Building a Path to Comprehension
Electricity, unlike water or gas, cannot be easily or inexpensively stored; it's typically generated as needed. Precision balance is required to ensure a consistent and ample flow of electricity to meet consumer demands. Systems operators work around the clock to coordinate resources among thousands of electricity providers. A successful systems operator not only needs to have a practical understanding of the physics of electricity and mechanics of the electric system but also needs to be schooled in the complexities of regulatory framework. Good instincts that experience brings and the ability to make appropriate decisions quickly are also essential to get the job done.
In previous generations, line crew employees were typically considered the best candidates for managing the electric grid. Today that is no longer the typical progression. “A workforce change has brought with it a communications and training challenge: men and women who don't have utility experience or sufficient knowledge about electricity from a practical perspective are approaching systems operator positions from a much different starting point,” observes Pamela Ey, adult learning specialist at SOS Intl, a leading provider of training and compliance services to the energy industry.
“We now have a lot of four-year engineering-degreed folks coming through our training programs,” adds Rocky Sease, CEO of SOS Intl. “Their professors gave them the necessary foundation but there are very few places in the United States where you can get an understanding of how the grid works and how all the pieces fit together. They know the individual pieces…but when you start talking to them about how to relate to power flows across the grid, that's a whole different way of assembling the information that isn't necessarily taught in college.”
It can take five years for a systems operator to really get to know a system. SOS is able to speed the process. Their training programs start with the basics: studying how direct current and alternating current work. This initial training serves as a building block for the next step: understanding the process of how electricity is moved from one location to another. As students begin to grasp the basics of electricity, SOS trainees transition their newly found knowledge to the next level: examining what the laws of physics permit in terms of energy flow.
Complexity is heightened when regulatory issues are added to the equation. The operator must understand balancing authorities’ boundaries, which may sometimes require unique procedures performed under certain conditions. The learning process continues as SOS's clients layer the pieces. They grow to understand how those issues need to work seamlessly so consumers can flip on the light without thinking about where their power comes from.
Without layering, SOS trainees might feel overwhelmed, needlessly struggling with abstract notions. The goal of SOS's programs prevents that by distilling the elements of physics down to their roots. Sease and Ey introduce regulatory and other issues at an equally basic level. From there they build from the foundation, reaching for a higher understanding of how electricity gets generated and delivered. Whether they call it layering or apply the concepts without labeling it, most institutional trainers embrace this approach. Layering breaks big, unwieldy concepts into bite-size morsels that prevent audiences from gagging on too much information. Building new ideas on top of what is already known eases the sting of comprehending the complicated.
LAYERING LETS YOU BREAK DOWN THE COMPLEXITY OF A SUBJECT
When a subject is truly complicated we need to nurture our audiences to help them comprehend. Raise them to a more mature level of understanding, but do it gradually. Help them along by using the building block technique. Eager to jump to the big idea, writers and presenters often get too complicated too quickly, leaving their audiences mute with confusion. In a presentation, you'd expect the bewildered to speak up and say: “Hey, you lost me in the first minute!” But this doesn't happen—people don't like to look uninformed among peers, clients, employers—or anyone else. It seems safer for them to just keep silent. Adult learning specialists Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard Mayer advise you to “help the learner manage the complexity by breaking down the lesson into manageable segments—parts that convey just one or two steps in the process or procedure.” They recommend we “minimize extraneous cognitive loads so that learners can allocate limited working memory resources to learning.”1
If your audience doesn't have the prerequisite knowledge to understand your idea, you have no choice but to give them a tutorial to help them build a path to comprehension. Invest a few paragraphs at the beginning of your paper or a few minutes at the start of your presentation to lay the groundwork. By breaking down your complicated story into manageable chunks, you can construct building blocks. Think of a complicated idea as the sum of smaller, easier-to-comprehend nuggets of information. Reveal the building blocks to your audience at a gradual pace—let them acclimate bit by bit—not revealing the entire 50-story building or 12,000-foot mountain all at once.
Each step is a block of knowledge that's useful to understanding the greater topic. Let your reader or audience member take one simple step at a time. Let them take a subject they are already familiar with and add on an increasingly difficult layer of complexity. Keep building layer on top of layer, step by step, taking what is already known and expand on that knowledge. Build a staircase to your ultimate complexity.
