Group Decision Making

Group Decision-Making Helps with Innovation

Collecting diverse opinions from others is essential and helps to foster innovation.  The diverse opinions of others are key in making decisions and brainstorming innovative ideas. Group decision-making techniques involve motivating others and engaging others to make more outcomes likely to succeed. Group decision-making is a strategy that involves group member interactions to enhance the quality of a collective decision.

This post is about group decision-making and the techniques that you can take to support the group decision-making process.  This post will explore the group decision-making techniques that will help innovators to come up with new ideas.  Group decision-making is also known as collective thinking or decision-making, which is when a collective effort is made to make a decision rather than an individual making the decision.

Four of the most common decision-making techniques are as follows;

1. Brainstorming
2. The Delphi technique
3. The Nominal Technique
4. The Stepladder Technique

The Delphi technique is used to for decision making, and it involves gathering a panel of subject matter experts to complete questionaries individually, and their responses will be shared anonymously with the panel to allow for further discussion and debate.  This technique involves gathering all of the input and ideas from the group and then further decomposing those into smaller pieces so that they can be discussed collectively.  The Delphi technique is mainly used when researchers do not have all of the information or expertise for the problem, and other techniques cannot be used. This technique is best suited for situations that require a consolidated effort from other experts, and individual judgment must be tapped into and combined (Powell, 2003).  The Delphi technique outperformed the brainstorming technique because it brought in subject matter experts and a further review of the exact problem and all possible solutions.

Brainstorming is also another group problem-solving technique; however, it involves being spontaneous and thinking of creative solutions and ideas instantly.  Brainstorming allows you to literally think outside of the box in real time.  Each group member is encouraged to think out loud of any suggestions and ideas to solve a challenge or a problem.  Group members generate ideas interactively to further increase the number of ideas generated (Putman & Paulus, 2009).

    The nominal technique is a group decision-making technique that is very similar to having a group discussion.  The difference is that group members are asked to provide a response to questions posed by a moderator, and then the moderator will collect and notate all responses.  The participants will then prioritize their ideas or suggestions. In a recent study in 2017 by Ven & Delbecq they did a comparison and discovered that the nominal and delphi techniques were both equally effective and both clearly are more effective than conventional interacting groups.

    The Stepladder Technique is a group decision-making tool that helps each member enter their ideas into the group.  The tool encourages all members to contribute, by providing an individual suggestion or idea before being influenced by anyone else.  The idea behind this technique is that all members will participate in the core group, and then one after the other in a stagnated approach to present their solution.  Each group member presents their solution first before they discuss the task with the group members.

When managed correctly, group decision-making is one of the most effective techniques to use.  It can help you to better understand the advantages and disadvantages. Group decision-making can also help to foster an environment that is creative and helps to support innovation.  This technique allows you to get direct feedback from subject matter experts.  This also helps to ensure that the decision-making is a shared responsibility within the group. 

 

Reference

Powell, C. (2003). The Delphi technique: myths and realities. Journal of advanced

nursing, 41(4), 376-382.

Putman, V. L., & Paulus, P. B. (2009). Brainstorming, brainstorming rules and decision

making. The Journal of creative behavior, 43(1), 29-40.

Ven, A. H. V. D., & Delbecq, A. L. (2017). The effectiveness of nominal, Delphi, and 

    interacting group decision-making processes. Academy of Management Journal, 17(4), 605-621.

New Technological Advances & Key Trends That Support Working or Stay-Home Moms

 New Technological Advances

I recently reviewed a new innovation technology from the EDUCAUSE Library.  The title of this article is titled The State of E-Learning in Higher Education:  An Eye Toward Growth and Increased Access.  This article focused on how two-year institutions have historically been leading in the race by a long shot when it comes to offering more and better e-learning opportunities to post-traditional learners.  Two-year institutions have been paving the way in online course offerings and are attracting more non-traditional learners, they are offering a significantly higher number of classes than traditional 4-year universities.  Studies state that 40% of current college students are non-traditional and 22% of those non-traditional students are mothers (EDUCAUSE Research, 2013). 

