Chapter 11& 12 Question #2

An example that I can think of when I used the collaborative approach to conflict resolution is at work. Because a lot of my co-workers are full-time students like me, we have certain work schedules. For instance, I go to class Tuesdays and Thursdays so I work Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. And there's three other girls who have the opposite schedule. However, last semester, my finals ended up being on Monday/ Wednesday which caused a conflict because there was no one to cover for me. As soon as I told my supervisor of the situation, I saw a look of panic on her face. In this instance, I decided to try and talk to my professors to let me take the finals on different days so I could still be able to work. This ended up working in both our favors because it spared my manager stress over coverage as well as gave me an extra day to study (Win-win situation) :).
On a related note, I had a situation where instead of using a collaborative method, I used a competitive conflict resolution. Around January of this year, we had one person quit which freed up some hours. Instead of having my manager split the hours between the other 3 girls, I approached my manager telling him I thought I deserved more hours based on my recent performance and great work ethic. Apparently I was really convincing because I ended up getting promoted to more hours than I initially wanted! Overall, it was my competitiveness and self-interest which landed me the promotion. There were other girls who also wanted more hours but ultimately lost due to their lackluster performance.

Chapter 11& 12 Question #3

The concept I found useful in this week's reading was in chapter 11 regarding creative decision making techniques. One of the techniques listed in the reading is the concept of role playing. This is something I have plenty of experience with in my work place. Although I agree with the idea behind role playing, I feel silly doing it. At my work, we constantly have to role play and participate in scenarios where we try to sell customers certain products. For instance, my manager always pulls every associate away and has us role play a “real life” situation with a disgruntled customer. The purpose of our type of role playing is to try to convert non-customers to get one of our products whether it be a checking account, savings account, credit card, or even a simple financial review with a personal banker. Although our role playing can be helpful, I find some flaws in our method because at the end of every role play scenario, the “customer” always ends up getting the product and leaving happy. In reality, this does not always happen so it is not as helpful as it should be. However, I think that if done correctly, role playing can be an important tool in problem solving and decision making. For instance, recently, when I play the role of the customer, I ask more questions and make it harder for my manager to try and sell me the product. This causes him to come up with a different approach and try harder to please the customer. Overall, role playing is useful because it allows for people to come up with alternative methods of approaching difficult situations.

Chapter 10 Question #2

As mentioned in the text, the five cultural barriers to creativity include: requirement for conformity, expectation of practicality and efficiency,particular arenas for competition or cooperation, an expectation of politeness and following the rules of social order, and reliance on expert knowledge. I believe there are various reasons that these barriers keep groups from being creative however, the one that stands out the most to me is the requirement for conformity. I have experienced many situations that have kept groups I've been apart of from being creative. In all honesty, I have been one of the group members who chose to conform instead of taking the creative route. I believe a big part in me not going the extra mile to be creative is simply because I did not think the rest of the group would appreciate or like my ideas as much as I did. Unfortunately, many people tend to not pay attention to anyone else's ideas besides their own so sometimes that makes the other people in the group just go along with whatever the rest of the group thinks to make things easier Also, in a recent experience, I had to do a group presentation involving a powerpoint. One person in my group had the idea to show a video within the powerpoint and I didn't really agree because I thought it was too much, and would probably be complicated to set up within our 8 minute presentation. Although I voiced my opinion, the group still decided to go along with the video. And as I predicted, when attempting to show the video, we had technical difficulties and did not end up playing it. This can tie into the expectation of practicality and efficiency because instead of being creative (using a video instead of just talking to the class) I wanted to be practical and efficient. 

Chapter 10 Question #3

This week I liked learning about guidelines for creative problem solving on page 164. The text states that these guidelines include keeping an open mind; withholding premature judgements; looking at problems in new ways as opportunities, rather than obstacles; accepting different opinions; avoiding too heavy reliance on logic; allowing for ambiguity; being willing to break the rules; and asking “what if?”. I found these very fascinating and useful to anyone who wants to be a successful problem solver (everyone!). I find that a lot of times, people are stuck in their ways and refuse to change their method of thinking and so they are not as successful as they could be. For instance, my father has had his own construction business for over 20 years. Yet, at times he finds it hard to maintain business and increase his profit. My dad is very “old school” and is not open to change even though my siblings and I try to convince him he will be much more successful if he changes his practices a bit. For instance, my brother, who has a degree in finance, constantly tries to get my dad to revise his bookkeeping/accounting strategies to increase his profits. However, my dad thinks that because he has been in the business for so long, he knows what is best, and my brother who has zero knowledge about construction does not know how to run the business. What I gained from this reading is that although you may think you know what is best and how things work, there is always room for improvement if you just switch up your creativity every once in awhile.

