Step 7 — Sharing
In earlier stages of the development of Decoding sharing was seen as the culmination of the process. After one had completed a cycle from identifying a bottleneck to assessing the extent to which the modeling and practice had been effective, it was time to make available what had been learned and to receive feedback from other scholars of teaching and learning. This could take the form of simple conversations with colleagues. But the systematic nature of the exploration of a learning issue and the assessment of the results also provided the basis for formal conference presentations or publications.
In time, however, it became clear that sharing generally played a role in most Decoding initiatives from their inception. The Freshman Learning Project within which Decoding had evolved had been intensely collaborative, and most of those who used the process have found it highly useful to work with others at every stage, especially Step 2. The possibilities of using faculty learning communities to support the Decoding process and to use the Decoding interview to create bonds among instructors has been chronicled by the scholars of teaching and learning at Mount Royal University. (See Janice Miller-Young and Jennifer Boman, eds. Using the Decoding the Disciplines Framework for Learning Across Disciplines, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 150. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass and Faculty Learning Communities on this site.)
Finally, it has been increasingly obvious that Decoding has uses beyond the individual classroom, and that it may be used to help instructors and institutions find effective responses to a range of challenges. (See, for example, David Pace. (2017) The Decoding the Disciplines Paradigm (Indiana University Press), Chapters VII and VIII.)
