Last week we found out our grades for the first midterm, and many students were disappointed with their performance (I am not speaking for myself here as I am perfectly satisfied). So the professor agreed to calm the students down by letting them come up with alternative solutions of how the exams should be graded. However, the catch was that the solution had to be "reasonable" and most importantly, there had to be a 100% class agreement.
Personally, I used a combination of accommodation and avoidance to handle the chaos during the decision-making activity. I was accommodative because the final decision had a greater impact on my classmates than me (as I received a perfect score). So I would agree to almost anything the class would vote for. I have to admit I did not like the “multiple multiple” choice part of the exam, and I am glad everyone voted to change it to a more manageable multiple choice section. I also used avoidance because I did not believe we could get a 100% approval from the class given everyone’s ambitions and priorities. Almost always, there was one person who had a different opinion and would screw everyone else up. Nevertheless, I am satisfied with the result we have achieved.
Given the time constraint, I think our general strategy to achieve the goal was working well. Despite some drawbacks, we were actually able to complete the task successfully. I believe in the end, when the time came to the final vote, many students in the class used compromise as they realized that getting something is better than getting nothing. In this case, an option of the curve, the lowest exam grade being dropped and a different version of “multiple multiple” choice questions is a better deal than not having anything at all.
