The Four-door Model: Part 2

In Part 1 of this interview, Russ Powell explained the components of the Four-door Model, a relatively quick and inexpensive way to develop online learning. He also explained how it creates an exploratory environment, in which learners can follow any path through the learning experience. The second half of the interview continues below.

COACH: Does this approach completely do away with the systematic organization of content? Is any instructional or content analysis performed by the designer?
RUSS: Well, I’d have to say Yes and No. Let’s look at the Yes answer first. And let me start by saying that this model is EXTREMELY flexible. Also, when I say “Yes, we’re doing away with instructional and content analyses,” we’re not really doing away with them altogether, we’re just doing them VERY quickly.

Let’s say you’ve got an instructional project to get out the door and there’s virtually no time and very few resources available to do a thorough content analysis. If I were using this model, I’d sit down with the subject-matter expert(s) and determine a reasonable final activity—ideally some task that can be done, observed and qualified in the field. Then we’d gather the most relevant and available content we could find that would support the performance of that activity and use it as is.

And the “No” answer to your question? That’s probably obvious. If you’ve got more time and resources, then yes, do more organizing and analysis—but not too much.

COACH: What types of content would you use?
RUSS: The content could be manuals, marketing material, videos, slide shows, white papers, etc. If there’s a lot of content, I’d lean on the SME to help me do some prioritizing, focusing only on what’s MOST important—that which most directly supports the final activity.

COACH: So its kind of content analysis on the fly?
RUSS: When I ask the SMEs to be thinking about good game items, they’re performing content analysis—choosing the most important content. I might help them re-write some of the game items, so they read well, but often they can do this on their own.

Earlier you asked about organizing content. This model is kind of self-organizing. The organization comes from the SMEs prioritization of content for the Library, and the fact that games are located in one place, primary content in another, social components in another, etc.

COACH: What do you see as the advantages to a self-organized approach to instruction?
RUSS: In this model, there’s an assumption at play that suggests that if the content is a little less organized than it might be in other models, the students/participants have to engage with it more and, as a result, learn more from doing so.

While this might be a little awkward and uncomfortable at first, it mimics real-life. We’re constantly thrown into awkward and uncomfortable situations, and I think we often learn a lot from them. This model encourages a greater investment on the part of the learner and I believe results in more “stickiness,” greater learning.

COACH: Can you tell us more about the frame-games in the Playground?
RUSS: The frame-games in the playground provide review and practice opportunities. Although the frame-games may not be slick, with lots of bells and whistles, they offer the designer a quick and easy way to help learners engage with the content in an addictive way to test their knowledge of it.

More specifically, the games help learners:

• Recall and organize factual information
• Associate components with different stages and steps
• Emphasize critical features
• Identify major differences among concept classes
• Gain fluency in recalling information

Example of a frame-game

COACH: Are the frame-games produced with a template in an authoring environment?
RUSS: Yes. Exactly. At Sun Microsystems we had the luxury of building our own frame-games, but there are many tools out there for building frame-games. I think Thiagi is selling his frame-games from his website at thiagi.com at a very reasonable price. CarsonMedia has an eGame Generator too that I’ve used in the past , and Articulate QuizMaker has a handful of templates that can be used to build frame games. If any of your readers get stuck on this or want to build something of their own, have them contact me, I’d be happy to discuss ideas with them. (See the Resources listed below for links.)

COACH: Finally, how do learners who are used to more structured learning environments know where to start? Do you help them initially?
RUSS: In the four-door projects I completed for Sun Microsystems (now Oracle), we didn’t want to give the student/participant too much. We felt that encouraging the user to explore the content was a valuable thing. But we also had a lot of concerns about alienating or losing users who just weren’t interested in exploring the content.

We ended up doing three things to address this concern. The first, and probably most important was the design of the interface. We tried to make it somewhat intuitive and easy to navigate. We went through at least four or five designs before we settled on one. User feedback suggested that we chose an interface that was relatively easy to use.

The second was to include some linear learning paths in the Guide Me section. If users got overwhelmed or lost, they could go to Guide Me and find documents that walked them through the course step-by-step. For example, “Step 1 – Go to the Library; Step 2 – Read the documents that are unfamiliar to you; Step 3 – Visit the Playground.”

The last thing was to include an introductory video on the main page that provided a three-minute tour of the user interface and the content.

COACH: What kind of response did you get to this learning experience?
RUSS: The user feedback we received suggested that the vast majority of users enjoyed the exploration that the course encouraged. There were very few who appeared to have trouble getting started or became overwhelmed by the experience.

To summarize, the 4D model combines the effective organization of online documents (in the library), with the motivational impact of frame-games (in the playground), the power of collaborative learning (in the café), and authentic performance tests (in the assessment center).

Thanks for this lengthy interview Russ! Russ Powell has his own consulting firm in Santa Rosa, CA.

See Part 1 of this Interview:
The Four-door Model: Part 1

Resources Mentioned:
Thiagi’s Store
Carson Media’s eGame Generator
Articulate Quizmaker

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