The goal is to make the abstract attainable not in one swoop but through a graduated, more digestible, approach. When we encounter a new concept our brains intrinsically scour our memories looking for a similar experience to attach the new situation. That is, the brain “looks for” connections to earlier information so it knows where to store new sensory input. Adult learning specialists Kathleen Taylor and Annalee Lamoreaux write in an article “Teaching with the Brain in Mind” that our brains want to find existing patterns that appear to “make sense” of an idea and thus be more likely to be remembered. When a brain can't find a commonality, it can't forge meaningful links to existing patterns.2
Tips for Layering Your Communications
In layering, you search for a series of simple steps that can lead your audience to an understanding of something they have never encountered. This exercise forces you to not only comprehend the essence of your subject, but to understand the entire framework the concept is built on. A superficial understanding isn't going to work here. That's actually good. You'll be a better communicator if you comprehend the details lying beneath the surface.
- EMPATHIZE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE. Consider how much background they'll need to grasp your topic. Think carefully about what background is essential.
- RETRACE YOUR STEPS. How did you learn this material? If you can reconstruct the layering approach you followed to gain mastery of the subject, maybe the same will work with your audience.
- BREAK DOWN YOUR SUBJECT INTO BITE-SIZE PIECES. Distill the big idea into smaller, more manageable pieces. Create a schematic to see for yourself how one piece of information serves as a building block for another piece of information.
- CONSIDER COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS AND THE INTERNET AS TOOLS TO HELP YOU SIMPLIFY. Sites like Wikipedia do a great job in getting through the clutter that can bog you down.
- NEVER OMIT ELEMENTS OF THE STEPS IN YOUR EXPLANATION. Doing so could compromise accuracy. Layering is about simplification through steps, not about dumbing down.
Look to the Movies for Examples of Layering
Hollywood does an excellent job of bringing moviegoers up to speed using the building block technique. The audience needs to be brought up to speed on background information. Without crucial prerequisite knowledge, the audience could flounder in ignorance and disbelief. Screenwriters and producers are tasked with making the plot seamless and believable.
Consider Arnold Schwarzenegger's 2000 action film The 6th Day as an example of layering in the movies. Set in 2015, fifteen years after the film's premiere, Schwarzenegger plays Adam Gibson, a man who comes home to find a clone living out his life. Gibson stumbles into a conspiracy led by the evil conglomerate Replacement Technologies attempting to take over the world with its clones.
The premise for this movie would have been downright absurd if screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Wibberley had launched into the plot without providing sufficient background. A generous amount of time was devoted to introduce the character and his world early in the plot's development. In setting the stage for the unbelievable, the screenwriters were able to keep audiences seated for the entire film.
The 6th Day begins with an easy-to-grasp scenario. We learn that animal cloning is widespread in 2015. This fact is reasonable because four years before the film was released, Dolly, a domestic sheep, became the first mammal to be cloned. Consequently, moviegoers watching The 6th Day would have found it perfectly reasonable in 2000 to assume that by 2015 animal cloning could have been possible, and even common. The acceptance of the existence of cloned animals becomes the first layer this film uses to build credibility.
The screenwriters take concepts believed reasonable in 2000 and add onto their audience's knowledge base bit by bit. The entry point to our trip of understanding in The 6th Day is that animal cloning is scientifically possible and may be widespread by 2015. In the next layer, Adam's dog Oliver helps bring plausibility to the storyline. When the dog is found dead of natural causes, Adam is urged by his wife to take his remains to “Re-Pet” so he could be cloned and replaced before Adam's daughter finds out her pooch has died. In a third layer we learn the daughter not only loves her dog but also wants her own Sim-Pal, a freakishly lifelike “living doll.” The doll looks and acts like a real infant. We're informed that the lifelike doll is considered a toy every girl wants in 2015.
If you can accept that animals can be cloned, then why not believe that you can take your dead dog to be cloned while doing errands at the mall? If that is possible, then it makes perfect sense that by 2015 you can also go to the same mall and buy a toy baby with humanlike appearance and mannerisms. From that point, it's not too far of a leap to fathom human cloning. Schwarzenegger's ensuing battle with the clones seems perfectly believable because of the layered approach. The movie didn't start with clone wars, it started with attainable concepts that got progressively more complex.
The best examples of layering are often those where the audience has no clue the author is using this technique. They may be subconsciously aware of layering, but probably don't think about how the screenwriters were setting the stage. When done well, layering is a seamless ramp, taking an audience from what is known and comfortable to what is yet to be explored. It's an added bonus when they're blissfully unaware of the calculated steps the author has built to lead them to a higher plane of understanding.