Decision Making & Conflict Resolution

One of the major issues with decision-making process that occurred in class was that they were many different views from almost every student in this class. It was almost as if we were in a parliament with many different factions operation at the same time.
The method of conflict resolution that I used the most was accomodation. I really did not have anything to lose or gain through the debates that were taking place at the time. I however did not want to see everyone in the class lose out on an oppurtunity to improve their grades. I did believe that the exam was difficult because of the way it was set-up, mainly because it was in a way that Baruch students were not used to. However, even though I supported the class getting a higher grade, my friend however did not. This friend argued that if you earned the grade, you should keep it, and that if the class were to recieve a higher grade then it would make this person's grade meaningless. Even though her aregument had merits, I realize that it was just who I am to see that other succeed and the it was just who my friend was. It was a diffeence off opinion that was probably ingrained in out respective personalities that made our veiw points radically different.
Given what I know now, I would have probably used a mediator - a thrid party whom every would respect and listen to well enough to have ease the conflict and ultimately avoid it altogether, that would most likely lead to a beneficial outcome for all parties involved. I would say someone who is in a position of authority, whether implicit or explict, who could command enought respect to guide the situation in the desired direction. This would have been better becuase this may have avoided unnecessary confrontation that resulted because of lack of direction. In essense it was a free-for-all battle royale between people with different view on what we should expect to get form the process, and i believe a mediator could have been used to act as a referee so that the 'fighting' remained fair to all of the students.

Group Planning Dynamics

The first thing that my group did was to let those members who had previous related experience to offer any insight into how we may successfully accomplish the goal that was set for us. Each member offered and example of how to design a contraption that would allow the egg to fall without breaking using out extremely limited resources. In essense we defined what our objective we in an abstract way but basically drawing essentially the same design for the egg cage. We were constantly aware of aour time constraints and worked as efficiently as possible to built a final product while at the same time making the necessary adjustments to the product we were constructing. In terms of trying to figure out future premises that would be included in the development of our egg cage, I would honestly say we completely over-looked that possibility. We had initally a vague idea for "Plan A" and as we progess furthur, our only goal was to make "Plan A". We were so focused on the here and now we completely disregarded "plan B." However, in a situation such as this working an a "plan B" would have been a distraction due to the obvious time constraints. We allowed ourselves to be flexible in our construction instead of delegating specific jobs to individual group members. This allow us to save time that would have been used in the delegation of task and allowed those who had the specific skills needed to design and/or implement to project to come foward and actively be involved in the project.
In conclusion, I would that the reason we were successful in design the egg cage was our group dynamic that was brought out in the planning process. We did not follow and exact guideline for planning a project; we allow ourselves to become flexible in our planning to allow us to accomplish the task presented to us.