Introduction: Because it becomes less feasible for today’s on-the-go workforce to attend training sessions, organisations must make learning & training more accessible. Conventional training methods don’t seem to be adequate for continuous skills updates as they confine learners to closed structures.
Here is why microlearning is beneficial
What is microlearning?
Micro training offers short bursts of information for learners, each based on a single learning outcome. Content can take many forms, from text to full-blown interactive multimedia, but should always be short. Microlearning is flexible and is a very effective form of training. It can be implemented in various ways to amplify employee and organisational performance. It can be standalone or be part of a blended curriculum. It is the best way to offer learning at the moment of need.
What is NOT Microlearning?
NOT limited to video content
CANNOT completely replace eLearning
Is NOT just squeezing content to make mini-courses
Is NOT the same as MLearning or Mobile Learning: However, microlearning can be delivered on mobile devices and mobile learning can have micro-modules
4 key benefits of microlearning to your organisation
1. It has a better transfer of knowledge to the job
The objective of any learning & development initiative is to help employees improve their performance. This can happen when they are able to transfer what they have learnt to their job. Given microlearning has small chunks of information, learners are able to better retain information and can apply the concepts better in their job. Microlearning helps employees understand the concept better as the concept is directly mapped to an outcome that is linked to their job. Due to the short duration of microlearning, learners can also access the course at any point in time to refresh their memory.
2. It’s less expensive
A microlearning course is much cheaper to create & deploy. It takes fewer resources and instructional designers to develop a microlearning course. A team that’s well-versed in creating custom content will be best positioned to help streamline this for you. A specialised microlearning content creator like Thinkdom will make the process much easier.
3. It’s more engaging
As microlearning is targeted to a specific outcome and is shorter in nature, it fares high on employee engagement levels. Microlearning courses are usually no longer than 5 minutes, and thus employees don’t feel the fatigue factor of going through longer courses. Employees can go through the courses quickly, understand and move on. When employees are able to complete a training module quickly and acquire the required skills, it helps drive motivation levels.
4. It’s faster & easier to deliver
As a microlearning course takes lesser time to create, it lets organisations respond faster to changing business goals and cater to new training demands. Organisations 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 a negotiation tactic can benefit from deploying microlearning. Organisations can also easily update any changes that they wish to make in the courses after a few months of deployment. To make it happen, organisations need to engage the right partner to develop these short learning nuggets.
Thinkdom’s Tips to remember when designing a microlearning course
Define the audience. Be a part of their lives and understand how they would best utilise microlearning.
Keep it short. Get to the point quickly and don’t go beyond 5 minutes. It is ‘microlearning after all.
Include interactive content to increase engagement levels.
Limit the frequency to one lesson a day. This impacts learning success rates. Web-based word game Wordle is hugely successful for this very reason.
Help your employees develop a habit of learning. Offer them something new & fresh each time they come to you.
Create conversational content. Completion rates tend to be better when your employees relate to the content.
Connect the next microlearning nugget with the previous. This increases memory recall between lessons.
Summing it up!
There you go! Now you know what microlearning is, what it isn’t and when to use it, how to design it and most importantly, the benefits it offers to the organisation. Deploy it with the right microlearning partner to learn big in small doses.