What is microlearning and how can you use it?

We take a look at the incredible learning method that’s sweeping the world.

Microlearning has been growing in popularity in recent years as educators and company trainers have come to realise its effectiveness at transferring and embedding knowledge. But implementing a strategy that embraces it can seem like a daunting task and we expect many learning and development professionals will have questions.

Microlearning — in a nutshell

If you want the plain and simple answer, microlearning is the breaking down of learning material into small, topical, bite-sized pieces. By avoiding overwhelming learners with content that is only partially relevant, the barriers to absorbing knowledge are lowered and new information has a greater likelihood of being embedded into long-term memory.

It is further enhanced by enabling learning to be performed in a context that’s more conducive to knowledge transfer. The diminutive nature of microlearning lessons mean that they can be accessed away from uncomfortable training locations or computers that are associated with doing work. When a learner can engage with microlearning in their own time and at their own pace, they are less likely to get bored or confused.

Microlearning courses are easier to develop, update and distribute compared to traditional eLearning courses and completion rates are dramatically higher. Furthermore, the compact nature of microlessons means microlearning is a great enabler of other learning techniques including Peer Learning, Spaced Repetition and Just-in-Time training.

How does it work?

Human memory can only hold up to five new pieces of information before it gets lost or overwritten. By focusing on fewer topics, and employing a chunking strategy, knowledge has a greater liklihood of transferring from short-term to long-term memory.

How effective is microlearning?

Traditional eLearning courses notoriously struggle with engagement: they regularly see completion rates as low as 15%. By embracing microlearning, typical completion rate figures rocket to 90%… and beyond(!) It’s not just the fact that microlessons take a few minutes to complete that improves effectiveness, microlearning’s propensity for adding interactivity, gamification, prizing and mobile learning means that engagement, incentives and ease-of-access all play a part too.

Why use it?

The workplace is evolving and training needs to reflect this. Herding workers into a central location is becoming as impractical as it is ineffective while traditional eLearning courses, all-too-often, fail to inspire workers.

• Enormous growth of the smartphone
All workers own smartphones so make microlearning available anytime and anywhere using mobile learning. Uploading existing knowledge, questions and answers to ready-made, interactive (and gamified) mobile LMS templates (that work on any device whether it’s a smartphone, tablet or laptop) and then distributing via the cloud, makes lessons simple to create and distribute.

• More Millennials in the workplace
Easily and quickly adapt your learning and development courseware so that it meets the high standards of design and technology that Millennial employees expect.

• Flexible, personalised learning
Easily manage a microlearning strategy for individual learners with a full, tailored analytics suite that can track their progress, knowledge retention and engagement.

• Rapid authoring
Author in hours, not days by using a template-based authoring tool. Anyone can create beautiful and engaging lessons, without writing a single line of code.

• A familiar experience
Learners intuitively know how to use mobile apps so familiar interactions like pinching, swiping and tapping are don’t need to be taught. Interacting with a mobile microlearning app is already second nature.

Try mobile-based microlearning for free

How to create the perfect microlearning lesson

Expert L&D instructional designers analysed the behaviour of learners across many thousands of microlessons to come up with the core requirements for constructing great microlearning. Watch the video to find out how:

How to ‘Boost‘ its effectiveness

Microlearning as a methodology is effective on it’s own but its effectiveness can be further enhanced through the implementation of associated learning techniques. Spaced Repetition is the revision of learning at increasing intervals until knowledge is embedded – something that isn’t practical with long eLearning courses. However, it’s important to use the correct interval-schedule-defining algorithm (which can be tricky to calculate) plus, it’s most effective when only questions that a learner struggles with are focused on. Dedicated microlearning app features, such as Brain Boost, remember which answers a learner got right before automatically creating a personalised microlearning revision course that’s tailored to the individual learner’s needs.

Using gamification and prizing with microlearning

A reward-based prizing solution that gives microlearners real prizes, encourages friendly competition among staff, incentivises learning and improves course completion rates. Winning multiple small prizes, such as instantly-redeemable gift cards and vouchers, is more effective than offering the opportunity to win large prizes. Meanwhile, Leaderboards allow learners (or groups of learners) to compete against each other: motivating high performers and stragglers alike. You can read more about gamification, here.

Rapid authoring means agile learning

Beyond a web browser, a microlearning-based authoring tool should require absolutely no additional software to create courseware. After signing up (in seconds) it’s possible to quickly author a first lesson before previewing it using native iOS or Android apps. If you’d rather use your own system to distribute it, simply export it as SCORM. What with existing eLearning systems being so expensive and time-consuming to install and implement not everyone can abandon that which represents a sizeable investment. However, microlearning is advantageous in that it needn’t replace what you’ve already got – it can be used to augment existing learning systems.

Traditional eLearning courseware can also be an expensive, time-consuming rigmarole to update which means learners are regularly faced with case studies and situations that are old and hard to relate to. The agility of using integrated authoring means that anyone can easily update courseware with more-relevant content that may have appeared on last night’s News.

The speed and agility of a rapid authoring tool means it’s simple to create microlessons that act as ‘booster’ lessons: to update staff on new products, policies or procedures. Find out more about rapid authoring tools, here.

Check out our Microlearning Infographic

If you want an at-a-glance guide to microlearning, check out our infographic below. Feel free to use it and share it as you please.

Microlearning and mobile: a perfect match

Microlearning works best when it’s mobile-first. By using a native smartphone app, learners can access their lessons anywhere – whether it’s during their commute or on-demand (utilising just-in-time training) when deployed in the field. Push notifications can inform them of new courses, deadlines or prizes.

Microlessons must react to the size of the screen: mobile-first doesn’t mean web-last. Reactive design mandates the need to display at full‑screen, high resolutions on both desktop and laptop computers – with the only requirement being a web browser. eLearning that only supports different formats (without being designed specifically for them) offers a poor user experience that distracts from learning.

Case study

Pandora Jewellery has used microlearning to dramatically improve learning and development for retail staff. The company achieved unprecedented completion rates after making the switch from its previous eLearning platform. Read the full case study.

We enjoyed completion rates of over 80% and 90% of learners prefer SC Training (formerly EdApp) to the existing elearning system.

More benefits of microlearning

When you help staff grow professionally you improve staff retention. According to one survey, 72% of retail employees want training that is faster, more convenient and more frequent. A further 88% of retail employees want training that is more fun and engaging.

It’s not just for retail either, any business including hospitality, enterprise and vertical markets benefit from the improved upskilling and faster onboarding that microlearning affords.

Try mobile-based microlearning for free

Microlearning also enables Peer Learning: the practice of employees teaching colleagues. Nobody knows your company’s products or processes better than your existing workers, so leveraging that expertise by getting them to create their own microlessons (either themselves or with minimal assistance) makes a great deal of sense. Learners will be more engaged when they can relate to the context and the teacher and learning will become even more effective (click here for more advantages of microlearning).

If you’re want to know more about implementing microlearning, get in touch with SC Training (formerly EdApp) at enquiries@edapp.com. You can also try its microlearning authoring tool for free in perpetuity. It doesn’t take long to create microlessons and if you don’t want to use SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s mobile LMS to distribute them, you can export to SCORM and use them elsewhere. Just click here to sign up and try.

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