Overall, the group I participated in did great with our deliberation. We were the first group to go, so that it could have been better, but all groups had critiques to work on for future deliberation. My group was very cooperative and open-minded, and they put great effort into our topic, the accessibility of health care to Penn state students. Everyone was respectful of ideas, talking, and approaches. Our deliberation had the perfect amount of “heat” in the room. In other words, there was undoubtedly one approach that people most certainly did not like, which made it more engaging and fun because more wanted to talk about why they did not like it, but there were also two approaches that had more positive points made about them. We got most of the group to agree and ended the deliberation favoring the third approach.

While overall, our first-ever deliberation was a success, if I could do it over, there would be some things I would correct and include. For instance, asking our peers to apply the criteria Dr. Bodaski discussed more in the deliberation. I think we should have addressed the feasibility of each approach, and if I were to do it over, I would make sure to incorporate that. With this, I would have liked to review our peers’ results from the survey we administered. As well as encouraging more deliberating between the peers instead of at us. The flow of the conversation was good, and each approach got the perfect amount of time to be deliberated. Still, as a group, we could have asked more engaging and intensified questions to make everyone feel even more profound.

As a first-time deliberation presenter, our group chose a great topic, relatable for all classmates, as we are all students. Our issue was controlled and specific to Penn State, which allowed us to go deeper on approaches, not be as broad, and has detailed and well-informed slides while maintaining a reasonable word count. I thoroughly enjoyed this project and looked forward to another deliberation and improvement in my presentation and facilitation of one.