Watch the following video describing how we approach designing a 4Door™ course. Below the video is a transcript of for easy reference.
TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO
As with any course design, start with the end in mind: What do you want participants to do as a result of the course? From there, you break down the course into logical modules. Each module will have the four doors within it. You will always have an Introductory Module—like this one. Your last module in the course will always be a “Putting It Together” Module, like Module VI in this course. In between, divide the content in a way that supports your desired outcomes. For this course, it was easy. Each door would be its own module. In other courses, like the Interviewing Skills Program, we had our Introductory and concluding modules. In between, we took the steps in the interview process (Prepare, Conduct, Follow-up) and made each one its own module. So, your modules could be steps in a program, or they could also be topics that are merely unrelated to the other modules.
Within each module, we always start with the outcomes we want participants to learn and demonstrate. Then we go right to the Assessment Center. We build the deliverables in the Assessment Center first. There should be a deliverable that matches each training outcome. If you forgot an outcome, you don’t need that objective.
Next step is to organize the Library. Your Library should contain resources that support participants' completion of the deliverables in the Assessment Center. Library items can be job aids, reference tables, lists, podcasts, videos, articles, or any item that will help a participant learn what is necessary to demonstrate the mastery of the module. Library items should never be something that isn’t related to the Assessment Center. This is a good test for your design. If you put something in the Library and you ultimately don’t see a direct link to the assessment deliverables, get rid of it, or add a test to the Assessment Center.
Playground items should support the materials in the Library. Try and create a game for every major concept or item in the Library. You will find that many participants will actually prefer to learn the Library materials via the Playground and will ignore the Library entirely if they can. We will go over different types of games and platforms you can use in Module III.
Finally, the Café which gives you an opportunity to foster discussion. In Module IV, we will explain comprehensively how to create Café activities. But here is a high-level view. We first start with some basic open-ended questions. We call these OQs. These can be questions about what might go wrong regarding the module topic, or how the topic might be applied specifically. Anything at all that is directly related to the outcomes you outlined earlier. Then, the Café world opens up. You can design more complex activities that follow the OQ format— for example, you can present a case and ask participants to respond. Or, you can conduct a jolt (a brief experiential activity) and debrief their experience. Thee key is to give some form of a stimulus and get them to respond in an open-ended fashion. Once participants do respond, there is another key component to the Café section. You should always develop a response from either you or a SME. This way participants can compare their responses to an expert.
The key to the 4Door™ design is alignment. Constantly go back and forth making sure that an item in the Playground aligns to an item in the Library which aligns to an item in the Assessment Center, and so forth.
The next two items in this Library are a template and then several samples using the template. Enjoy.