- We analyzed alternatives and came up with our final strategy. We discussed tactics such as how are we going to get the scissors, how we are going to build the contraption, however we did not allocate jobs and resources. Had we allocated jobs and resources, when it came time to build we would not have ended up fighting for the egg! WHICH WE DID! For this step we performed only 10% because allocating jobs and resources is critical to being organized and without the organization, when it came time to build, my team fell apart.
Step 5: Implement the plan and evaluate results
- Here we performed 100%. We did exactly what we had to do and even made adjustments to our planned strategy. However, because of our failure to meet all the requirements in step 4, our implementation in step 5 suffered. When the time was up, we rushed and panicked and as a result broke our egg before getting a chance at the 10 points extra credit!
This really was an exciting activity. I learned so much regarding planning and working with others. Even though we didn't even get a chance to step up to the plate, at least we had fun!
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