It's Getting Closer...

This week we talked about the Delphi Technique in class. This is when the leader of the group sends out an e-mail to everyone in the group and asks them to send him/her their ideas and s/he compiles the ideas and sends them back out. The group looks over the ideas individually and sends the leader back their opinions. This technique bypasses groupthink by allowing the best decision to be made because of the anonymity between the group members and their opinions. I really like this technique because I have always felt that people just go with any idea that is proposed just so that the decision is made instead of finding the best choice.
This past week we printed off all of our fliers for our service learning project. I have posted my fliers around campus and have even seen it catch people's eyes. I have also written on some chalkboards to get the word out that way. This Wednesday and Thursday we will be fulfilling our goal of serving the community through our connections with the YWCA.

---DLM---

problem solving

This week in class was came at us quick it seemed. We started a problem solving task force and was given a scenerio with only 28 hours to come up with a solution, and on top of that we were assigned a whole new group to work with. And on top of that, we are evaluating another member in the class over their group work. It just seemed like too much, with other classes and assigments and all. But our new group worked very well in putting together a solution proposal with minimal time. It was a good taste of what the real world will be like, having quick approachign deadlines and needing to get them done. We came up with a solid proposal and presentation as a group and we are ready to present it tomorrow in class. It was intresting though evaluating another member of the class. It is different being on the other side looking in, thinking about who is contributing and how they are doing that. It got me thinking about it when I was working in our own group as well. I feel that it made me put forth more of an effort when working in my group.

Andrew Ferrel

Task Force Extreme

This week working on the Problem Solving Task force was a little bit of a crazy project. I feel like we were just thrown into the project and had to figure out what to do on our own. It was hard to figure out what to do within fifteen minutes. We only had fifteen minutes to meet with our group face to face. This meant that we not only hdad to figure out how to solve the problem, but we also had to organize ourselves so that we could present to the class. Luckily in my goup everyone stayed on task and we were able to figure out what we wanted to do, as well as give each other our contact information. I think that the goal was to make the situation as real life as possible, but I feel like even in a real crisis a group would have a little longer than fifteen minutes. Even with the short time period I feel that our group was successful with our presentation. Everyone did a good job with their part and we all worked well together for not have ever working together. The project was a good learning experience, however I felt that it was just a little rushed.

The Guardians of B230 had a eventless week. This next week we will be advertising for our event and posting flyers and making announcements. Hopefully the word about our project gets out and we can collect alot of cell phones for the YWCA.

Zach Myers

What's the Story, Fishbone?

Fishbone diagrams are a big help in manufacturing, I know. I was glad to see that we read about fishbone diagrams for class because that was one section I did not have to pay a whole lot of attention to because I am already familiar with it.
When I was a Co-op student in a manufacturing plant, we engineers would use the fishbone technique to find potential causes for miscellaneous things. For example, when our production line did not make the day's quota at the end of the day, it was necessary to find out why. I thought it was funny to see that Kaoru Ishikawa mentioned the "four M's" that problems boil down to because they were all true. Manpower, Materials, Methods, and Machines were all causes of our production line not meeting the daily quota! First, the manpower was never consistent. People would not show up for work, or show up late, or abuse their FMLA (Family & Medical Leave Act) rights, or just not work! Second, several materials were outsourced, so sometimes we would not get the shipment in on time, or the shipment had bad parts in it, or we ruined the materials ourselves. Third, the methods we used were typical industry standards, but they would fail sometimes too because of safety reasons and such. Last, machines would constantly fail. Electronics do fail. When machines go down, they could be down for 5 minutes (which seems insignificant, but cost us $8,000 per minute in sales) or be down for 6 hours (which REALLY got executives upset).
The bottom line is that the fishbone diagram helps to sort out and organize the possible causes for the problem. The fishbone diagram does not solve the problem because extra work is required after the causes are sought out to observe the causes and to implement the changes to make sure the problem "never happens again".

---DLM---

Moon Exercise

This week we did an exercise in class dealing with our opnion of importance when stranded on the moon. We were given a list of 15 items that we could take with us, and we had to rank them from the most important to the least important. First we ranked them as an individual. Then we got together within our group and ranked them, then as a class compared how we ranked the items. It was very interesting the way that some people in the class ranked things. When I looked at the list, I thought about just myself taking these items and getting to the space station. But what I didn't think about was finding a way for all of the other people stranded to get back to the space station as well. I looked at this as supplies most important for me and what they could be used for, instead of how they can be used as a group. I began relfeting back on previous groups that I have worked in, and realize that I have the tendancy to do this sometimes, and I need to stop and take the time to think about how can I help the group rather than myself sometimes.

