Decoding working group at BayZiel

Members of the Decoding working group at BayZiel in July 2023 (online participants not shown).

The Decoding working group at BayZiel (German: Arbeitskreis Decoding) is a learning community of teaching enthusiasts meeting thrice a year at the Bavarian Center for Innovative Teaching (Bayerisches Zentrum für Innovative Lehre - BayZiel; formerly known as DiZ). Current participants work at higher education institutions in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, mostly as faculty or faculty developers.

History

The Decoding working group originated in 2017 after David Pace gave a day long workshop on Decoding the Disciplines at BayZiel (then DiZ). Participants realized that in order to practice Decoding it would be helpful for them to practice it regularly and in community. Franz Waldherr, then director at DiZ, supported these desires by offering support in establishing a working group hosted at his institution. The first formal meeting of the working group took place in February 2018.

Activities

Impression form a Decoding working group meeting. While Decoding is a serious business it is also a lot of fun.

The working group engages in various activites related to Decoding:

• Improving the teaching of the group members
• Creating training materials for Decoding
• Training interested parties in Decoding
• Supporting individual instructors (who do not need to be members) by improving their teaching using Decoding
• Decoding Decoding, i.e. making the expertise appertaining to Decoding itself visible, e.g. by analyzing recorded Decoding interviews
• Information sessions for interested parties (e.g. first and fourth German SoTL round trip, Hochschulform Digitalisierung)
• Operating this wiki

Participation

Participation is open to interested parties. No formal membership is required. Online participation is possible. Meeting dates can be found on the Events page. Participants are asked to sign-up for the meeting at www.didiaktikzentrum.de. For further information contact Peter Riegler.

Publications

Cover page of Didaktiknachrichten 11-2019

The group has collectively published about their work in

• Didaktiknachrichten 11-2019 (German)
• Didaktiknachrichten 07-2020 (English).

Publication that resulted from the members' work within the Working Group include (follow link to get bibliographic data):

• Analysing what-if-questions as a move in Decoding Interviews
• Blinde Flecken der Lehrenden entdecken und beheben mit „Decoding the Disciplines“
• Bottlenecks: From Static Words to Slippery Concepts | Bottlenecks: Zwischen glitschigen Konzepten und starren Worten
• Creating Cultures of Collaborative and Innovative Scholarship: The Case of Decoding the Disciplines
• Conducting Decoding Interviews with the Structural Model TEACH | Decoding Interviews führen mit dem Strukturmodell TEACH
• Dekodieren impliziten Wissens – Disziplinäres Wissen und praktische Expertise für Kompetenzentwicklung zugänglich machen
• Decoding across Disciplines. New Developments from all over the world
• Decoding Decoding: Concepts as embodied competence
• ‘Decoding’ from the Perspective of Higher Education Didactics | Decoding aus hochschuldidaktischer Perspektive
• Decoding group activities in interactive teaching
• Decoding the Disciplines – A Roundtrip from Novice to Expert back to Novice | Decoding the Disciplines – vom Laien zum Experten und nocheinmal zu den Anfängen zurück
• Decoding the Disciplines: Entwicklung effektiver Lernaktivitäten durch fachbezogene Lerngespräche
• Decoding the Disciplines from an Instructor’s Perspective | Decoding the Disciplines aus Lehrendenperspektive
• Decoding the Disciplines – Mehrere Expert*innen widmen sich einem gemeinsamen Bottleneck

• Editorial to the special issue: Decoding across disciplines: New Developments from all over the world
• Einflüsse von Decoding the Disciplines auf die Gestaltung von Lehr- und Lernprozessen
• Hartnäckige Lernhürden decodieren und Verständnis-Brücken für Studierende bauen
• Is it possible to identify student bottlenecks using quality management tools?
• Lehrende als Lernende
• Lehrendenlerngemeinschaften als Ort und Gegenstand von SoTL
• Lost in Language Comprehension: Decoding putatively extra-disciplinary expertise
• Studentische Schwierigkeiten mit dem Grenzwertbegriff und mögliche Implikationen für die Lehre
• The Decoding Alphabet
• The Decoding Clock Reading Activity
• The Decoding Interview - An Exemplary Insight | Das Decoding-Interview – ein exemplarischer Einblick
• The Decoding Working Group at DiZ | Der Arbeitskreis Decoding the Disciplines am DiZ