The Future of Training: Microlearning
Written by Alexandra Wilcox
Our world is fast paced, mobile, and constantly evolving. Banks, clothing stores, coffee shops and car dealerships have completely rethought how they do business. They offer easily accessible applications that users can navigate quickly, seamlessly, and promptly execute the function of their choice. The one thing all these industries have in common? They are trying to make things simpler and faster for their customer, because they’ve learned the hard way, people just don’t have time. So, why isn’t the field of training and professional development doing the same? Why are we still treating our learners like college students who have nothing better to do besides give us their rapt attention? Everyone is busy, we need to start respecting that and delivering content on their schedule, not ours.
As a training professional, I have designed, developed, implemented and evaluated a slew of training materials. I started my career creating eight-hour facilitated workshops, then moved into developing 60-90 minute eLearning courses. Now, I’m primarily creating 30-45 minute eLearning courses. The trend I see, no matter what client I work for, is they want it faster, cheaper and better than anything else available. Well that’s just great because I’m a training wizard who can create courses from air!
Ok, so while I’m not a training wizard, I am the senior instructional designer at Windwalker Group. As a result, I’m equipped with an arsenal of tools for delivering fast and insightful education. The most important of those tools, and what is arguably the most underutilized, is microlearning. For those unfamiliar with the term, microlearning is exactly what it sounds like. Small learning. Little pieces of education, training or professional development that make up a whole.
These small chunks of education can be about anything but they must not exceed 10 minutes in length. The standard microlearning size is 5-8 minutes and they can range from an eLearning course, a podcast, an infographic, to even a short paper. The main point of microlearning is that the little pieces are tied together to support and teach the whole concept in meaningful, accessible chunks. The other point is that it’s short.
In todays world, where millennials make up a large portion of the work force, microlearning is a crucial piece of the professional development puzzle. To stay relevant, training must adapt in the same ways other industries have, offering learners more content for less of their time, with the ease of mobile accessibility. Microlearning allows our profession to do just that and yet, it hasn’t really taken off. I think part of the lack of use lies in awareness, but I believe the largest reason we don’t see it more often, is people don’t know where to get started. So, how do we go about implementing microlearning, and even more importantly, how do we create it?
Getting started
Microlearning is no different than other forms of training when it comes to the planning process, so if you’re in the field, you’ll likely recognize some of these steps. To start, you want to perform an assessment of the existing training materials you have and identify gaps. If you have no training materials, start by looking at the concepts you want your learner to walk away with. After that, you’ll craft learning objectives that cover the gaps or address the concepts you want to teach, and start to source content. You can use a SME to create the content you need, or you can try to leverage existing resources such as job aids, standard operating procedures and your HR office, if you have one.
“It’s important each piece makes sense standing alone, but also supports the overall objective of the course.“
After you’ve identified or drafted the content, start considering the best way to chunk it. It’s important each piece makes sense standing alone, but also supports the overall objective of the course. You may consider creating a short introductory lesson to help your learner understand the flow of the content and explain the course isn’t a traditional format. This is an important message, because your learner’s perception of the content influences their level of engagement.
Learners will interact with the content differently if they know they are only experiencing eight minutes of it, versus navigating into a two-hour long eLearning course. As a trainer, who creates those courses, I still get that overwhelming sense of dread when the narration reads “this course will take approximately 120 minutes to complete.” Letting you learner know ahead of time the brevity of the course will make them pay closer attention and solicit buy in.
Delivering Microlearning
Now that you know the content and the organization of it, you can start looking at the best way to deliver it. When beginning this step, remember, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Use content in it’s existing format if you can. Your learner is going to experience a wide variety of materials, each for a short amount of time, so it’s OK if they’re reading a pdf or article. The primary objective is to ensure diversity in how it’s delivered and that the information is clearly relevant to them.
Once you have the content's chunking and delivery method decided you can start developing the pieces that need to be built. While you’re developing these, think about how you’ll deliver them. Are they going to be emailed to people? Hosted in an LMS? Do you want to create a mobile application the learner uses to access them? There are a lot of options, all of which will depend on your budget and existing resources. No matter how you choose to deliver your materials, make sure during development the content is mobile friendly (easy to access on a phone or tablet.) One of the keys to successful microlearning is that it can be accessed on the go!
Think about the applications you use most on your phone and the lifecycle they went through before becoming your favorites. I can tell you, I use Gmail, Amazon and Kindle FAR MORE now that they have fantastic mobile apps than I did when they were browser based. Similarly, we want to make highly effective, engaging training accessible to learners on their devices. Microlearning is how we create that content, but I have yet to encounter an easy way to aggregate and provide learners those materials. LMS’s are highly effective, but restrictively expensive for companies, and a lot of them don’t offer mobile applications. The answer for delivery will be different for every company but I’m excited to see the industry evolve and look forward to the innovative solutions I know are coming.