PBL Exercise 3

One of the first steps in the problem-solving process is to identify what the problem is. Sometimes the problem as given includes conflicting information from multiple sources and describes a range of possible things to work on. What you need to do in this case is to clump the symptoms into a manageable number of chunks and prioritize them.

The Pareto principle states that 80% effects in a situation come from 20% of the causes. This principle is sometimes overgeneralized and may not apply in every case, but it does provide a potentially helpful starting point for prioritizing your problem-solvine.

In this exercise, you're to provide some advice to a teacher who has received devastating reviews from her students on the RateMyTeachers.com site. Working in small groups, use Pareto Analysis to arrive at a priorized list of what Ms. X should work on to improve her ratings.