A good explanation can make a complicated idea suddenly seem manageable. But that clarity doesn’t come from accuracy alone, according to UGA communication scholars. 

“An explanation is not a passive, neutral container for facts but rather a generative, persuasive structure,” said Maryam Ahmadi, assistant professor of communication studies in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. 

Explaining something requires choosing which information to include and emphasize, Ahmadi said. It also means adapting that information to a particular audience and situation so that the subject falls within the audience’s “field of vision and intelligibility.” 

Put another way, communicators don’t simply transfer what they know. They make choices that shape how someone else can understand it. 

Those choices can also affect how much mental effort it takes for an audience to process new information, said Chelsea Ratcliff, associate professor of communication studies in Franklin. 

“People have basic mental maps or ‘mental models’ of how the world works,” Ratcliff said. “If you can help a learner situate new or complex concepts into their existing mental schema, you can reduce the cognitive demand it takes to process the information. It takes learners less effort to ‘connect the dots.’” 

Storytelling is one way to make those connections. Humans naturally process the world through stories, Ratcliff said, so placing new information within a narrative—with a plot, place, and main characters—can tap into mental models learners already use to understand the world. Consistent and familiar terminology, rather than jargon and acronyms, can also ease cognitive load. 

But what makes an explanation work isn’t only how information is organized. How learners feel matters, too. 

“Decades of research show that confidence and enjoyment enhance the learning process,” Ratcliff said. 

Making learning enjoyable and reducing anxiety can help people retain complex information and perform to the fullest of their ability, she said. Lower stress can also promote cognitive flexibility—the ability to update information in memory rather than falling back on rigid, habitual ways of thinking. 

Motivation matters as well. 

“Research on information processing also shows us that if a communicator can make the audience care about a topic, they’ll be motivated to process the information more carefully and integrate it with what they already know,” Ratcliff said. 

Taken together, those principles help explain why presenting correct information isn’t always enough. An explanation can be accurate and still be difficult to understand if it assumes too much prior knowledge, introduces too many unfamiliar ideas at once or fails to make their relationships clear. 

Making knowledge accessible, however, isn’t necessarily the same as making it simple. 

Ahmadi cautions against treating accessibility as an ideal of simple, efficient language removed from the “material, messy, and contingent conditions of life.” 

Instead, she points to what she calls the “pedagogical effects of unlearning”—examining the assumptions people bring into spaces of learning and considering how those assumptions can themselves create barriers to access. 

“No learning, I believe, can happen unless these assumptions about access are unsettled,” Ahmadi said. 

The challenge, then, isn’t simply making complicated information shorter. It’s considering what an audience already knows, what a communicator assumes they know, and what might prevent someone from accessing an idea in the first place. 

UGA alumnus Steve Heimler offers a highly visible example of what that work can look like. 

The 2003 speech communication graduate is the creator of Heimler’s History, a YouTube channel that helps more than a million subscribers navigate AP history, government and other subjects. His concise videos require decisions about what information matters, how ideas connect, which terms need explanation, and how to help students feel confident about the material. 

For Heimler, that focus traces back to studying communication at UGA. 

“It has always just blown my mind, what is happening when we communicate,” Heimler said. “That’s why I chose that degree, because I wanted to be able to harness that magic.” 

His work puts into practice something communication scholars have long studied: Possessing knowledge and helping another person understand it aren’t quite the same thing. 

“I’m actually so grateful that I spent the time that I did learning how to articulate what is in my mind so people can understand it and feel served by it,” Heimler said. 

Read more about Steve Heimler’s path from UGA student to the creator of Heimler’s History on UGA Today.