December 14, 2018
What is Microlearning
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December 14, 2018
What is Microlearning
I am a Learning & Development Professional with a passion for learning and giving back to communities by educating our teenagers to be successful in their careers.
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What is Microlearning?

As a training and development professional it is important to understand what “Micro Learning” is and how it can be used in the education and training of all employees.  This is my insight into what will make a successful micro learning project taken from many of the projects that I have worked on with my clients over the past number of years.

Is Microlearning Right for Your Employees?

Many professionals have their own definition of what microlearning is and some say that microlearning must be video based or that it must be under five minutes long.  Others say that it depends on the platform that delivers the content to the learner that makes it a microlearning experience.  In y experience, strictly defining the microlearning by media length or platform, takes away from what is important here and that is the learner’s experience.

Microlearning should be built around the following:

Short:

Microlearning events are created as short bursts of learning that the employee can complete them “on the go” regardless if on the train, a coffee break or in a quick timeout session.

Focused:

The learning event should focus on one topic or skill.  If you were creating microlearning on the topic of HACCP & Food Safety you might create a single three-minute video on how to use a thermometer correctly, then other events might include how to wash your hands or how to identify contaminated food.  So, microlearning must be a gradual build-up of the entire skill or topic that the employee needs to learn.

Multi-Platform:

In today’s, busy world employees might be learning at their desks, on the train or bus or even while having breakfast or lunch. So, the more platforms that we can use the better the experience for the learner.  It helps if the multi-platform include both PC and mobile, it would not go well while having dinner or lunch to be trying to use your PC, but doing it on mobiles is pretty easy for all employees.

It’s worth noting that not all companies will have the luxury of having the infrastructure for a multi-platform learning and that where it is worth look at a system like Captivate Prime from Adobe that allows for multiple-platform devices for a very low fee per learner (here is a link to it ( https://www.adobe.com/ie/products/captivateprime.html )   There are other platforms out there so it is worth doing a bit of research to identify what will work for you and what will fit in to your budget.

Why is Microlearning Very Popular Now?

In the training industry as in any other industry trends are part of the norm.  Platform providers come out with the latest new idea that will boost your employees learning and will revolutionise the way that employees learn skills and knowledge.  These new tools create a frenzy of excitement across the industry.  And this is not negative; after all, the discussions that can be sparked by the releasing of a new tool or the emergence of a new work process can help every participant to improve their practice.  However, many of these tools never live up to the promises of the initial claims or result in the learning revolution that participants hoped for.

Microlearning is trending because its a reaction to how users have come to interact with the internet.  Most sales are happing on mobile devices today and even the sales that are not completed on mobile probably started their search on a mobile smartphone. The same is true for YouTube, Udemy, Wish and all social media platforms.  In short, mobile is a part of life that is going places fast and furious.

Some Platforma that use microlearning:

Some really good examples of microlearning are Linda.com, Udacity, YouTube and Udemy.  The all cater to short segments or bursts of learning that are easy to absorb and retain and use.  Just recently I purchased a course on Udemy on how to learn to play the guitar.  The course is made up of 311 short videos and makes it extremely easy to learn to play the guitar. Each video is between 2.5 and 5 minutes long, this makes it very easy to replay that segment again and again until I have mastered that skill I’m learning at that moment.  And because they are small I can pop back to them whenever I get stuck. But, remember that this microlearning will only give me the knowledge to play the guitar, I will also have to put in many, many hours of practice to master playing the guitar to a level that I would be happy to busk on Dublin’s Grafton Street.  Apart from that, I can play on my PC. MAC, Smartphone and TV, meaning that U can learn and practice just about everywhere I go.

Is microlearning suitable for your company?

The idea of segments that are short and focused experiences might be appealing to all learners, however, there is much more to successful microlearning than the quality of the exercise or ease of use.  These are some factors to put on your checklist and explore when it comes to considering microlearning for your company:

  • Is microlearning optional or required?
  • Does the culture of your company allow for the learning of small chunks of training time?  If you have many employees that are hourly paid, then this may not be suitable as their employees will want to be paid for work-related activities, whereas salary paid employees will happily do the training even on their own time.
  • When and where will the learners complete the microlearning? During work, after work, on their breaks or during a commute to work?
  • What access to devices will the learners have to complete microlearning, smartphones, laptop, PC, iPhone, Android or Windows systems?
  • Will learners complete the microlearning is a structured sequence or in no prescribed order?
  • What instructional design resources does your company have access to?

