An Example of the Decoding Process Below you will see the steps of the Decoding the Discipline process, as they were used to respond to a persistent bottleneck in a junior-level history course. There were 22 students in the course in the fall of 2010, and it was taught by David Pace in the History Department of Indiana University. For a more complete description of this course and a more though description of the process see Leah Shopkow, Arlene Diaz, Joan Middendorf, and David Pace, “The History Learning Project “Decodes” a Discipline: The Marriage of Research and Teaching” in Kathleen McKinney, ed., Ebbs, Flows, Rips, and Waves: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning across the Disciplines, Indiana University Press, Forthcoming. 1. Defining the Bottleneck: Where in my courses do many students consistently fail to master crucial ideas or actions? Bottleneck Category: Argumentation 2. Identifying the Operations: What are the steps or operations that a student must have mastered to get past this bottleneck to learning?
3. Modeling these Operations: How can I show students how to do these operations? * Showing students how the same situation can be viewed from multiple perspectives 4. Practice and Feedback: How can I give my students an opportunity to practice and get feedback on each of these operations? In-class collaborative exercises Examples of practice and feedback 5. Motivation: How can I motivate them to continue through this process? Breaking tasks expected of students into manageable chunks that they could imagine mastering 6. Assessment: How can I tell whether students have mastered these operations by the end of the process? 7. Sharing: How can I share what I have learned with others?
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