Decisons Decisons

This past Monday’s class was just as chaotic and crazy as the egg drop class we had. It started out great; we had one person in front of the class, with some leadership capabilities, leading the class in a somewhat organized class discussion. This leader took on the “compromise” method. He was more of a mediator then anything else, and didn’t put his input into what was going on. He listened and tried basically lead the class in one collective direction. I personally took the stance of the “accommodation” method. Once I saw that we would have a curve, it placed me in a position where I didn’t have to worry much about what was going to happen next. From there on I knew I basically achieved what I wanted from the discussion, so I decided to just sit there and let everyone else argue it out amongst themselves. As for my classmates, I saw a variation of different methods that they applied. Some took on the same accommodation stance as I did. Others went into avoidance; they neither participated nor listened to what was going on. This is something that really bothered me because when it came time to vote, they didn’t know what the class had come up with nor understand it. When a 99 percent majority vote in one direction came down to one person who wasn’t listening at all to what we were voting on, and instead of just raising their hand, they have the audacity to argue something they obviously know nothing about, it gets annoying. In the beginning of the class as soon as we were given the time to discuss, the person with the highest grade in the class stood up, not only as the first leader, but the person with the best idea. He said that we should break up into small groups and then have leaders of those small groups present the ideas we came up with. This idea was what I thought at the time would have been the best and most efficient idea. Unfortunately, the class shot him down right away, and he went into accommodation as well.

Crash and BURN !!

The objective of the proposed exercise was to build an egg protection device. There were only three rules. The most important objective of the whole project was for the egg not to break. Well when I titled this entry as crash and burn, its because our team effort did just that. We worked so horribly together that our egg protection device didn't even make it to the testing part, because our egg broke while being mishandled amongst our group members. To start of during our planning phase, we efficiently wrote our names on the piece of paper as required, and named the egg. Then we all just started throwing out ideas, some were liked by members of the group more then others. Although collectively we couldn't come up with a a design. So we did complete step 1. We knew what we needed to do, and we also knew we were very far away from that destination. As a group collectively we did not go through with step 2. Resources weren't and strengths weren't brought out to light. It was more like a shout fest of what should be done by each member of the group. We did implement step 3 into all of our proposed designs. We kept trying to understand how each design would react to the experiment. There were disagreements among which design would work best. Step 4 was not completed by the group. There were no designated roles handed out besides the person that would be participating in the experiment, even that was changed last minute. Step 5 was an all out free for all. People were grabbing, shouting, and arguing. Some group members became discouraged and just sit their quietly, while other members tried to make the experiment work. The design was re designed over and over until there was 3 minutes left and, some strange looking contraption was formulated. The egg was push and pulled to many times, it met its demise while awaiting testing, in the hands of a group member. WHAT A DISASTER.
How could the project have been more successful and effective? One major thing was that a leader should have been implemented. Roles should have been designated. We should have had a leader, and a builder at least. Probably a little more knowledge of physics by some of the group members would have made the project a little easier, as we had designs that were completely opposite of each other. Overall it had to be one of the worst team efforts I have ever encountered in my life.