Most of us can use help understanding a scientific concept at some point. There are popular quotes attributed to Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman espousing the opinion that if you cannot explain something simply, or to a six year old, you do not really understand it. Even if the words were not uttered by the eminent physicists, I imagine the logic behind them, the value of being able to chunk down a topic into bite sized bits that can be stitched together to form a complete pattern, would not produce much disagreement.
Five Levels is a site with a series of videos that helps helps us to get a better grip on a concept. The videos feature a different academic expert on a topic discussing it with users at five different levels of understanding: 1) primary school child 2) young high school student 3) college student 4) graduate student in the topic discipline 5) an expert in the topic.
I do not find that it is a difference in explanation that is shown in the five levels. It is more a different conversation: speaking about the subject in different ways, perhaps gaining more insight as we go along, which is possibly the whole point of the different levels of explanation.
Although the series run is limited, with only six episodes thus far, the examples may give us ideas on how to approach scaffolding. Viewing them may give us insight on how to apply the techniques to our own examples, test and strengthen our arguments, break down themes into basic principles, convey an idea in more entertaining fashion to our students.
Cutting edge topics that are covered (and appear in the screenshots on this post) include CRISPR and the Connectome.
Gavin Paul, User Services and Instructional Librarian, NYU-Tandon School of Engineering
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