Decision Making

After we had received our grades from our first exam our professor had allowed us to decide amongst ourselves what we had wanted to do with the scores of the first exam.  We were also given the opportunity to make suggestions on how we wanted the next exam to be designed.  He gave us the power to make a proposal that the class would 100 percent agree on which he will grant if everything goes as planned.  If one person disagreed the proposal would be thrown out and we would be stuck with our old grades. We were given roughly around a half hour to get this completed.  Our final proposal consisted of receiving a curve, extra credit worth up to 10 points, and dropping the lowest test among the first two.  The test format would remain the same, however the essay would be marked as extra credit instead. 

Power rested in the hands of the students as it was up to us to come up with the proposal.  A couple of students had taken roles of leaders standing up in front of classroom picking on people to voice their ideas.  This created some sort of control in the room as opposed to people screaming left and right.  The time constraint definitely created more stress in the room.  Things overall were going smoothly a far as ideas were being thrown out.  There wasn’t much disagreeing although there was a lot of clarification that needed to be done.  People didn’t fully understand the ideas that were being proposed.  Personally I felt I did not say much openly in front of class. I didn’t feel the need to speak up since I felt everything I had to say was already being said, since majority of the people were speaking were the people that needed to get a better grade on the test, and I felt I was in that category as well.  However, I was speaking more amongst the classmates around me and did propose to class about combing all three ideas for the grade of exam.  There were people competing to win, those who strongly were fighting to get rid of the essay.  Overall I felt the decision making process in our class wasn’t that bad.  With the leaders in front of the class keeping things in control and having the final say in things made thins less chaotic and more organized.