decisionflow.htm

Organizing your ideas for PrOACT Decision Making

Making Decisions about Great Lakes Issues [pdf format]

Objectives:

When you have completed this activity you will be able to . . .

Organize information in a flow chart to help make informed decisions
Examine a Great Lakes environmental issue and determine possible solutions
Evaluate the advantages, consequences, and tradeoffs associated with making decisions
Search for useful data and information on the internet

Background:

Every day you make hundreds of decisions. Some of these are complicated decisions and some are simple. For example, at some point you decided to get out of bed. From there you made decisions about what to eat, what to wear, what to bring to school, how to get to school, and what time you would leave for school. Few, if any, of these decisions were difficult to make. Decisions about environmental issues are often much more difficult to make since these issues often affect more than just you.

In this activity, you will use a PrOACT decision-making flowchart to help you analyze a Great Lake’s environmental problem and decide which solution will work the best to solve the problem.

Materials:

Access to the internet or other data sources such as a library; Decision Making Flowchart

Procedure:

1. Work with your group to find out about a current Great Lakes environmental problem. Choose one of these problems to evaluate in more detail. Your teacher may give you a list of issues to choose from.

2. Using the internet and/or the library, gather information about your issue and begin to summarize the main topics and concerns related to your issue.

Our Great Lakes problem is:

Topics and concerns are:

3. Look at the diagram below. In your group discuss how each area may or may not be affected by this problem. You do not have to agree with each other. You can agree to disagree. In fact, this may help you later in the activity.

8 factors in Great Lakes decisions

4. You are now ready make a decision on how to solve this problem. Use the decision making flowchart [pdf] to help you make the most informed decision possible.

After you have used the flowchart, answer these Questions with your group:

1. In the decision-making process did you consider short-term consequences or long-term consequences to be more important? Why?

2. Which of the areas in Procedure Step 3 had the biggest influence in your decision? Why?

3. Compare your flowchart with your classmates. What would you change about your chart?

4. What were the pros and cons of using the flowchart?

From Decision Making Activities for the Great Lakes
Developed by the Ohio Sea Grant Education Program, The Ohio State University
© 2003