Chapter 10 Question #1

One example I can think of that relates to being creative is a recent tutoring session I had with my younger cousin. As noted in the text, creativity is looking at things in a new way, a lot of times to solve problems. As I was helping my cousin with his math homework, I was having trouble trying to get him to understand the material and how I was presenting it. Instead of enforcing the only way I knew how to do the type of math he was learning (absolute values) I took a different approach. I came up with the idea that related to something he completely understood and liked. I decided to compare absolute values to football. I instructed my cousin to think of the absolute value as a football field and how far away the number was from the “touchdown”. After doing a few examples, my cousin completely understood the process and was able to do the problems on his own! I thought this was creative because I took a less “academic” approach to doing math. I believe it's extremely hard to try to get young students to like any subject in school (especially math!) so teachers need to be especially creative to cater to the different needs of all types of students.

Chapter 15 Question #1

There are many ways in which computer-mediated communication differs from face to face communication starting by the obvious use of technology. There are many mediums of CMC such as e-mail, text, instant message, and video/audio conferencing. One reason I like (and most of the time prefer) CMC is because it gives me more time to prepare my thoughts/messages rather than just blurting out anything that is on my mind. For instance, If I need to speak with a professor, co-worker, etc about a serious issue, I would rather do it through e-mail first so I can clearly get my message across. I say this because a lot of times (more often than not) I get interrupted when I am speaking and it drives me crazy. I hate not being able to say exactly what I need to without someone barging in during the mid of the sentence. Also, using CMC documents everything each person said so there is no issue regarding who said what. On the other hand, for some things it is much easier to use f2f communication to get the point across. For example, I have friends who will send me really long and complicated texts such as what happened to them at work, school, and explaining their emotions. However, it is really hard to detect how someone is feeling via text so in this instance I would rather have face to face interactions to better understand where they are coming from. Aside from the emotional aspect of these forms of communication, CMC also differs from f2f because it allows people to connect in different time zones, across the world. As previously mentioned, my brother recently went to Barcelona and I was able to use CMC to track exactly where he was and how he was doing. Such cmc mediums as Facebook and Youtube allowed him to upload photos, videos, and certain events within minutes! It was truly amazing to see and I felt as if I was also on vacation in Spain! :)

Chapter 15 Question #2

I find it quite fascinating how certain factors such as anonymity, number of people and proximity between people influence participation in computer-mediated communication. For instance, this class is an excellent example of a CMC because our whole course is taught completely online and we do not have any physical contact with the professor and/or classmates. I believe that CMC classes such as this one promote and almost always require more participation than the standard face to face classrooms. For example, I've noticed that in my FTF classrooms, there is always two or three people who always participate or answer questions that the professors ask the whole class. A lot of students (sometimes including myself) will hardly ever speak up unless called upon. Some reasons could be due to communication apprehension or simply lack of interest in the subject matter. On the other hand, the use of the Internet gives us a little more freedom of expression in the sense that we can say pretty much whatever we want without facing the confrontation in person. The anonymity element is that we are solely known as our user name such as "jprado" and not a physical being. Our participation is also influenced by our freedom to post whenever we have the time (whether it be 3 in th afternoon or 3 A.M.). Finally, our proximity to the group plays a role in the fact that we can all be enrolled in the same course but can live several miles apart. For instance, I live in Hollister which is about 45 miles from SJSU. This makes it difficult for me to attend school during the week so I try to find as many online classes as possible. Another example, my brother lives in Folsom and works 40 hours a week but is currently working on his MBA at Sacramento State through online courses. So because many students live far from campus and other students, many of us feel the need to participate more than we would in FTF settings because it is our only connection to peers.