The Smooth-Talking Hermits

The Smooth-Talking Hermits - the Most Developed, Pompous, and Best Constant Complainers.

Danielle Pride - For being the most laidback, dedicated, cheerful and best giver of input.

Brendon Pierce - For being the friendliest, nicest, least quiet and best praiser (of others’ ideas).

John Bexiga - For being the most reserved, quiet, and easy-going team player and photographer.

Allison Saker - For being the most absent, enthusiastic and improved (in attendance and comfort).

Chris Caffrey - For being the most endearing, vocal, focused, all-around and turned around leader.

David Morganson - For being the most argumentative, honest, outspoken rebel with the most insight.

Liz Clermont - For being the most energetic, consistent leader with the best lip ring.

Folks! Don't forget to send my your award nominations! I need these by Saturday midnight! You must nominate each person in your identity group for an award. Please!

Also, whoever was present on Friday can gain extra credit/make-up by posting about the stage of development of your group. Name the stage and cite evidence from each of the four dimensions.

Only two more days! Don't slack off now! :-)

Integrity rules the day for the Hermits, as the chance to "win" a round was forfeited by your honest mate, Brendon, who confessed he'd seen the topic for one of the final rounds. Nonetheless, only a half-point separated your group from the first place finishers. Congratulations on both counts!

Hells yeah! It's almost as nice as it was yesterday. That means we are finally going to have class outside. I am very happy about this because one of my biggest peeve is to be in class during an incredible day. The thought of being outside sometimes distracts me from learning. But anyways...

I am glad that Allison and I were given most of the credit for Wed.'s decision making process. I felt like I took an energizer/leadership role to help spark the group's idea's. Allison reacted just the way I wanted her to react by giving such a great idea. The other hermits gave praise and support for such a good idea. I'll agree with the rest of the group and say that we finally are in the norming part of our group development. I think we have all looked past our differences and/or grudges with each other. It is ok that it took all semester in my opinion. I feel that we may have all learned more because we struggled so much to develope. It may have been a real challenge for some of us since our group was so dynamic, but we finally learned how to get conquer it. (I am speaking mostly about myself, assuming other members feel the same way) I'll be honest and say that I may have been a great factor of our group's inability to form because I initially did not want to be part of the group. I am very glad that I am part of the group. It was a great experience and learning experience for me. Thanks
signing off
Chris Caffrey

Steph, please give me credit for this post.

When we were thinking about what to do in class on friday, people just kept throwing out ideas. Chris kind of took on the role of the leader, by asking people for suggestions and putting out his own. At first we putting out ideas that had nothing to do with communication, but then Liz said that Steph would probably be more likely to do our idea if it had something to do with communication. Chris then took his idea of playing capture the flag and tried to alter it to combine somesort of communication in the rules. After I gave some suggestions, I came up with the idea of pictionary. This was accepted by everyone in the group, and accepted by the entire class when discussed.

I think that the decision-making process that we used was the one that we always use, majority-minority voting. We didn't hold an actual vote but everyone seemed in agreeance with Chris's suggestion to go outside, and Allison's suggestion to play pictionary. Everyone either verbally or nonverbally agreed.

I think that Chris was an energizer and coordinator b/c he really took a leading role today. He was generating ideas and incorporating Allison's suggest of pictionary into playing pictionary outside. I think Allison would fit into an opinion giver role b/c she offered an alternative suggestion. The rest of the group falls into follower/encourager b/c all Dave, Liz, Jon, Brendan and I just went allow with the group, offering praise with each new idea.

I think our group is in the norming/performing stage. I think as a group we have gotten to know each other pretty well so that enables us to have affection towards one another. I also feel that we have gotten past any differences that may have existed within our group, so we are able to function and accomplish our goals. I think our leadership issues have also been resolved in the sense that we no longer depend on Steph so much and that we depend on each other instead. I also think that each member of the group recognizes their strengths and weaknessess enough to know when they should take a leading role and when they should step back and follow. As a whole, I think our group has finally started to come together...it sucks that it took so long b/c now class is almost over....

considering this is probably the last blog we'll be doing in this class...I just wanna wish you all the best of luck in whatever comes your way...
Love, D

Liz emailed a question about the "dimensions" I mentioned in the HW question about stages of development. (My response got kicked back for some reason so I'm posting here.)

Look back at the circle diagram to the dimensions listed around the outside edges. There are four types of "evidence" one can look at to see what stage the group may be operating within. I'd like for you to generate evidence for EACH dimension staying WITHIN the particular stage you select. So, if you pick norming, for instance, all the evidence should be examples of the things listed in the circle of norming (no examples from other stages).

Hope this clears it up!

We sat around thinking of what we wanted to do. I sat there and thought we should do something fun if it was mandatory to come to class on Friday. Chris threw out, "We've been doing communication all semester. Let's take a break." People laughed. Chris then suggested we should have class outside, which many of the group members agreed to, but only if the weather was nice. Capture the flag was thrown around, and I heard Danielle agree. And I think Chris or Dave had said that there's been an air of competition between the 3 groups, we could air it out by playing the game. The rationale for capture the flag would be competition, communication among teams, and teamwork. Allison threw out that we should recommend the class to a friend. And Dave rebuted the suggested with how do we know she's going to be teaching it again. (I don't know if I'm accurately remember who said what, but I remember what was said.) Finally pictionary and charades was suggested. I think Danielle after most had agreed to the two threw out we should do duck duck goose.

