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EvaluatingtheAlternativesApplyingSoundReasoningEpisode15.pdf

It’s Your Choice 15 – Sound Reasoning: 5th Chain Link - Makes Sense and Feels Right: Brings Together Creative Alternatives, Sound Reasoning, and Useful Information - Weight and Rate Table

Narrator: On today's episode titled Makes Sense and Feels right. We will see how sound reasoning brings together clear values, creative alternatives, and useful information to identify the best course of action. When evaluating a decision. A final check for the decision maker is whether the decision makes sense and feels right. If a decision doesn't make sense and feel right, then we need to look for ways to improve the decision until head and heart come to agreement. While any one of us might favor our head or start with our heart, the highest quality decisions come when we make the best use of both our hearts and our heads. To illustrate, let's watch this story about a girl named Jess who's working through a decision right now Narrator: makes sense and feels right. Do you ever wish you had something useful to help you sort out what you want so that you could decide what to do? This the story of how jess used some decision tools to help her plan her class schedule. Jess will be a junior next year, which means that in addition to her core courses, she'll be able to take one elective. The question is which one? When her best friend, Leah asked if she figured out her courses yet, Jess replied, “I can't make up my mind”. So here's the problem. Jess loves drawing and would like to take an art class, but she's worried that it'll seem a little lame when she applies to college. She could take something like computer science which would look good, but she doesn't think it'd be much fun.To help her decide Jess sketches out the pros and cons of taking an art class. This helps jess collect her thoughts, but she still doesn't know what to do. So she decides to get some input from her parents. Her mom says, “I don't think a fine arts class is such a bad idea”. Her Dad says “Me either it would be a good way to show your flare and develop your interests and abilities, but have you thought about taking intro to computer as preparation for a future graphic arts class or what about taking that current events seminar we heard about at back to school night?” Jess is glad she talked to her parents, but now she has even more possibilities in her head. If anything, she feels that she's further from a decision than she was before. She decides to share her situation with Mr. Jones ,a teacher that she knows and trusts. Mr Jones says, “So, how are you thinking about this decision Jess”? Jess shows Mr. Jones, the pro /con lists she made for art and explains that she has two other courses. she's also considering. “Good idea to use a pro/con list to help figure out what you want or don't want from a decision, but with several alternatives like you have there's another tool that might be even more useful”. Mr. Jones shows Jess how to use weight and rate tables to capture her thinking and help determine which alternative should get her the most of what she wants. She begins by listing her three alternatives- art, current events and computers. She uses her pro/con list to help identify the three things that are important to her -enjoyment of the class, how it will look on her college applications, and the chance to learn something new and interesting. “Great!”. says Mr. Jones, “but let me ask you, are all three of these things equally important to you”? “No”. says Jess. “Then you need to weight your preferences. Think about how important each preference is to you. You might want to rank them in order of importance. Assume all your preferences together total 100 percent. Then think about what percent or how big of a piece of the total pie each of your preferences should get and write down those numbers’.

Jess says enjoyment is most important to her, but not that much more important than her college application because it will be junior year. Learning something new comes last, because while it might be great opportunity to learn and grow, she's not sure that's a good reason to take a course. “Now let's give each of your alternatives a score on a scale from one to 10 on how much of what you will get for each preference. For example, on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the most enjoyable class you ever took and one being the least enjoyable, how much enjoyment do you think you would get from taking art”? “I love art”! says Jess, “so at least an eight “. “and computers, how enjoyable would you find that?” “Computers” says Jess “ I'd say maybe a two”. Okay. says Mr. Jones, now go ahead and fill in the rest of the table for your other preferences in the same way”. Jess fills in the table. She thinks that art would be a three for college applications and a two for learning something new. Computers would be a nine for college applications and a seven for learning something new, but what about current events? Even though she doesn't really know much about that class, she takes a stab at it anyway Jess likes to follow the news so she thinks it deserves a six for enjoyment. She thinks that it will look good on her transcript, so she gives it a seven for college applications and since she already watches the news every day, she only gives it a three for learning something new. Now that she has all her information together, just multiplies the weight by the rating for each class and then she adds up each course column to find its total value. According to the weight and rate table, the alternative with the greatest value is current events, which comes as a surprise to Jess. She's also surprised to find out that art and computers were almost equal. M. Jones asked her, “Does that help”? and Jess says “well, sort of, the numbers add up, but I'm still not sure about taking current events. Something doesn't feel quite right”. “Ah”, says Mr. Jones, “Then you have more work to do”. Roger: Art and computers were close to even for very different reasons and that she needed more information to understand why current events was coming out on top. I wonder what she'll do. Narrator: Jess gets help. Sometimes when we think through decisions, everything adds up and makes sense, but the choice doesn't feel right. That is what happened to Jess when she tried to decide which elective to take. Although her weight and rate table indicates that current events would give her the most of what she wants she still isn't convinced. “Jess, you look concerned,” says Mr Jones. “I am. This just doesn't seem right to me”. says Jess. “The math may be right, but maybe the numbers are wrong. Since you can enroll in whichever class you choose, this choice is all about estimating how much of the things you want you'll get from each alternative. Do you think it would help if you gathered more information”? .Jess realizes she knows very little about the current events class, which is part of what is making her uncomfortable, so she starts by talking to a couple of friends who took it last year. Friends: “ It was a fair amount of work, but easy stuff like watching the news and reading the Web”. Yeah, I liked it okay. You didn't have to write too much, but I don't think I got all that much out of it. I came away feeling mixed about it.

“Did either of you take intro to computers”? Jess asks. ‘No, but my older brother did last year. He said he learned a lot, but I remember him not liking the teacher very much”. Next Jess visits her guidance counselor. “Hi, Ms. Crabtree. I'm trying to pick an elective course for next year and I'm wondering if you can help me”? “Sure Jess, how can I help you”? “Well, one thing that would help would be to get an idea

of how important my elective choice will be when it comes time to apply for college”. Ms Crabtree explains that colleges want to see that you're a serious student and can handle academically rigorous material. Ms. Crabtree: I can see from my system that you've registered for some challenging courses next year, which is good. Colleges also want applicants to be well rounded, so if there is an elective that you're interested in that would help you grow as a person, that would probably be a good choice. Does that help?

“Yes, it does. Thanks very much” Jess says. And she realizes that she's going to need to update her weight and rate table since her folks were positive about the possibility of her taking art next, jess goes to see the teacher of that class. She brings a few things she drew for fun to show Mrs. Spencer, the art teacher. “These are promising Jess” Mrs. Spencer tells her. “One thing you should know is that this is really a beginner's course .With your skills, you'll be ahead of the game. The downside is that other people will need more help, so you'll probably get limited individual attention”. “Oh, says Jess”. “But there would be a lot of freedom to work on what you want. I think you could do some really interesting projects”. With all of this new information, Jess goes back to Mr. Jones with some updates to her weight and rate table. Based on what she learned from her friends, she changes her ratings for enjoyment of current events from a six to a four. Based on what Mrs. Spencer said about a freedom to work on new projects. She changes her art rating for something new from a two to a five and based on what Ms. Crabtree said about colleges preferring well-rounded students, she changes the college app rating for art from a three to a five. Her view about computers hasn't changed, so she leaves that alone. Jess sees that art now has the highest score by far and she's convinced that it's the choice that will give her the most of what she wants. Her estimates for her ratings really benefited from gathering more information about the courses and their potential impact on the things that mattered to her. Now this makes sense and feels right. Thanks, Mr. Jones.