Video Transcript for Memory Game Debrief
presented by Mark Collard
I’ve got a question for you. As I was observing the process of each of your two groups solving this problem I identified three critical junctures that were significant in the life of solving this problem, things that were very very important that either propelled you forward successfully or perhaps even got in the way of your success.
Three critical moments. What were they?
Help me out. Think back. Review the tape in your own mind. Oh, basically you’re asking the question what did Mark see. Think back to your own process. What might I have seen that I believed to be significant about your process? Not about the task, about your process. What might it have been? Yes.
(The point with our group, the point when we completed it and then we were prompted to discuss amongst ourselves, make sure all of us had understood how we’d done it, and then even when we were about to do it we were still having some glitches because we actually had… we were still all figuring it out by doing it the second time.)
Great. And in the context of cooperative learning one of the key elements of cooperative learning is individual accountability. It’s not enough that other people in your group know the answer and therefore everyone knows it because that’s not true. It’s important that anyone randomly could be asked for the answer and can be individually accountable for it. And that was the process that your group went through. Terrific. Great. One. Todd.
(I think with our group we had a bit of a hesitation because we very liberal thinkers so we were thinking to ourselves well, we can’t do it this way, we don’t have the physical attributes to do it this way, so we were stuck on the I guess the point of doing it right but not necessarily having a go. So we were more afraid of failure then having a go.)
Fantastic, thank you. Good challenge. Good point. A couple more.
(I think it’s really important. Like with our group we all came up with certain ideas, but we all listened to each other and then cooperated. We all had different ideas but then cooperated. We came up with a solution.)
Great.
(So… but looking at the other group, just observing the other group it’s interesting how you know sometimes you get stuck in not being able to go over that because culturally, size, or whatever. Sometimes it’s about looking at the bigger picture. But again the rules you start to think well, hold on a minute, are we allowed to do that? So the rules sometimes get in the way…)
Or… Go ahead.
(So it’s about trying to think outside the square and how you can do it.)
And part of that is actually the process of identifying what is the actual problem. What is the actual problem we’re trying to solve? We spend a lot of time in our curriculum, both in school and out of school developing what’s called problem-solving skills. So I guarantee any interpersonal or PDS program has that somewhere stuck within the curriculum framework, the boxes to be ticked, problem solving.
That’s only half the equation. We don’t spend enough time in problem identifying because sometimes we actually solve the wrong problem. So identifying the problem is equally as important as how we go about solving it, and important in fact that if you solve the wrong one you would argue that maybe the identification is more important.
(One of our members actually just said look, my foot and when he sat down and we were like… we just accepted that. We didn’t even think to try out of the box to be like no, you can still be included, we’ll fudge the rules and we’ll pretend to carry you just so you can still be included. We just kind of accepted it, and I don’t know, in a way that wasn’t… we weren’t excluding you but we were letting you…)
(We did let you come up with some ideas.)
(Yeah, yeah …)
And we do that a lot as human beings. We not necessarily devalue others but we devalue ourselves more often than not. It can be us for whatever reason that pulls back thinking that I’m not good at this or I’ve never been able to do that and we pull ourselves back or the group makes that decision for us.
That could be a really pivotal point in the dynamism of a group is that they are actually able take that on. That becomes a group problem not an individual problem for the group to be able to solve. How can we embrace difference in this group? And nutting out what the problem was can really help us to do that. So good identification.
One more? What were one of those other critical points that was something I might have observed in what you were doing. This is not a test. I’m just interested to know what you might have observed.
(I found out…)
Belinda.
(… because we did discuss it first and then some people got it straight away, some didn’t. But then when we actually did it whether we failed or not, that just really helped.)
Great. So trial and error. You can plan until the cows come over here, but no one is going to be successful. You might have the best plan in the world but until you actually execute it you’re not going to know that it’s going to work.
And there’s a lot of ‘oh but that won’t work.’ Do we know that? Where’s the evidence? So yes, trial and error.
Love the way that this debrief is introduced. Rather than the individual thinking from their perspective, they have to consider it from a third persons perspective, which adds another layer to it.
Gives the individual a level of distance to express themselves too. A different approach to getting the participants to reflect on things