Microlearning!

If you are familiar with the story of David and Goliath, you would probably know that David was tiny while Goliath was a giant. However, David with his slingshot brought down the mighty giant.

Moral of the story: A small but effective solution can overcome even a mighty problem.

                Coming swiftly to the point now, I propose that the exact same principal can be applied to adult learning. Micro learning - training broken down into short yet informative bits has proven to be beneficial to the learning needs of the millennials. This concept embraces teaching a concise topic which is then tested or applied immediately afterwards.

                Research suggests that 90% of all information taught in a traditional classroom setting is lost within 12 months!  To counter this, micro Learning rejigs your training program into short bite sized courses. Information is relayed in a manner that is easy to understand. Studies show that the average attention span of a human being was 12 minutes in 1998. This, however dropped down to just over five minutes in 2008. The study also concludes that the average attention span of a person surfing the internet is between 8 and 12 seconds! That right, 12 seconds.  Keeping a learner engaged is by far the biggest challenge a modern instructional designer faces. Thus, reinforcing the fact that learning is 'right sized' when it is 'bite sized'.

                Training should be short and focussed. It should be available on a variety of devices and platforms and must be rich in interactive content. Having a variety of content is also a good idea. A study suggests that by the year 2020, an average human being will be consuming more than 15 hours of media per day! A large chunk of this media is in the form of videos. Therefore, it is key to have interactive video content as part of your training curriculum.

                Practice what you preach goes the adage. Therefore I am going to keep it short and simple folks. Deploy micro learning to improve retention, increase productivity and reduce training cost. Isn't that a win-win situation for everyone?

As usual, your thoughts and suggestions on the above topic are welcome.

Citation: Slideshare, Microlearning Allen Communication and Grovo.