Today's session (17 October 2016)

Hi everyone

Today was our practical day, as we applied our problem solving and decision making knowledge to The Ball Game and The Great Egg Throw.

(You will be asked about both of these exercises in Assignment 4 so, if you missed today’s class, please ask your classmates about what they experienced).

Both The Ball Game and The Great Egg Throw are opportunities for you to reflect on the ‘book learning’ that you have done so far, as part of this paper. What I would like you to do, is to think about how useful these various PSDM models and techniques are in solving ‘everyday’ problems.

Quite often we just ‘do’ something when confronted by a problem. There may be no obvious process of identify-define-explore-action, DECIDE or ‘applying the scientific method’ in these situations. Today was an opportunity to solve a problem, to make decisions and to reflect on how the theory works in practice.

We started with The Ball Game. This is a simple exercise in which a team has to pass a ball between them in a shorter and shorter period of time. Between attempts we asked team members to explain what is going on and to describe the process that they are using.

On our first attempt, the team took about 16 seconds to pass the ball eight times. The team quickly got this down to seven seconds and finally to less than two seconds. However, along the way, the team had to try different methods / solutions to achieve better and better times.

As the pressure went on to reduce the time taken to pass the ball, the team had to find new / better ways to complete the task. The earlier methods used were time-consuming and offered little opportunity to reduce the time down to the target time of less than two seconds. This required a mix of critical evaluation of the rules of the ball game and creative input to find a workable solution.

Some things for you to think about include:

* Whether you used any identifiable process to accomplish the task?

* What steps you took to get your time down from 16 seconds to less than two seconds?

* Whether there are any applicable decision making models that helped you?

* Were there any particular problem solving techniques that you used during the exercise?

Often we begin solving a problem by starting with a ‘familiar’ solution which we have seen before, such as standing in a circle to pass the ball. As the task becomes more difficult (but still straight-forward) we might introduce critical thinking to help shape our solution. This approach is logical and sequential (e.g. we can pass the ball quicker if we stand closer together and if we practice our passing technique). If the task becomes ‘unrealistically’ difficult (e.g. get you time down to under two seconds) then we need to think more creatively by checking our objectives, questioning the rules and / or finding new ways of doing things. Our method of passing the ball through multiple hands was quite different at the end of the exercise from what it had been at the start!

We then took a short break and when we came back we moved on to The Great Egg Throw.

The Great Egg Throw (hereafter GET, for short) is a team challenge in which you need to devise a way to throw a raw egg further than any other team, without breaking the egg. Each team is given a raw egg (wrapped in gladwrap!) and roughly an hour in which to scavenge any resources that they needed to complete the task successfully. Each team was also given an instruction sheet with various additional rules (e.g. stay on the campus; don’t use the faculty admin office; make sure that you behave ethically and responsibly; etc.)

Before the teams started, I also gave you some other tasks and challenges to consider along the way. For instance, I noted that you had at least two problems to solve here (and maybe more than that, depending on your point-of-view). When you reflect on your performance after the event, you might like to think about some of the following:

* Planning the best solution to the GET (this is the Task Problem)

* Finding resources which could help you (this is the Resource Problem)

* Examining how you make your group decisions during this exercise

* Considering ethical and socially responsible activity during this exercise.

There are also various PSDM decisions which you may need to make along the way. For instance, how did your group handle disagreements or different opinions? Did your group solve problems by making:

* Random decisions?

* Take turns deciding?

* Delegated authority?

* Shared discussion?

* Participatory voting?

* Consensus (unanimous; disagree and commit)?

You might also like to think about ethics and social responsibility affect your choices, with regard to:

* Ownership of the resources and materials which you used in the GET?

* Permission to use these resources and materials?

* Safety?

* Fair / unfair?

* Sustainability?

* Wastage?

* Clean up?

(In previous years, each team has been asked to test their activity against one of four PSDM models which we have discussed in class and you might like to try this in your own time, using some of the models that you are familiar with.)

We also had a brief discussion today about Assignment 4 (the Test). I mentioned that one of my objectives with this paper is to encourage you to think expansively about how you might arrive at solutions to apparent problems. It is one thing to ‘do’ a paper on PSDM but if you aren’t applying what you have learned to everyday problems then it all remains rather ‘academic’.

So, if Assignment 4 looks like a lot of work, are there ways in which you can make it manageable (without breaching academic standards)? We know that the test questions are available to students ahead of the actual test day and that I am open to people working collaboratively to accomplish tasks. As a tutor, I need to see that your work is your own (i.e. that can you complete the Test successfully as individuals) and that you can demonstrate understanding of the topic that we are studying. However, there is nothing to stop the class working in collaborative ways to prepare for the Test (in fact, we do this every Monday afternoon in class!) and we discussed some other ways in which you might do this, in your own time.

As with most problems, the challenge is to find effective solutions that work for you and the people around you!

Finally, remember also that next Monday (14 October) is a holiday, so the campus will be closed. The next time we meet will be on Monday 21 October, when we start on the class presentations for Assignment 2.

Cheers

Phil