After reading Roger Brown’s post – Adventures in Accelerated Learning – I decided I had better read Sharon Bowman’s Training From the Back of the Room. The book has really helped me improve my training style and I look forward to taking Sharon’s training to get an immersive experience. I am writing about this now since I had a chance to put it into practice on my Kanban 101 training. In this post, I want to share the key concepts from the book.
The visual note below is an example of an exercise I did when reading the book – “1 minute concept review”. It took me considerably longer than a minute, but now I have a clear picture of what the book is about. I knew some of this stuff when I was a teaching assistant in university where I was part of a program to help improve teaching skills. Sharon’s stuff is way more powerful.
The 4 C’s
- Connections
- Concepts
- Concrete Practice
- Conclusions
Sharon uses the 4 C’s as a way to think about training and to help learners engage with new information. The book contains links back to research on learning and neurology.
The reason I really like the book is that it is chock full of example exercises. These are easy to understand and apply. So it is theory + practice.
4MAT
The 4 C’s are a simplified model of the 4MAT system of learning that I learned a while back but found difficult to apply effectively. So if you are looking for a richer model consider this one.
What Sharon’s book brings to the table is a model that is easy to understand and apply. And great examples. So give it a read if you do any training.
