Microlearning vs Traditional Learning

A number of corporate organizations transition from traditional classroom training to microlearning every day, and for good reason.

eLearning helps employees retain a greater volume of knowledge, helps save money on training, offers accessibility and flexibility 24/7, while also helping the organization monitor and track employees’ progress. However, as times change and eLearning trends lean more and more towards offering learners short, engaging, and tightly focused modules, a lot of organizations are beginning to transition directly from traditional classroom training to microlearning.

As most of you would know, microlearning is, by definition short, crisp and concise. Microlearning modules are no longer than 5 minutes and each has a specific focus to meet a specific learning objective. As microlearning is learner-centric, mobile-friendly and cost-effective, it is a better learning strategy to transition to than to stick with traditional eLearning.

In this article, let us discuss how an organization should transition from traditional classroom training to eLearning, step by step.

1. Needs Analysis

Every transition must start with a needs analysis. A needs analysis starts with the reason for the transition. Why does your organization want to transition from traditional classroom training to microlearning? It’s usually because of one of three reasons. One, they’re doing it because everyone’s doing it, i.e. it’s trending. Two, they understand that microlearning is cost-effective and will save them a lot of money, or three, they understand the ins and outs of microlearning and have reached a well-informed decision. While all of these reasons are enough to begin the transition, the clearer and the more informed the reason for transition, the more chances of its sustained success. The needs analysis also includes an analysis of the who your target audience is and what they need. In case of microlearning, it works best on modern learners who are tech-savvy and do not have the patience to sit through long lectures.

2. Design And Development

After a proper training needs analysis, there comes the instructional design and development part. When it comes to designing and developing microlearning, there are 4 things that every designer needs to keep in mind.

• Microlearning learning modules NEED to be mobile-accessible. It defeats their point if they’re not, as they’re created for ultimate flexibility of place and time.
• As mentioned before, microlearning modules should have a specific focus and learning objective, which means that each module should deal with only one idea. All the content should revolve around that idea for the whole 3-5 minute duration of the module.
• Use only crisp, to-the-point content and focus more on visuals. Represent the central idea of the module using images, infographics, text and interactivities.
• Try to use personalized learning strategies like ‘branching’ in your microlearning module. This means that the learner’s choice of response leads to different topics, which personalizes the learning experience for the learner.

3. Evaluation

Do not forget the most important part of the eLearning process. eLearning of all types, including microlearning, needs to be constantly evaluated to know its efficacy, as well as whether it was a success or a failure. The best evaluation technique is to measure the targeted attributes, skills or qualities in your employees both before and after your employees take the course. You could also use surveys in order to get feedback from the learners themselves. Another way of assessing the microlearning module is to ask questions of yourself, after you’ve had proper feedback and after you have analyzed the feedback.

Questions could include:

Were the course objectives met?

Was the course engaging to learners?

Was the user interface easy to navigate?

Is the ROI as expected?

All in all, what matters is that the microlearning course should engage learners, have clear-cut objectives, must adhere to a proper structure and should provide learners with an incentive to learn. If your course is devoid of any engaging components, has no clear objectives or structure, and offers no incentives to your learners, then you can be sure that the eLearning course was a failure.

A successful transition from traditional classroom training to microlearning increases the effectiveness of your organizational Training and Development strategy but you’ll need to enhance your eLearning team’s understanding of microlearning. Microlearning is in itself a quite broad field, and exploring microlearning as much as possible before such a transition is in the best interest of any organization that wishes to successfully execute it.

If you would like to learn more about how to shift from traditional learning to microlearning!

If you’d like to know more about how SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s mobile learning platform can help your internal training practices, get in touch at enquiries@edapp.com. You can also try SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s Mobile LMS and authoring tool for free by signing up here.

Curated course examples

• Top 10 Cybersecurity Training for Employees
• 10 HAZWOPER Training Courses
• 10 Business Training Courses