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This week found my mind bouncing back and forth between our required readings and my own standout experience of a group decision making module that I still remember after more than 20 years!

The readings covered a wide range of training and instructional modules that used the guided design method.  At the University of Idaho, first year engineering students were taught concepts such as professionalism through the presentation of open-ended scenarios/problems.  Most of these case studies required that a series of decisions be made; many times new decisions were based on the results that occurred from prior decisions - thus serial decisions were required. The report from the University of Arizona found that most teams will make superior decisions to that of an individual.  However, they did have some maverick individuals that performed well and some renegade teams that failed miserably.  Trivette's comparison of several studies measured the efficacy of guided design in great detail and found guided design as an effective and student valued instructional model in a wide variety of disciplines. 

Although many of my college classes incorporated case studies in our courses; there were none that made such an impact on me as the real life model scenario game that was introduced to us in an Economics course.  Economic theories are often explained - "when all other things are held constant, this will occur..."  The problem with that is all other things are never held constant.  A theory presented in a vacuum does not reflect real world outcomes.  To give us a more realistic view of how the introduced economic theories evolve in a real world, our professor assigned us to groups that competed against each other for the A!  The scenario game was a beautifully written computer program that imitated all the aspects of running a business from issuing common stock to developing a new product and purchasing raw materials for the production of goods.  Each group's decisions and actions had an impact on the other groups - think the Toyota accelerator fiasco and recent stock market reactions to global currency fluctuations, quarterly earnings announcements and unemployment rate reports!

I was very impressed with the University of Idaho's use of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  Their program was further enhanced by administering the Myers-Briggs personality test with a follow up by a psychologist that taught a segment on how to interact with different personality types.  I thought this was fantastic!  Between all the articles, I also read about the importance of team input, group dynamics, the importance of each member being willing to listen and talk, and how guided design encourages learning by engaging students through case studies. All the readings mentioned the benefit of combining content knowledge and critical thinking skills.

Although it was acknowledged that there are really no study insights on the intragroup dynamics, this was part of what was most important to me and what I remember most about the Economics game that I played back in the early 80s.  At one point I was actually quite disturbed that most of the members in my group were wiling to defer all decisions to a confident, strong willed, and outspoken, older man in our group.  He immediately became our group expert.  Most of the group members were quite complacent and lacked confidence in their understanding of the material, so they were quite willing to accept our "expert's" decisions.  At one point I was so certain that our "leader" was steering us in the wrong direction, I consulted with my professor on how to overcome the problem.  I was quite competitive in those days, so I individually spoke with each of the other team members to convince them to cast a different vote at our next group meeting - a mutiny of sorts.  In the end our team made an A for our efforts.  And, I feel certain that my actions contributed to that final grade.  Wonder how our group "expert" remembers the experience?