Personal history influences both the encoding and decoding processes occurring during communication. This includes cultural understandings, past education, personal experiences and the ability to identify vital terms. For instance, a teacher cannot effectively teach the three branches of government to young students who are unaware of the federal government’s existence. Such an effort would fail because the teacher is encoding information based on her education, while the students are decoding it based on theirs. Effective communication requires the teacher to locate a common experience through which she can relate information in a such a way that students can effectively decode it.
Distractions disrupt the encoding and decoding processes by providing outside stimuli. Distractions include emotional problems, lack of attention and outside noise or other environmental distractions, such as other students' talking or playing with cell phones. In these cases, the decoding process cannot occur because the receivers of the information are not taking in the information they need to decode. By removing these distractions, the teacher can help her students receive the information contained in the lesson, allowing the decoding process to begin.
By cognitively selecting a specific encoding process, thinking how students understand a topic and using that understanding to encode the information, a teacher can control the way she relates information to her students. This includes using precise word choices, which limit the potential ambiguities in a lesson and focus students' decoding in a particular direction. This process begins by making specific references to page numbers in the students' books, providing visual references for complicated ideas and repeating important bits of information during the lesson. For instance, if a teacher states that the government is responsible for determining whether laws are just, instead of specifying that that is the function of the judicial branch, students may not understand the role each branch plays in the government. Similarly, if an English teacher believes her students may not know who William Shakespeare is, she can provide the crucial background information the students need to understand the lesson.
Students play an important role in the classroom environment, as not only receivers but also speakers. Students encode their own confusion within their responses to class lectures. The teacher is responsible for decoding these messages and determining whether students are misunderstanding the lecture. If teachers do not bother to decode student questions or comments, they can miss these messages from students. This requires teachers to play the role of both speaker and receiver. If teachers do so effectively, they can prevent student confusion during a lesson.