MICROLEARNING

Microlearning is an interesting way of teaching concepts to, in short, focused nuggets or micro-bites. As a matter of fact, microlearning is a trend that is here to stay. According to studies by Alorica, by 2025, millennials will make up 75% of the workforce and the average attention span for the generation would be 90 seconds.

What is Microlearning?

Microlearning is learning that is accessible through your smartphones or tablets and is basically, learning on the go. Microlearning that is focused on a specific objective, that cuts out all the fluff, is action-oriented or task-oriented, and supports the main training or learning journey helps in better understanding and therefore retention of concepts.

The great part is that Microlearning can be taken at home or during commuting. Learners are in a comfortable zone when they can learn at their own pace, anywhere anytime. This learning content is still trackable as the content is hosted on LMS.

Microlearning is a great way to create an action-oriented or task-oriented approach of offering bite-sized learning that gets learners to learn and practice the key concepts.
Reinforcement subtly encourages learners to apply the concepts in their day-to-day tasks.

What are the benefits of Microlearning?

1. Better Engagement for learners

To start with microlearning engages the learners better as it is targeted for a specific learning objective and is of shorter duration. Microlearning content is not more than 5 to 10 minutes and thus learners don’t feel the fatigue factor of going through longer courses. They go through the short microlearning course quickly and understand the concept and move on. Even if 5 microlearning modules are presented to the learners, they don’t feel rushed or bored and complete the course faster. It is always better to have shorter specific modules that address a specific need to meet an objective rather than having 30 minutes module with 3 to 4 objectives.

2. Better retention of concepts

Short microlearning courses are designed to address one learning objective and can be presented on a couple of screens as video and animation or two animation pages. Because of this, learners are able to understand what action needs to be performed or the learning outcome that needs to be accomplished. The result is better retention of concepts. Short games, quizzes, and videos can be easily converted to microlearning courses as well and can be implemented for an effective learning process.

3. Better transfer to the job of the concepts learned

As the concepts are learned and retained, learners can apply the concepts better in their job. The objective of any training is to help learners improve their performance. This can happen when they are able to remember the concepts better. Microlearning course helps learners to understand the concept better as the concept is directly mapped to an action that the learner must perform in the job. The memory drop after training is also reduced as learners can take the microlearning course at any place and anytime to refresh their understanding of the concept.

4. Benefit for the organizations-faster development and easy deployment

Organizations that are looking for quick wins and want to train their employees on new features of their products or services or want to train their salesforce about an interesting technique that can be applied for negotiation can take benefit of microlearning courses. Microlearning courses are faster to develop and deploy and thus fulfill the needs of the organization to train their staff very quickly without investing a lot of time on cumbersome and long training modules. Organizations can easily update any changes that they wish to make to the courses after a few months of deployment. To make it happen, organizations need to engage the right kind of talent to develop these short modules.

How does Microlearning help organizations?

Microlearning can be implemented on any device, be it a PC, Tablet, or Smartphone. However, as the courses are short, they are ideal fit for a Smartphone delivery. Organizations that are looking to implement mobile courses can start off by implementing short microlearning courses with a variety of interactivities and activities. When it comes to mobile delivery, a variety of mini-games or activity templates that are unique to smartphone can be tried out and implemented. Learners will enjoy them too. An example could be using a variation of a true/false template or a matching template that is unique only for a smartphone delivery. Any organization looking for quick wins for their training programs can try microlearning as a key delivery mechanism.

What value does Microlearning bring to learners?

In today’s corporate environment, what is needed is a wholesale transition from theoretical knowledge to practical action-based knowledge. This comes from accepting the fact that a person’s job is fluid and what he/she already knows matters less when compared to how quickly they can learn. A solid Microlearning strategy involves delivering short, impactful learning experiences for employees, to help them learn effectively and efficiently while working.

Microlearning has emerged as a viable format of learning. Initially hailed as a solution for dropping attention spans, it is now looked upon as a solution to bridge the learning gap or as just-in-time learning for the moment of need.

Why should organizations and L&D teams invest in Microlearning?

As microlearning focuses only on a specific objective, it can be used as a support mechanism or a tool that can be administered at the right time during the learning journey.

Microlearning can be used as part of a continuous learning journey of a learner. From the time a learner joins an organization to the times when new product launches happen, when the teams need to be updated about changes happening across the organization, or any new training needs to be provided.

L&D in general course set up training calendars, so they would know in advance when the training would be administered. So, once this is set up, they can use instructional or learning designers to create microlearning nuggets that can help learners prepare for the training. Similarly, microlearning can be provided after training to help reinforce the key concepts learned.

How can Tesseract Learning help you leverage Microlearning for effective learning?

At Tesseract Learning, our learning architects and visual architects continuously innovate and reinvent their approaches to design, develop, and deliver better learning experiences.

We are leveraging our powerful learning platform, KREDO, to create efficiencies across the training life cycle and deliver optimal learning experiences.