Wick3d Designs New Product Negotiation
Summary
This is a multi-party negotiation role play in which students are given negotiating roles and then are asked to negotiate and agree on a new product for their company. The company's values include sustainability and equity.
CollapseLearning Goals
Students learn about different types of equity (e.g., economic, environmental), the wicked problem of sustainability and the trade-offs that have to be made, and about multi-party negotiations.
This does not teach about quantitative reasoning.
Students engage in high-order thinking skills including critical thinking, synthesis of ideas, and understanding complexities in decision-making.
Students complete written assignments for their pre-negotiation work, they work with a team to make a decision, and they (optionally) present their product pitch using sustainability-related arguments.
Context for Use
This activity is a follow-on to the Wicked Problem of an Equitable Zero-Waste Circular Economy module.
This is appropriate for undergraduate students in classes of 35 or fewer students. It would be relevant for any institution type.
This is a classroom activity that includes reading a negotiation role, negotiating with a team, and then selecting a sustainability-related product. Reading the negotiation role and preparing takes approximately 30 minutes. The negotiation takes between 20 and 30 minutes. The debrief takes up to 45 minutes.
Preparing for a negotiation is a skill that is learned across the semester. This is a relatively simple negotiation but might feel a little confusing for students outside of a negotiating class. Therefore, it would fit easily into a negotiation class, but students in other classes might need a little more time reading the negotiation role.
There are no other concepts that are needed to complete this activity.
A debrief and lecture with the common exercise materials about sustainability makes this a much clearer and richer experience to learn about sustainability. Using the negotiation role alone limits the learning related to sustainability.
Description and Teaching Materials
Assignment: Planning sheet (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 20kB May3 23)
All negotiation roles (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 48kB May3 23)
Quiz for multiparty negotiations (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 17kB May3 23)
Assessment
I read their pre-negotiation planning sheets, their debrief sheets, listen to their debrief answers, and read the quiz to see if they seem to have learned. There is a test later in the semester that also asks questions about multi-party negotiations.