As far as our group project goes, David secured our spot in the Stewart Center and we are now just waiting to start advertising. We will be getting together as a group this week to perfect our flyer and start putting them up around campus. We also hope to get a facebook group created as well. As of now, things for our project are running smoothly.

Andrew Ferrel

Fallacious

This Wednesday, in class, we talked about fallacies. Fallacies are my favorite part about communication because they are used all the time by everyone but most people do not even realize they are being fallacious. I also just really like the word "fallacious". In class we talked about causal fallacies, either-or fallacies, bandwagon fallacies, hasty generalizations, and the red-herring fallacy. Of these, my favorite is the bandwagon fallacy; where everybody does what someone else is doing. It is not my favorite to use, but my favorite to hate when others use it.
My whole life, my father has been pounding Words of Wisdom into me and one of his favorites is, "Right is right, even if nobody else is doing it. Wrong is wrong, even if everyone else is doing it." From this Word of Wisdom, it can be seen that jumping on the bandwagon when you know something is wrong, is wrong. However, jumping on the bandwagon is not always bad.
Another Word of Wisdom my father gives me is, "In matters of opinion, go with the flow. In matters of principle, stick to your guns." From this latter Word of Wisdom, it can be seen that if a situation arises where what happens doesn't matter, its okay to jump on the bandwagon. For example, if your buddies order a pizza with pepperoni on it, but you wanted sausage, go with the flow and just pick off the pepperoni.

---DLM---

Stranded on the Moon!

This week we did an activity in class that dealt with decision making skills in our group. The scenario was to imagine that you had been stranded on the moon and had to get back to the mother ship. We had a list of fifteen supplies and had to arrange the supplies from the most important to the least important. Then we would compare our individual and group answers against the real answers. By myself I found it easy to decide, because I just thought about myself and no one else's life. I think in many situations it is easier to make a decision when you are not responsible for others. This plays into my real life as well because I am married. Now that I am married the decisions that I make on a daily basis do not only effect what I do but also my wife. It makes me think twice before deciding to do or not to do something. I always keep in mind how this will effect my wife. As a group it was interesting to hear every ones take on what was important to them in terms of the supply list. We had a lot of things in common, but we did have to use consensus on a couple of items in order to rank it appropriately. I believe that getting everyone to agree on a specific idea is ideal, but does not always happen. When it does not happen I tend to lean towards a majority rule decision. I know that this leaves some people out, but I have been on both sides of majority rule decision and that is just part of life. Part of growing up and being a responsible adult is being okay with not always getting things your way. You have to be able to accept new ideas and just move forward.

Our group project is coming along, and we actually kind of took it easy this week. We did not have any deadlines that we needed to meet so we did not see a need to really work on anything. Thanks goes out to David for getting our spot in Stewart Center locked down, and to Jasmine for helping us out with that. We have planned to meet sometime next week to prepare our flyers so that they are ready to be posted a week before our event. It was a good week, but I think that fall break showed me how tired I am and that I am still trying to get back into the swing of things after the break.

Zach Myers

The Semester is Flying By!

This week in class, so far, we learned about how to prepare to collaborate. Something new that I learned about was causal reasoning. Causal reasoning is relating two or more events together by showing how one event caused the other. I thought that was an interesting type of reasoning. I also liked the various examples we talked about in class about being aware of the fact that there may be little evidence to connect the two events together that you are trying to use for causal reasoning. As far as communication goes, I think that being an ethical communicator is an extremely important quality to have when working in a group environment. I've worked with groups in the past where certain members of the group would say one thing, but never follow through on their commitments. This was both frustrating and time consuming when trying to pick up the slack that they left off.
So far the project is still coming along nicely. Now that the proposal is out of the way I feel that it's just a matter of time before I am going to look around and think wow this semester is already over and everything worked out! I am excited to see how many cell phones we can collect, and I know, regardless of the quantity, it will help the women at the YWCA.

