Last week in the management class, professor gave the whole class a chance to decide how the exam is graded and the format for the next exam, as we did really bad in our first exam. Sounds really liberal, isn't it? The only criterion is that we have to come up with the 100% aggreement. If ONE of us disagree, the suggestion will be turned down. That could be really hard to reach the 100% agreement for 80 people.
Everyone has equal power, but not everyone plays equal in this game. Some people competes to win, they keep expressing their voice and hoping everyone else will agree with them. Some avoids to make decision, like one of guy wants to leave the classroom as he might feel really frustrate and think there is no way to come up with a good final decision. Most of us compromise, accommodate and collaborate in the process.
I personally take this role too. Part of it is because English is my second language. I perfer to let those who speak English fluently to bring up some ideas, as I know that the majority did bad in the exam, they will provide effective ones. The only thing I have to do mainly is to sit there and vote for the best solution. I won't be a bustard to object a suggestion if every else agrees on it. But I won't rise my hand for the ones I don't really like. It works. We come up to the alternative that we all satisfied.
The result is satisfatory. However, I believe we could get an ever more desirable result if we don't need to get 100% agreement. We all sitting there, looking around and hope there isn't any hand's up in the classroom when a desirable suggestion is out there. This is not fun at all. Like there is a term called Standard Error in statistic, why can't we have our 5% error?
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Chui Pik,
ReplyDeleteI completely disagree with you, however I do understand your reason for not participating in the activity because English is a second language for you. I think that we as a class got a great deal… I mean what more could we have ask for? I would have understood your argument about all of us agreeing or not agreeing on one solution, if anyone had objected, but the fact of the matter is no one objected. We don’t need a standard error of 5% if no one objected. On the other hand I do agree with you on that most of us use the compromise, accommodate and collaborate methods to get to our final solution. I don’t get your argument with the students who did raise their hands and shout out solutions, you said you didn’t want to participate because English is your second language; by the every act of you not wanting to participating you are dependent on the students (who gave solutions) to come up with the right solution for yourself as well. I hope I’m not too hard on you here, but I really don’t understand why anyone had a problem with the decision making exercise when in the end it benefited all of us except for our professor.
Ray Narine
Very astute of you to notice that everyone has equal power but that the balance of with whom exercises that power is not equal. Clearly those who are vocal and compete to win have a much greater degree of power than those who avoid the discussion, despite that the power given to them is in fact equal. I think the majority of people take the stance of compromising, accommodating and collaborating, or avoiding. I know that I personally do. However, as you pointed out, we all take these same stances for much different reasons. In your case you were almost forced into the role because English is a second language to you. However, in my case, I was not as active a participant because I did not believe that I had a tremendous stake in the situation, and my personality is far less outgoing than others. I like what you pointed out regarding some error. Since we need 100% of people to agree, there is tremendous pressure on everyone involved to agree to the terms. I would bet that if the professor would have allowed a limited amount of error, people would have actually voted against the proposal, and we may have in fact not gained anything. Perhaps in that manner it is good that we needed 100% agreement and not only 95%. That 5% deviation would have enticed those unhappy with the result to voice their opinion and vote against the proposal.
ReplyDeleteI read both of the comments above me as well as the comment you've made on my blog. I thought it was interesting that you pointed out English being your second language. I was thinking that is it really English being your second language stopped you from participating or was it like the way you said on my blog. Just out of curiosity because English is actually my second language as well but it didn't bother me or made me believed that I should not voice out my opinion.
ReplyDeleteLike I've mentioned on my blog, I just thought that the ideas that were floating around the room were well proposal and extra ideas weren't really needed because we already are asking a lot from the professor.
So what do you were you really thinking? (Please I'm just wondering what you think since we were both in some what of a similar situation.
I do agree with you to some extend. Everyone has an equal voice some students just chose not to raise there voice due to various reasons. I think that it doesn’t matter if English is your second language, especially because that’s the case for the majority of us, you should still have said something if you wanted something that wasn’t brought up already. I know it might seem easier said than done but you should speak up next time if you are not 100% satisfied. I don’t agree with you about leaving 5% deviation for unhappy students. It would have made things just more complicated and would have prevented us all from being happy with the end result. This way no one can be unhappy cause in the end we all agreed on all of the terms, right! I really thought we did well as a class; sure in the beginning it was chaotic but we pulled it together and got a great deal.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I agree with you that there is certainly a more desirable idea that is more satisfactory. Of course, most of students want the exam to be as simple as possible, but as the guy who led us in the class had said, we also have to consider about ethical issue. It’s really a test we all have to go through, and we should all study hard about it. And I’m content with the result as long as the next exam will not be as tricky as the last one.
ReplyDeleteI think it's interesting how you brought up the 5% error from statistics, because I would've never thought about it that way. It is hard to reach 100% agreement, which we did at the end, but what kind of challenge would it be if we didnt have to reach 100% agreement? And when you mentioned that English is your second language, I totally understand. But even if English was your first language, I don't think it would've made a difference, since those that were shouting made it so much more difficult and frustrating to voice ourselves. I personally tried to say something but no one could hear me due to the shouting, so I just shut up and tried to wait it out. So I don't think we are completely just sitting there not doing anything.
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