How to create effective microlearning courses in minutes

It doesn’t take a huge amount of time and effort to create engaging and enjoyable microlearning courses. And you don’t have to sacrifice quality either. With the right tools and strategies, we’ll show you how you can create effective microlearning courses in minutes! 

What is microlearning?

Simply put, microlearning is a training strategy that uses bursts of bite-sized lessons for faster and more effective learning. Microlessons are designed to be engaging, interactive, and habitual because they’re human-focused. In the age of mobile devices and shorter attention spans, microlearning is a way to work with these hurdles rather than fight them.

Microlearning vs traditional learning

Traditional instructional strategies for workplace learning usually involve toolbox talks, sit-down lectures, and lengthy PowerPoint presentations that remind you of school. In other words, it’s boring. Employees need to carve out time in their busy schedules just for training, and depending on the work, they might not even have a lot of time.

Microlearning is about delivering effective training right to your employees. Microlearning content has three distinct characteristics:

• Mobile: should be accessible on any device
• Engaging: uses interactive elements like quizzes, games, video, and image media
• Affordable: it’s cost-effective because you don’t need instructors or specialized tools. Microlearning apps like SC Training (formerly EdApp) are free!

How to create microlearning courses

In five easy steps, you can build effective microcourses that your team will love. You don’t even need specialized tools or design expertise, just access to the internet and you’re good to go.

Step 1: Find a course creator platform

There are a lot of dedicated elearning tools out there, but our choice for easy and intuitive microlearning course creation is SC Training (formerly EdApp). Right now, SC Training (formerly EdApp) has everything you need whether you’re a seasoned instructional designer or a one-man learning management team.

You want your course content platform to have some of the following features:

• Course templates: for easy customization, so you don’t have to start from scratch
• Content templates: these include interactive templates, games, quizzes, image galleries, and more
• Mobile-first compatibility: once you’ve built your courses, you don’t have to worry if they look good on any device
• PDF/PPT converters: turn your existing learning materials easily into microlearning courses
• Reporting and analytics: even after course creation, you want your platform to have the capability to monitor and track learner progress

Step 2: Choose a topic and research

Gathering information is a big part of creating lessons. Creating microlessons is all about breaking knowledge into digestible chunks so your learners can easily remember and retain knowledge. Organize your course into the most important topics and then outline the information to be taught.

SC Training (formerly EdApp) understands that research is one of the most difficult parts of course creation, so if you’re feeling stuck, try out its Create with AI feature. At a click of a button, you can generate a microlearning course all populated and organized for you. It’s kind of like skipping the research step, it’s one of the best brainstorming partners for course creation!

Try creating a microlearning course in minutes today with SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s Create with AI! Sign up now—it’s free forever.

Step 3: Add your content to the authoring tool

Now that you’ve made an outline and have your content, it's time to build your course on the authoring tool. The first step is to find a course template that works for you. For example, if you want to add images, use an interactive image gallery to elaborate on the pictures you want to show. This is great for showing examples of products or comparing items for retail.

You can use text sequence templates to break long chunks of text into manageable pieces so your learners can absorb information better. And, one of the great things about SC Training (formerly EdApp) is that you can already add your existing learning materials through the PDF and PPT converters. If you have training manuals or presentations used for lessons, you can easily convert these into microlessons with a click of a button! This saves so much time.

Step 4: Add interactive content

Aside from content templates, SC Training (formerly EdApp) also has interactive templates like quizzes, games, video libraries, and more to make learning much more engaging. Learning becomes much more effective when learners are actively participating in their lessons, and not just passively listening.

You can gamify your courses by using game templates like multiple-choice questions, missing words, and categorizations. We call game questions like these knowledge checks, they’re the moments to challenge your learners on the information they’ve tackled. 

And if you’re interested in adding your branding or creatively designing your lessons, the creator tool has a Canva integration. Similar to Canva’s mission to democratize design, SC Training (formerly EdApp) wants to democratize learning so the tool makes content creation easy even without design or coding experience.

Step 5: Deliver to your teams

Once you’ve finished building your courses, you need them to be easily accessible to your teams. SC Training (formerly EdApp) makes this easy because you can deliver all your courses straight to your team’s devices. You can even create user groups if you’re managing multiple sets of teams with different learner styles or needs.

Through the admin experience, you as a training manager have full control over reporting, analytics, courseware, integrations, and more. You can invite learners individually or in a user group all in a click. Drive engagement with push notification settings, course reminders, leaderboard management, and rewards. And because you have real-time analytics, you can manage all learner needs and reach compliance by tracking learner progress and metrics. 

Free examples of microlearning courses built with SC Training (formerly EdApp)

We’ve created a quick list of SC Training (formerly EdApp)-built microlearning courses if you need inspiration for your own content. And as we mentioned, all SC Training (formerly EdApp) courses are editable so you can even directly use these examples as templates for your courses. Try them out now!

How to be a passionate leader

This quick seven-part leadership course is everything you need to learn about becoming an effective leader. It’ll tackle topics like the importance of personal passion, bold behavior, relationship building, and gaining trust across the board. There’s even a review lesson at the end to help your learners remember what they’ve learned!

Cybersecurity Awareness

Cybersecurity compliance is a must in all organizations because your company’s most important asset is data. Get your teams to be cyber secure with this simple yet effective information security course that tackles everything from data threats to sensitive data best practices.

Karamo's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Training 

SC Training (formerly EdApp) is very proud of this Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training program co-created with Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown. This course talks about actionable steps your company and teams can take every day to foster a more inclusive and safe workplace. With interactive storytelling content, this program will deep dive into everything from unconscious bias to stopping microaggressions.

New Hire Safety Orientation 

Onboarding is a crucial part of any workplace training program, and all onboarding programs should have a strong safety orientation. This safety training program comprehensively covers first aid, hazard communication, and even emergency plans for new hires. This means that everything is easily digestible to prevent overwhelming the new people coming into your team.

Fire Safety

You can never run out of safety training! This safety program will help your teams understand and prevent possible fire hazards in all kinds of workplaces. It’s a quick four-part course that tackles fire causes, fire prevention techniques, and fire safety evacuation plans. Guarantee that your workplace is emergency-ready with effective safety microlearning courses like these.

Create a microlearning course today!

Creating effective lessons is easier than you think, especially with the help of new technology like generative AI and built-in PPT/PDF converters. Try it out today and change the way you’re training at work today! SC Training (formerly EdApp) is free forever.