Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate: Mastering the 5E Learning Model

In education, it's been hard to find good ways of teaching.

Plenty of people are looking for new ways to teach learners that will also help them understand and remember what they've learned. The 5E Learning Framework is a beacon of promise that offers a complete solution to the perennial challenges in classrooms around the world.

Lectures are not always effective at getting students interested and understanding concepts. Passive learning, lack of student involvement, and low retention rates have become common problems in the traditional educational model. Teachers need a solution that addresses these difficulties and improves learning.

The 5E Learning Framework is a solution to the drawbacks of traditional teaching. This method of teaching, which includes five stages: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate, helps students learn in a systematic and student-centered way.

By combining these stages, educators can create an environment that not only sparks curiosity, but also helps students understand the subject deeply and for a long time.

In this blog post, I will show you how I personally use the 5E Learning Framework to learn and retain new information, I'll explain each stage to show its unique benefits and applications. The 5E Framework can change education by making students interested and encouraging them to think critically and evaluate their learning. Let's start exploring it now!

ENGAGE

This part corresponds to the WHAT.

This level of understanding focuses on concept and definition of the topic with official resources (PDF, Paper Book, Online documentation). It's really the most fundamental level of understanding one can achieve about a given subject.

EXPLORE

This level corresponds to the HOW.

Here I get the immediate effect of using a concept or a programming construct. Simply put it’s the practical step where I see the code example that do the thing (on Official documentation or Stack Overflow). Usually for a programming task on a daily basis, I typically stop at this level when my top priority is to complete a task.

EXPLAIN

This level corresponds to the WHY.

This is "the why" or the reason for using the topic. In this step, I try to explain the concept with real-world examples and find some alternatives to the topic. Knowledge acquired at this level helps me to make informed decisions regarding when to apply the subject of interest or choose some other alternative that might be less elegant but more widely understood.

ELABORATE

This level corresponds to the MORE.

I consider this to be the deepest level of understanding in my Learning Framework. I typically resort to this level when my primary goal is to write technical documentation or blog post about a given topic. This is where I dig into experts opinion by reading some blog posts or books related to the topic.

EVALUATE

This level corresponds to ACTIVE RECALL.

In this stage, I plan in the future when I will recall my memory on the topic using the active recall technique. For the planning stage I use a simple calendar app or something fancier like Things 3 (It really depends on my mood)