Reading Response 5

In this chapter, Vicente emphasize the human factor on a team coordination level. He indicates that human behave a lot more different when they act as a team compared to an individual task. “When you bring two people together you get a new emergent phenomenon- in fact, a new system – that is made up of more than the sum of its parts.” (P155) I agree with Vicente. When people accomplish a task individually, the person himself is the only component within the operation progress; hence, he or she can fully take charge of the task. But a person’s competence of achieving a task is limited. Without communication and idea sharing, his/her brain, to a degree, is working isolated. Consequently, he or she may fulfill the task but not reaching for a best outcome. On contrast, when people working as a team, with communication and idea sharing, the mind will be more activated and when progress come to a bottleneck, the team can solve the problem out together instead of stucking in a dilemma. So to speak, team work magnifies individual competence.

However, when people accomplish a task as a team, the situation is different. People working as a team, any individual is not the charging role within this operating system. “When you have a team, key factors such as communication, authority, responsibility and priority-setting must all be taken care of, otherwise the team members won’t be able to coordinate their respective actions.” (P156) In a psychology aspect, people tend to depend on each other in a team. When problem comes out, anyone in a team will have the same idea that “maybe someone else will take care of it, not me”. As a result, actually no one is taking care of the problem. The consequence will be fetal if situation like this happen in a touch-and-go circumstance, for example, the cockpit conjuncture. That’s why it is so important to have effective communication, clear authority, firm responsibility and once again crystal clear priority-setting. People need to know what is their exact role and responsibility in a task, especially in a high pressure situation. With effective communication, there is a maximum chance to solve out the problem, especially in a split seconded situation.

After bringing up the team work problems, Vicente introduces us the “Cockpit Resource Management”. In a flight simulator, pilots are trained how to response properly in crisis and how to communicate with each other. In the CRM system, every action and every words of the pilot can be record. They can review their performance to discuss the possible operation and communication errors so that they can learn from it without losing their lives. “They learn it in a tangible, personal, and therefore memorable way.”(P167) I think this is one point that educator should take in mind. Students who have difficulties in remembering what their teacher had taught them because they are not engaged in the class. They are not the center role of the class and they do not experience. Without engaging and experiencing in the class, students become passive and not motivated. However, it is always the main issue of instructional design that how to make students a active role in the classroom.