Educational Eavesdropping episodes offer webinar-style resources, guidance, and food for thought from experts in the field. Listen in on conversations about relevant topics between practitioners, researchers, and community members.

This presentation is sponsored by Indiana University’s Office of School Partnerships and IU High School.

In this episode of Educational Eavesdropping, David Pace, Emeritus Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington teaches us to Decode our Disciplines.

In the midst of a pandemic, teachers are being asked to make unprecedented changes to the way that they teach – changes that involve far more than the mastery of new technologies. In most situations, it will be impossible in the new environment to cover everything that was included in traditional courses. Teachers will need a strategic framework for deciding what is most essential to teach to their students and for creating the most effective environment for deep learning.

The Decoding the Disciplines approach to increasing student learning can provide such a framework. Created on the IU Bloomington campus in the late 1990s, this approach is now helping teachers increase student learning in at least fifteen countries. It begins by focusing attention on the most serious bottlenecks to learning in particular courses and then systematically explores what students need to be able to do get past those obstacles to success.

Participants in this webinar will be introduced to the decoding process and will have hands-on experience in identifying crucial bottlenecks to learning in their courses and in making explicit the steps that students must master to overcome these difficulties. The session will be led by David Pace, professor emeritus of the IU Bloomington History Department and co-creator of Decoding the Disciplines. Professor Pace has almost fifty years of teaching experience and is a recipient of the American Historical Association’s Eugene Asher Award for teaching excellence.

Those who are new to this approach can find more information at http://decodingthedisciplines.org/.

Please watch the video and then join the conversation below!