-Katherine

Projects, Proposals, and Presentations

This week has been very productive both in the group and in the class as a whole. As we polished our project ideas into a completed proposal and prepared for the group presentation, I don't think any of us were aware at how beneficial the entire process was to our group. Completing the proposal as a group brought us together as we combined ideas to create a successful project pitch. I also really enjoyed and was a little surprised by the group activity where we worked to negotiate our presentation date and time. I was surprised at how quickly our group came to an honest consensus, and that we were the only group that wanted to present first, which proved to be an easy position to negotiate for. When it came time to present, we were prepared and made a good presentation to our peers. I was a little nervous for the question and answer segment, but I feel that we did a good job of answering every question completely, and I didn't think we had any really difficult questions, which must mean that we know our project well.

Relieved to have finished our presentation, I looked forward to relaxing through the rest of the proposals in the class. However, I was pleasantly surprised at the time and effort that everyone else had also put into their projects and their presentations, and I found myself really interested in the ideas of the other groups. I was impressed by each project's creativity and individuality. Despite there being two groups doing projects with the same organization, the Girls and Boys Club, I don't find it hard to distinct between the two projects - one with a sports theme at an outdoor event, and another with a Halloween theme at an indoor event. I feel like these presentations have brought us together as a class because everyone understands how hard the other groups are working respects what everyone else is doing. If I had a less hectic month of October, I would definitely look into helping the other groups out with their endeavors, as I hope they would do for ours.

-Melissa

Doing Work!

The Guardians of B230 did some great work this weekend and this week. I was happy with our written proposal and with our presentation. We scheduled meetings and then just went right to work on what needed to be done. Our plan is finally coming together and we have really got the ball rolling. Our project has a lot of potential, but I believe it will be completely driven by the advertising that we are able to do. Our one main fear is that we will not have a good turn out for this event. Hopefully we can combat this with things like a facebook group, flyers, and announcements in classes. The cell phones are going to a good cause and I believe that will be the message that will really need to be conveyed. I really enjoyed getting to hear the other ideas that the small groups in our class have. My personal favorite from the class (besides ours) is the Starting Five's project. I think that The Starting Five is really well organized and that they have a good plan. Also the games that they have planned for the Boys and Girls Club sounds like a lot of fun. Who knows maybe I will even want to come help out. I also found it kind of cool that the other three groups all had a project related to Halloween. Halloween is a fun holiday and it is neat to think of it at as time to give back to the community instead of a time to receive. My only complaint about this week, was the bad Lafayette weather and the fact that it made me so tired.

Thanks,
Zach Myers

Post 3: Reflections

This week in another class I found myself relfecting on some of the things that we have been learning about in Com320. In this other class, four other group members and myself are responsible for doing our own research, then we are tying it all together into one big paper. We are all doing our part to work towards a common goal. Well for a couple people in a group, this seems to be a problem. They are not pulling their weight. This is frustrating the rest of us in the group, as the deadline for the paper is approaching quickly. Given the theories that we have learned in class about conflict, negotiation, and resolution, we were able to meet last evening to discuss the problem. We were able to calmly discuss without conflict, negotiate until we found our solution, and worked together as a team to try to finish our project. We do not feel that we will have any more problems with people slacking and we hope that our research and our paper is done well and turned in on time.
It is instances like these that make me thankful that our Com320 group works well together and gets things done without somebody dragging our group down. We are now into week three of our service learning project. We have our plan of action approved, and our next step will be working on advertisement and getting our booth set up.

Andrew Ferrel

My BATNA

In class on Monday, we learned about Roger Fisher and William Ury developing the BATNA technique. BATNA stands for the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement. Your BATNA can be seen as your point of leverage in a negotiation. For example, I know I can sell my guitar to my brother for $1,500, so when other people offer to buy it, I can demand more than that. Therefore, my BATNA would be my deal between my brother and me. It was published in Fisher and Ury's book "Getting to Yes." I had never heard of this book before, but I know how important negotiating is, so I am going to go to Half Price Books and see if they have it. My grandpa was a great negotiator and so is my dad, so between what they have taught me and what I can learn from the book I ought to make a pretty good negotiator myself one day. I'm kind of excited...
We, The Guardians of B230, presented our service learning project proposal to the CEO and Board of Directors today. Afterwards, during the question and answer session, I realized that we had good plans on what to do but had failed to realize smaller details, such as how many phones the YWCA needs. Small things like that need to be ironed out before the project unfolds so that there are not any major wrinkles when the time comes to fulfill our project. I still, honestly, believe that our group is a fantastic group because of the respect we have for each other, everyone's open mindedness to the group's ideas, and by always avoiding groupthink by weighing every option.

