Today was the last session of a three-day HHMI workshop on campus. It was great to see friends in person! To end the day, Amada and I watched a Lilly Conference online 2021 session entitled “Marshmallow Structure Negotiation Class Activity” by Michael Conklin from Angelo State University. I was really curious about the title and the video preview! Conklin began by describing the marshmallow structure negotiation class activity. Groups of students get a couple of supplies including marshmallows, tape, scissors, noodles… and they are then challenged to create the tallest free-standing structure. Conklin described the learning outcomes of the traditional activity: leadership, groupthink, collaboration, and creativity are important for this activity. I did not know about the sunk cost fallacy: “eh, we are far enough along that we shouldn’t change now.” Conklin presented data from a study that found that kindergarteners are more creative. I had heard about this study from a book I listened to… though seeing the graph and how CEOs and business school students built on average shorter structures than the children was telling. Conklin then described a variation they do on the activity: while the goal is the same, each team gets all of one item, and teams need to negotiate. Conklin has improved this variation of the activity and instituted a two-trade minimum for each team. The importance of explaining the added value to “sell” an item to another group is a new aspect of this variation of the activity. The activity also teaches about scarcity and artificial scarcity. Groups also have to consider the next best alternative. Conklin debriefs after the activity to highlight the strategies used and how to improve. Conklin is still trying to improve the activity to discuss “win-win” trades, for example. Conklin is conversational and humorous. I enjoyed this 21-minute session even though I don’t teach negotiation. It would be cool to try this as a team-building activity with some guidelines for the instructor on strategies to emphasize or debrief and why.
