FAQ - Four-Component Instructional Design

Frequently asked questions

Find the answers to the most common questions below.

4C/ID is an instructional design approach for complex learning; that is, learning aimed at integrative goals where knowledge, skills, and attitudes are developed simultaneously in order to acquire complex skills and professional competencies. It provides guidelines for the analysis of real-life tasks and the transition into a blueprint for an educational program. It is typically used for designing and developing substantial educational programs ranging in length from several weeks to several years and/or that entail a substantial part of a curriculum.

The 4C/ID model was originally developed in the late 1980s. Its first description can be found in the 1992 publication Training for Reflective Expertise: A Four-Component Instructional Design Model for Complex Cognitive Skills by Jeroen van Merriënboer, Otto Jelsma, and Fred Paas in the journal Educational Technology Research and Development. The first extensive description appeared in the book Training Complex Cognitive Skills by Jeroen van Merriënboer in 1997.

Complex learning refers to the integration of knowledge, skills, and attitudes; coordinating qualitatively different constituent skills; and often transferring what was learned in school or training to daily life and work. The term was introduced in the 1990s to refer to forms of learning aimed at the integration of multiple objectives. This is frequently encountered when instruction must reach beyond a single lesson or course, for example, when professional competencies or complex skills are taught. Complex learning takes a holistic rather than atomistic perspective on learning and teaching processes.

4C/ID refers to Four-Component Instructional Design and is an instructional design approach that describes educational programs for complex learning in four components: learning tasks, supportive information, procedural information, and part-task practice. The Tens Steps is a practical, systematic approach to apply the 4C/ID model. It describes ten steps to help designers create the four components and perform an analysis to collect the information needed for the design. The Ten Steps function as a practical guide to create an instructional blueprint based on 4C/ID and includes a collection of heuristics to help designers complete each of the steps.

Yes, probably. The 4C/ID model describes a set of generic instructional design guidelines that can be applied in many different contexts. 4C/ID has been applied in domains such as medical education, communications training, technical training, information problem solving, application development, teacher training, and air traffic control. 4C/ID aims at the development of complex skills or competencies. Depending on your context, some of its design guidelines might be easy to apply, while other might be quite challenging and require some creativity.

Yes, the 4C/ID model also includes guidelines for the design of assessment that is constructively aligned with the program's goals and learning and teaching activities. In line with the model's whole-task approach, guidelines describe how to design holistic assessment focusing on performance. The model proposes longitudinal monitoring of competency development over learning tasks, and emphasises many low-stakes formative assessments rather than few high-stakes summative assessments.

Yes. In terms of 4C/ID, this is called dynamic task selection. The model provides guidelines to design a backbone of learning tasks. These can be presented in a pre-specified order, but the model also allows flexibility. Based on the assessment of previous learning tasks, learners or teachers can make informed choices for the most suitable learning task to carry out next. This can lead to a situation where different learners are working on different learning tasks at the same time.

The 4C/ID model adopts a moderate constructivist approach. The basis for an educational program is whole-task practice, offering realistic and increasingly more complex tasks, and often these tasks will be performed collaboratively. Learners actively construct meaning or new cognitive schemas that allow for deep understanding and complex task performance. Yet, the 4C/ID model also has some clear ‘instructivist’ features. These are readily visible in the how-to instructions and corrective feedback for routine aspects of learning tasks, and in part-task practice for routines that need to be developed to a very high level of automaticity. Social constructivist and traditional ‘instructivist’ approaches rest on a common psychological basis and complement each other. The 4C/ID model aims to combine the best of both worlds.