Key Trends

One key trend out of six key trends that they discussed in this document focused on redesigning the learning spaces.  Colleges are implementing more strategies to incorporate digital elements to accommodate more active learning in the physical classroom (EDUCAUSE Research, 2013).  However, educational settings are now being redesigned as we shift to a more digital platform where mobile flexibility is in increasing demand.  There is a huge need to increase remote communication, so colleges are in increasing their bandwidth and they are installing larger displays to support natural collaboration.  They are also looking into mixed reality environments that are introducing 3D holographic content into physical environments.  This allows non-traditional distant learners to still participate via simulation.  This is helping to bring real-world skills to a virtual platform to support the needs of non-traditional students (EDUCAUSE Research, 2013).

Forces That Impact the Trend and The Technology

There are social impacts that are due to a shift from a non-traditional classroom to an e-learning environment.  This has led to a demographic shift, more mothers are now going back to school, and they are able to do so because of virtual classroom environments.  Another one of the forces is technology, the increasing demand for e-learning has led to new technological advances.  There has been an increase in artificial intelligence, and there has also been an increase in the next generation of digital learning environments.  There has also been an economic impact due to an increase in educational costs over the years.

  

References

EDUCAUSE Research. (2013).  The State of E-Learning in Higher Education: An Eye Toward

Growth and Increased Access. Retrieved on August 23, 2022, from https://library.educause.edu/resources/2013/6/the-state-of-elearning-in-higher-education-an-eye-toward-growth-and-increased-access

Giving Women in Engineering Their Flowers!

This blog is all about girl technology magic!  It's about girls in technology supporting other girls in technology.  I am a strong advocate of women in technology and being innovative to inspire other women in engineering to be innovative and make an everlasting impact in the society in which they live.  This page is all about "Giving Women Engineering Their Flowers"!  Giving someone their flowers is a meaning to serve as an encouraging reminder for all of us to stop taking the contributions that women engineers make for granted and the existence of those whom we profess to care about and love for granted, so "give them their flowers!"

My Background

My Name is Shanel Crusoe and I am working towards my fifth degree.  I am pursuing my Doctorate Degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Big Data Analytics to help teach and inspire women to be innovative and to build up their confidence to get a STEM degree.  As I continue to move up in my career, I have future aspirations to become a director of engineering, and a technical consultant.  

In my spare time, I am very active in volunteerism and teach various STEM classes to students in my community. I work to inspire the youth to pursue a career in engineering, STEM is the wave of the future.  I love to serve, empower, and educate my community, it is my pleasure to serve.  I rely on both my subject expertise and my creativity to excite enthusiasm and understanding in the students that I tutor; this is a uniquely challenging but immensely rewarding role.

 

Futuring and Innovation Course

The objective of the Futuring and Innovation Course is to provide a strong foundation and understanding of foresight and how it ties to strategy, innovation, and ultimately being creative.  In order to support modern-day technological advances, we have to be intentional, which means that we have to be innovative.  This course will students improve their ability to identify opportunities for innovation and change.  Further, this course will provide greater insights into understanding new ways of mapping future innovative ideas to present impediments, and techniques to remove potential barriers to innovation to help satisfy emerging needs.  Whether designing a new business, creating new fashion designs, or even designing a new smartphone application, this course provides the tools for how to anticipate the opportunity and the actions to take.

So, What is this all about?

This blog is all about women in technology supporting other women in technology.  Often times we forget the contributions that women have made to technological advancements in STEM.  We overlook the challenges and obstacles that women have had to overcome.  This blog is about girl technology magic, and to highlight some of the past and present technological contributions that women have made in technology.

 Studies show that women make up only 28% of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), and men vastly outnumber women majoring in most STEM fields in college. The gender gaps are particularly high in some of the fastest-growing and highest-paid jobs of the future, like computer science and engineering.

#1 Katherine Johnson –  

Is an engineer who studied how to use geometry for space travel.  She figured out how to assist NASA in sending astronauts into outer space to orbit around the earth.  Her mathematical calculations helped to figure out the paths for spacecraft to orbit earth and then land on the moon.  Johns is coined the name as the human “computer” because she was instrumental in John Glenn’s first orbit of earth, she worked in engineering and supported the space program for 33 years.

 #2 Lilly Mittenthal and Kenzie Butera Davis – 

Are co-founders of an application called Maro.  Maro is an application that helps parents navigate through tough conversations with their kids.  Parent are extremely busy and have tough times navigating difficult conversations with their children.  Co founders Mittenthal and Davis noticed the lack of support for parents who were dealing with the difficulties of “growing up conversations” with their children.  This app was designed to help parents engage in difficult conversations by combining digital content with artificially intelligent bots.