---DLM---

Week 2 Group Progress

We discussed earlier this week about conflict and how we should start maybe pointing out some of the negative things occuring within our group. But at this point, I really can not think of any conflict happening between any group members. We have been able to establish a service learning project this week, and have also been able to put into place a plan of action and set up dates that we all can be able to put on our project. I won't repeat the plan any further because other memebers in my group have described in very good detail our plan of action, and our reasons for putting on the event. Our group meetings have been very effective, and we work effieciently together. Even when group members are absent from our meetings, everyone in our group is understanding, no conflict arises, and we work progressively and effieciently to our goal. That I think says a lot about the type of people we have in our group. At this point I think we are a very good group and I am anxious to see our project succeed.

Andrew Ferrel

Giving Back

This week in class we had an activity where we decided what to do with the spare change brought in by the class. Our group came up with a few fun ideas before settling for the option that eventually won the popular vote, which was to give the money back to everyone. However, before we settled on this decision, we also thought about giving the money to the homeless guy on State Street, which led to further conversation bringing our group together with the symbolic convergence theory. We each shared our own stories about "State Street Steve" as he is called, and even though the conversation wasn't very productive toward our goal of deciding what to do with the money, it was fun to share stories with each other and bond as a group over a common theme. Oddly enough, another group chose to give the money to State Street Steve, so it appears we have a lot in common with our group members as well as other groups in the class. I thought the activity was a good way to practice decision making in our groups because it was more than just a scenario that was made up by the teacher; we were deciding what to do with actual money and the results of our decision would have a real impact on the class.

In other news, our project is taking shape very nicely. We are meeting tonight to put together our proposal and our presentation, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the other group members have to contribute. At this point we're all getting excited about helping people through our cell phone drive and seeing the results of advertising within the community.

-Melissa Evans

We're not playing follow the leader!

My take on the idea of groupthink by William H. Whyte, Jr. is that often to many times we follow suite of others that are in our small group. For example last week when I wrote my blog I had the advantage of being able to read others in my group who had already written their blog for the week. I decided to keep my blog looking and sounding very similar to the others in my group, because it was very comfortable and required me to think less. In class when we were talking about group think it made me take a step back and realize how many times in my life I just go with the flow, even though I may have a better idea or want to do something else. It is good to be able to agree and use others ideas, but I now know I need to make sure that myself and everyone in the group agrees with the decisions that are made. I found this quick youtube video that explains group think a little bit better through a Sociology 100 course study, that is performed by students. In the beginning they ask a girl about how many hours she studies. Her answer changes however when she enters a small group atmosphere to conform her answers closer to those in the group.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EooVqjISJHw

I wanted to also update everyone on the progress that our group had this weak. We had been slacking off a little bit, but we have now picked up the pace and have decided to work with the YWCA (which David talks about in his post). We will be collecting used cell phones, preferable that still work or just need a battery. If you know of anyone that has a phone or you yourself

have one we would be glad to donate it to the YWCA. Go out and tell all of your friends, because I believe that word of mouth can be some of the best marketing available. I sincerely have no negative comments about our group and it has been really nice to work in a group where everyone gets along and is focused on the goal.

Thanks,

Zach Myers

YWCA For a Better Life

At the beginning of this week, our group had an idea of what we wanted to do for the final service project but we had not officially made any important decisions. Now it is easy, and safe, to say that we have come a long way in our plans and commitments for this project. We met as a group Wednesday evening and came up with all the plans. The YWCA is excited to have us volunteer for them, and I am proud of our small group for helping out a class that is easily over-looked in our society.
The abused women at the YWCA are in a class of their own, a group, if you will. Although their group spans several countries, they all share the same common theme. This is where the symbolic convergence theory steps in, because each member shares true stories, and that is what shapes their group's identity. These women may feel locked up in an emotional sense, unable to communicate the way they'd like to. By providing the phones the Guardians of B230 and the Purdue community will, these women can open up and communicate freely.

---DLM---

KS - Week 2

This week we worked on getting everything ready for the proposal on Monday and working out all of the details for our project. Our group met yesterday (Wednesday) night, but unfortunately I was unable to make the meeting due to prior committments in my senior design class. Our group found out about a program through the YWCA that collects old cell phones to give to abused women, and Melissa is going to call and see if we can collect phones to help out. Hopefully this will work out, and I think that it is a great idea to volunteer for. We decided on the days that we are going to set up our table (Nov. 4th and 5th) and the times that we will be sitting there. I think that our project is shaping up nicely, and that our group is committed to getting everything completed in a timely fashion.

-Katherine