What is Microlearning?
Microlearning is a type of learning that consolidates and delivers short, targeted nuggets of information to the user. It allows the user to get the information they need in a short period of time, usually 2-5 minutes. The modern learner is estimated to have 1% of the work week available to dedicate to training and development which makes it necessary for a business to provide training information in short and informational bursts.
Microlearning has various advantages for both learners and businesses. A few of the main advantages that microlearning can offer your business are:
- Improved Knowledge Retention
- Reduced Costs
- Compatibility with Mobile Learning
Different types of microlearning that can be used in your business.
A rising misconception is that microlearning can only be in the form of video clips. Even though short videos are a great way to deliver information to your employees, microlearning can be more than quick YouTube “how-to” videos and TED Talks. Other forms of microlearning can include:
- Interactive modules
- Gamified activities
- Short Articles
- Infographics
- Questions/surveys
These forms of microlearning enable you to easily implement microlearning into your training strategy. Now let’s discuss the ways to effectively use microlearning.
5 Steps to Effectively Implement Microlearning Into Your Employee Training
1. Develop Training Goals
When developing any training course, it is most important to figure out your goals and how you want to use it. Microlearning can be used for quick questions that employees might have, continuing educational modules, and tips and trick for success.
Some basic questions that should be outlined and answered before you start to create any content are: What problems do you want to solve? What behaviors do you want to address? How do you want to track results?
2. Create a Complete and Cohesive Course
After your main goals have been decided, you can start creating courses that incorporate learning objectives or pinpoint a behavior you want users to learn through your course. Courses must not be fragmented nor have cliffhangers, and it is NOT effective to cut up a long video into shorter pieces. Instead, there should be a full concept covered in each piece of content.
3. Encourage Continual Use
Microlearning is most effective when it is implemented into a training and development program continuously, improving knowledge retention. Users should have the ability to easily access these informational training courses any time to boost their long term memory, and quickly find an answer if they do not remember it.
Some tricks you can use to ensure that your microlearning content has the most impact and are accomplishing your goals are:
- Spaced Repetition: Practicing a new topic over increasingly longer intervals in order to deepen memory.
- Retrieval Practice: Strengthening memory by using questions to recall information.
- Confidence-based assessment: Improving memory and self awareness by distinguishing what you think you know vs. what you actually know.
4. Make Microlearning Content Easily Accessible
Employees often wear many hats at work and are swamped with heavy workloads. To increase productivity, training courses should be able to fit in their day-to-day workflow. Pairing microlearning courses with mobile learning can allow users to access and complete training courses anytime and anywhere.
Learn how a Learning Management System can streamline training and help users easily access microlearning and other training content here.
5. Evaluate Results
With company-wide acceptance and continuous use, you will be able to collect a large amount of data about your learners. Microlearning allows managers to see the exact information that employees have or have not learned and how this knowledge connects to their job performance. Analysis of these results will allow you to track the successful areas of your training program, pinpoint the problem areas and continuously optimize training.
Of course, a business needs a tool that can track results and help managers assign customized content to the right learner. This again is where a Learning Management System (LMS) is critical to success.
Microlearning is not the perfect fit for all of a business training needs. The purpose of microlearning is to provide short, targeted nuggets of information and not all training subjects can be delivered in this fashion. In order to have an effective employee training strategy, it is important to think of microlearning as a part of the overall toolkit for your training program.
