Decoding the Disciplines

Decoding the Disciplines is a process for increasing student learning by narrowing the gap between expert and novice thinking. Beginning with the identification of bottlenecks to learning in particular disciplines, it seeks to make explicit the tacit knowledge of experts and to help students master the mental actions they need for success in particular courses.

This wiki is intended to foster student learning by

• sharing comprehensive information on students' difficulties (a.k.a. bottlenecks)

• bringing together people engaged in Decoding the Disciplines
• making accessible research data and media used in and for scholarly work on Decoding the Disciplines by adding citations of books, articles and papers to the Decoding bibliography

• providing information on how to practice Decoding the Disciplines

Learn how to contribute, engage, and share your work and to join the Decoding community.

Featured Article Five phases which commence group work Group activities are an integral part of teaching. Often they consist of tasks given to students in order to work on them collectively. However, it cannot be assumed that students consciously or subconsciously perform operations that allow them to get started with problem solving in group tasks. There are at least two issues here. One is generic and related to bottlenecks which appertain to group work.The second one is indirect: Instructors often use group activities as a means to help student overcome difficulties related to subject matter, implicitly assuming that group work as a format is free of its own bottlenecks. If this assumption does not hold, however, the teaching format might backfire and hinder to achieve the intended teaching goal. (Full article ...) Did you know? When mathematicians think of limits, "approaching" has a very nuanced meaning - an amalgam of "dancing" and "getting closer."

Featured Bottlenecks Scope of formula: When using a mathematical formula students don’t check whether the prerequisites for the applicability of this formula apply. klsadfj Featured Article