Russ Powell, one of Sun's instructional designers, has written a nice summary of the Four Doors approach to eLearning, created by Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan--Thiagi for short. For those of you who are intrigued with alternative learning methods for online learning, this is a very interesting and easy way to envision something different from the classic page-turners of traditional eLearning:

Thiagi's Four-Door Approach to eLearning – An Overview

What Is It?

The Four-Door Approach to eLearning, developed over the last ten years by Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan, is a simple instructional design model that helps training and non-training professionals build eLearning programs that address the needs of many types of learners relatively quickly and cheaply.

The “four doors” represent four different areas or components of the learning environment.

• Library – This area contains the content of the course or module—the information required to master the test objectives and to successfully complete the final performance test. It typically contains pre-built or existing content: videos, documents, slide shows, photos, audio files, etc. Learners are invited to study the content in any sized chunks they prefer.

• Playground – This area contains fast-paced Web games that provide practice in recalling and applying the content from the library. The games typically require the learner to type or choose short answers. Learners can play each game repeatedly at up to three levels of difficulty to increase fluency.

• Café – This area contains social learning activities. One common activity is the open-question game which uses open-ended questions to encourage the user to reflect on the content presented in the library. Learners respond to each question by typing an answer in a text box. When complete, the learner can review the answers given by experts and fellow participants/peers. The café may also include other social-learning components such as wiki sites, blogs, message boards, etc.

• Evaluation Center – This area, sometimes affectionately referred to as the Torture Chamber, contains the final performance test. Typically, instead of using multiple-choice questions, the evaluation asks the learner to complete or participate in an actual job-related assignment.

Why Is This Important?

Training professionals are looking for, and learners are demanding, alternatives to what has become traditional eLearning—the PowerPoint slideshow souped up with an audio component. These programs are typically very linear and do not offer much control to the learner. If you are designing training for traditional play-by-the-book learners in their 40s and 50s, this is no problem. But if you are designing for learners who grew up with Nintendo, Playstations and MySpace—the Gen Y or Millennial crowd who put the chaos in EduChaos—your audience is going to grow bored quickly. When organizations have loads of revenue they can invest in eLearning, they can address the needs of these groups with expensive research and applications. In today’s era of cutbacks and often severe fiscal limitations, however, Thiagi’s 4D approach offers a fresh and relatively inexpensive alternative that can be very effective.

The model, depending on how it is implemented, offers almost total control to learners. They get to choose how they learn. According to Thiagi, “If you...

• ...are a law-abiding type of participant, you may begin at the library and proceed through the playground and the café to the torture chamber.

• ...are a wild and impulsive participant, you may hop, skip, and jump your way among the modules and sections. You may go to the playground first, get trounced, find out what types of questions are asked, and then work your way through the library.

• ...feel lucky (or have an inflated sense of self-esteem), you may skip all of the studying, go directly to the torture chamber, and complete the assignment.

• ...are a grasshopper, you may skim through the library, jump to the café, enjoy the games in the playground, and then return to the library for some serious studying.”

The games of the playground provide review and practice opportunities. The games may not be sexy, but they offer the designer an easy way to help learners engage with the content. They give learners an addictive way to test their knowledge of the content. Among other possibilities, well-crafted 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

The café approaches Learning 2.0 in its purest form—learning through social interaction. More and more, it's what Gen Y and Millennials are demanding. They tend to see this as the most profitable educational experience.

The evaluation center contains the measurement component. For learners it provides a final opportunity to test their knowledge of the library’s content. In an ideal situation this assessment simulates the real-life scenario the lesson is preparing them for.

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

Pros and Cons of the 4D Approach

Advantages

• It is faster and cheaper than traditional approaches. One of the best things about this approach is that, with the right tools in place (i.e., a good game generator, Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and chat rooms, etc.), training professionals can put together instructionally savvy eLearning programs quickly and inexpensively. It provides a lot of bang for the buck and gives learners a great deal of control over how they learn.

• Students engage with the content more directly, more closely simulating content-interactions in the real world. There is an old adage that suggests that in any given instructional project the person who learns the most is not the student but the instructional designer—the person who combs through the content, parsing and sorting as they go. In this model, instead of the instructional designer chopping up the content into appropriate chunks optimized for a mythical average learner and disrupting the flow with questions of trivial value, the learners are permitted to read the content in any sized chunks they prefer.

• The playground, for Gen X and Gen Y who grew up on Nintendo and Playstation, offers a way to learn though channels programmed since childhood.

• Allows trainers and subject-matter experts to design, develop, and deliver Web-based games in a matter of minutes without any complex programming requirements.

• In its simplicity, the model offers a great deal of flexibility in how it is applied.

Disadvantages

Many of the drawbacks to the approach are merely the flip side of some of the advantages. Some of the drawbacks of the approach include the following:

• If not planned well, the 4D environment can be difficult to navigate. The learner has to study and learn the learning environment in order to figure out where to go next. If the content in the library is extensive, navigation and search components must be added.

• The frame games of the playground reinforce basic knowledge components (the cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy). They do not provide a high level of simulation. Typically they must be paired with a simulation that more closely approximates real life (field-level work) with a well-planned final activity in the evaluation center/torture chamber.

• If you do not have a game generator, or the game generator is limited (i.e., it produces only closed questions, not open-question items), you may have to invest in game development efforts.

• At first glance, simple models of the 4D approach are not well received by audiences used to more glitz and glamour in their online experiences. And it often costs a little extra to make the approach look and feel attractive to users. The instructional approach may be sound, but if it does not look good and function well, it may be tough to get learners to participate in it.

How Can I Learn More?

• www.thiagi.com - You can find articles about the 4D approach here.

• 4d-elearning.com - Thiagi has posted a basic example at this site. I think registration is free.

• http://mlearningworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/choose-right-door.html - Matthew Nehrling provides a nice summary with notes regarding use with Millennials.

• A Google search for “Thiagi’s four-door approach to eLearning” brings up a host of articles, most of them favorable toward the approach.

5 June 2008
Russ Powell