Delivering Microlearning Content

This is a major factor to consider before you begin work on your microlearning initiative. While it’s easy to create your microlearning interactions, videos or content one at a time and host them on your company LMS, like you other large courses, this may not provide the best experience for employees or for the company.  To be useful, the learners must be able to access the content without having to dig deeper and deeper to find the segments that require.  If its hard to get at learners won’t use it or return to refresh their knowledge (the internet rule applies – if it’s hard to find, then it lost, and visitors will move on).  So before hitting the road hard make sure you know the following:

  • Where will the microlearning content be located?
  • How will learners access the content?
  • How will Learners know about it?
  • What data will you capture to identify how your microlearning is performing?
  • How will the data you capture assist with additional training requirements for learners?
  • Security.  While you could host your microlearning on YouTube, it could be accessible by the general public, so, what is the best platform for your company?  What will offer your company the best security?

Also, consider the fact that employees will want to access their microlearning on their own smart device.  What consequences could this have if a device was obtained by one of your competitors?  What if a learner gives this out freely to others?

Planning an Event With Microlearning

So, as I’ve said earlier that I am in the process of learning the guitar in small microlearning steps, that said I will have to complete many of the lessons to ensure that I can play the simplest tune on the guitar, even as simple as “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer”.  It will take many sessions and I will have to go back over sections many times to ensure that I’m getting it spot-on.  It would never be possible for me to complete the course and then do a concert in the Three Arena here in Dublin, I would have all of the information and knowledge, but, I would still lack the skills as these take practice.  When you think about it microlearning segments happen in the time it takes you to have a smoothie or a coffee.

Applying these skills takes longers periods of time and some dedicated space.  So complex skills like playing a guitar solo, learning to be a professional in Adobe PhotoShop or being proficient in taking and understanding x-rays aren’t a great candidate for microlearning.  Plus when the skills required are so important to the learner/employee you would not want to shortchange them by giving them knowledge only, you want to make sure that they receive on the job training and skilling that will allow them to be competent in their work.

That said, micro-learning is great for sub learning where the learner needs to hone their sub-skills, smaller components of that larger skill set.  For example, the radiographer could use microlearning to identify the operations of each switch or dial on the x-ray equipment.

So, it is important that you design microlearning that can be useful to the main curriculum of the company and the learner.  If microlearning is not short, focused and multi-platformed, then it may not achieve the ROI that you are expecting from the curriculum.

Designing Great Microlearning Experiences

a single microlearning task is short, focused and delivered asynchronously.  Don’t make the mistake of splitting up a major course into small bites of microlearning, because this is not what microlearning is, microlearning must deliver a short simple task or a concept that can be finished completely in one sitting.  It is better to make your microlearning event based on one small sub-topic only and you can then create other microlearning events for other sub-topics in the same course.

Try to reduce the number of introductions in microlearning as it not the same as doing a larger course or doing the work in a classroom setting.  It’s not necessary to have an introduction to microlearning the topic name should suffice for this purpose (ie Hot to RTake and Record HACCP Temperatures), this tells the learner exactly what they are going to learn in this short 3-minute microlearning session. Remember you only have a few minutes to deliver the main content of the microlearning, so use it wisely!

Today’s learners have been conditioned by their online habits, they now expect to go straight to the relevant topic and start to use the materials within, they don’t want to spend ages looking for instructions or how to get to different sections within the microlearning event. If you microlearning is interactive, the let the learners get stick in as soon as possible and only use an introduction to set the context.

Show Me, Don’t Tell Me:

Especially for videos, this is so important and you should show me how to do something by demonstrating how the task gets completed.  This will achieve much more from the learner and will allow the learner to retain more of the information.  You can still use commentary to explain what you are doing as you do the demonstration.

Make Tasks Performance-Focused:

Focus on a sub-topic and try to include some interactivity, for example in the “HACCP Temperature Taking”, I would include two quick random set of temperatures around chilled foods and ask the learner to select the correct temperatures.  Threinforcesces the learner’s knowledge and enables them to retain more of the lesson.

Conclusion:

I believe that microlearning must be short, focused and multi-platform, and the content that combines all of these elements will become common.  Microlearning is a great way to learn sub-topics, a way to hone your skills to the next level. Microlearning is powerful, because, learners can manage it on the go, at breakfast, in the workplace, on a train or in a training room.  Remember that the events are short typically between 3 and 5 minutes, with none/very short introductions.

And if you still think that small can’t be powerful think about this fact about  Mosquitoes:

“Mosquitoes are a tiny insect that kills more people every year –

than all of the other animals and insects put together”

2 Comments
2020-12-02 19:45:39
2020-12-02 19:45:39

Love this articles description. I have gotten confused by the way different companies define microlearning. I can confidently say that Microlearning is my jam!

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2020-06-08 14:24:26
2020-06-08 14:24:26

What do you feel like at the best platforms to use for quick learning if I am working on my portfolio? It is always a video? Do infographics fall under this category as well? Any advice or input is appreciated.

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