Effective Instructional Design with The 4Cs

A long time ago, my boss asks me to train some people.

So, what's the first thing that I do? You can probably guess …

1. Launch PowerPoint.
2. Load a corporate template.
3. Dump my brains into PowerPoint using a combination of bulleted lists and clever-sounding quotations.
4. Insert some amusing memes and cat pictures.

It turns out that this is a crazy way to design training. Worse still, it is an awful way to deliver training.

Thankfully, my colleague Jose introduced me to a better way … Sharon Bowman‘s Training from the BACK of the Room! (TBR)

People often equate TBR with the highly engaging activities in the book. While these activities are a key component of TBR, the underlying scaffold to TBR is an instructional design and delivery model for accelerated learning called “The 4Cs”.

Here's a brief description of The 4Cs and how you can use it to help design training. I hope you find useful.