Chris took the role of initiator contributor by opening up the suggestions. Allison and Danielle played the role opinion giver. The rest of us were follower and went with the flow of the conversation and gave our agreement about what we should do.

I think we are still transitioning from the Storming stage to the Norming stage. TBC..

us to our final decision which was created by Allison. The group barely had any emotional response to the task at hand and if any it was just going with the flow and muttering an "alright". The power/influence of the group was obvious. Again, Chris influenced our group to come to our final decision by throwing ideas out and asking for feedback. Allison finally thought of the great idea of playing pictionary. The group showed counter-dependence by not initiating any of the ideas but just reacting with a sigh or a muttered "alright". Overall though great idea and I know it was just one of those days

Is it just me, or has Allison become amazingly strong, confident, and assertive in this class? Maybe she's been like that all semester in your group and I just hadn't really seen it. :-)

Today The Smooth Talking Hermits did not really react at first to the chance to voice our opinion as to what we would like to cover on Friday. Chris and myself made a few comments and Chris finally decided that we should do something different, something outside. He first mentioned capture the flag to the group and no one seemed to respond to anything besides moaning or muttering a "sounds good to me". The group was quiet today. I don't know if it was the weather or the semester winding down, but the group was kind of "soft" today. Allison then chimed-in with the idea to play pictionary which everyone was in agreement with. I think this is a great way to show teamwork and togetherness. Chris then reasoned with Allison and said we could also do charades. Both of these ideas were great and both Allison and Chris came up with excellent ideas today.
In our group Chris filled many roles such as the energizer and initiator-contributor. He tried to get the group talking and came up with some great ideas. Allison played the elaborated and also the initiator-contributor by coming up with the excellent idea of playing pictionary on Friday. No one else in the group really made any huge contributions to the decision. As I said earlier everyone was kind of lackadaisical today. Everyone else seemed to be a follower among our group today.
I believe that to date our group has formed into the "Norming and Performing" stage of group development. Even though today if we did not demonstrate this today. Today we were in the storming process. Control was handled soley by Chris and no one else seemed to even react except for a certain few. He led

Question: "Carlos and Loren did not include an activity in their presentation on Persuasion. What is the most fair way for Steph to deal with this? Remember that team grades will be averaged among the entire group. Since this was known in advance, should other group members bear some responsibility for not confirming that each team was on track with all the grading criteria? Make an argument and identify what kind of persuasive appeals you are using to try and convince me."

Dear Hermits –

There is a range of opinion presented by your group, from

“there don’t appear to be any extenuating circumstances…to do anything but what you said would be dishonest and unfair”,

to it being my fault (!) for not stressing the averaging enough,

to “look at the excellent job Carlos and Loren did…the great aspects of their presentation.” (With the implication being not to penalize them at all.)

I’m interested that several people assumed Carlos and Loren “chose” not to include an activity and that they “should” have been more responsible or assertive in requesting help or doing their delegated tasks. Any use of the word “should” implies a moral argument, but most of you did not include any information about the specific moral or ethic that you felt should have been invoked. Many of you wrote about what Carlos and Loren “should” have done (which you described as presenting information) and less about how and why you think I should (!) resolve the situation.

Some of the arguments I read were relational arguments: “The group is graded as a whole: they should work as a whole” (moral of shared responsibility/relationship), the delegation of responsibility, how the whole group could have assessed whether or not Carlos and Loren were ready and let them present later, and the rest of the group shouldn’t suffer for their mistakes (denial of relationship with an emotional appeal to reduce suffering).

Given my status as the instructor and the educational goal of learning, I would think more of you would have put energy into trying to convince me of the benefits of an alternative grading scheme. The closest someone came was “maybe this is part of the learning process – we learn through our mistakes and suffer the consequences.”

Overall, the dominant strategy of presenting information was a weak choice, as I already know most of the information. The new bits that could be persuasive would be information on how your groups worked, what you did/didn’t do, what seemed possible/impossible while working on this project, while staying within its parameters. Moral and emotional appeals need to be articulate clearly – fully explained – and there should be some obvious connections to our environment/context – being in school to learn. One brave soul attempted buttering up (nice try, smile!) combined with an emotional appeal (to make me feel guilty).

One of the most important aspects of persuasion is selecting the most effective and appropriate strategy for the occasion.

Sorry I wrote this so late. I thought that it was due by midnight tonight rather than last night.

The feedback that I wrote about people was pretty general. I was having trouble categorizing people from the types in the book. This may be because I had trouble thinking of examples from our group. Steph wanted us to come up with a way for us to receive each other's feedback. I hope we don't do it anonymously because I would like to know where the feedback that I receive came from. I feel this is important because feedback may have different meanings to me depending on what member of the group said it. I honestly feel that our group may not be ready just yet for this type of feedback. Because of this, I expect everyone's feedback to be general and basic as possible to avoid negative emotions. Anyway, I am excited for it. I agree with Brendon when he says to take the feedback as a "grain of salt" when it comes to the individual roles. Most of them may be offensive.

-Chris