Why Microlearning needs to be the Core Component of your Learning and Performance Strategy

Over the years a lot has been said about microlearning; for some, it is the silver bullet and the utopian answer to all our challenges. Others have claimed that it is irrelevant, and is as bad as the 60-minute click through “next” eLearning content that has tarnished our industry. So, what is the truth?

The truth is that it is neither. But before we discover what it means for our industry, we first need to define what microlearning is and what it isn't.

Microlearning should not be the chopping of traditional eLearning courses into smaller chunks - after all, something bad sliced into smaller parts is still bad. Microlearning as part of your L&D strategy should be:

•    The bedrock of the move from Courses to Learning Experiences 

•    A way to create new daily learning habits

These concepts are the foundation needed to develop a truly modern learning organisation.

 Microlearning is the breaking down of essential knowledge into specific concepts and procedures.  Each of these is represented by an individual and independent piece of content (quite commonly now a video or an article). The benefit of breaking down subject areas into these lego-like blocks is that it can be reused through all the modern ways we learn, which include:

•    Reusing the content across multiple learning experiences

•    To be searchable (we are now programmed to search at concept or procedure level, not course or experience)

•    Through discovery, as this article on the concept of microlearning was discovered by you

Take a practical example, in our social mission at FuseSchool to provide high-quality education for all 13 to 16-year-olds. We took the first subject, Chemistry,  and broke it into 240 individual concepts. Each concept has a corresponding bite size video explaining the notion in the best way we know how.

Video - our social mission at FuseSchool is to give free secondary school education to every child around the world

 Each of these videos is utilised in a variety of ways, including:

• Moved in and out of different learning plans at a micro-level
• As a revision tool where memorable content can be searched instantly and refreshed time and time again
• As a Lego-like building block to build a structured foundational learning experience where a child can process one concept at a time
• As a resource for a teacher to use in a flipped classroom design, where they ask the students to learn the concept for homework and then practise in the classroom the next day
• A supplement to knowledge. For example, if a students' teacher isn't able to explain the concept in a manner their students  understand during their lessons dependent on the examination board –(IBO, AQA, West African, South African) 

A microlearning content strategy allows each concept to be explained once and then reused in a multitude of ways. It maximises the return on the effort to create each concept or procedure and, theoretically, makes it possible for the content created to become of higher quality as wastage is eliminated and reuse across traditional and new ways of learning is implemented.

Only a microlearning content strategy has the potential to stop the biggest barrier to eLearning that we, as learning professionals, have got wrong for 20 years in our design of content. Research shows us that the human brain only remembers 50% of what it has learned within an hour (unless applied) and data shows us that less than 1% of people go back to a SCORM eLearning course after they have completed it because the path is too hard. Only a microlearning strategy designed outside of SCORM develops the frictionless access to get back the concept or procedure that needs refreshing instantly (less than 1 second) which is the expected behaviour of technology today, created and embedded by our constant consumer behaviours. 

In the void of the above, our learners will continue to try and learn as they always have: when they don't know how to do something in their job, they simply ask the person next to them.

What I found fascinating a few years ago at Vodafone was that certain videos were accessed around 50 times each by hundreds of users and I couldn't understand why. When we asked why, we found out that it was because of their core selling and customer service concepts, as explained by their most successful people were available within a second. Store Managers, therefore, were using them as mentoring tools to explain what great looked like to their teams. "Why explain yourself?" they said, "when you can get the best person in the company at each concept explaining what great looks like."  I think this is the other thing that microlearning opens up - new possibilities that we never knew existed or planned for, but we know it affects our future design thinking.

Another even more exciting application of microlearning is how it can be used to develop new daily learning habits and transform learning cultures. What is evident is that most of us struggle to find time to learn for an hour or two at a time, but all of us have already created microlearning habits in our everyday lives. This article itself is a piece of microlearning. It sits within a stream of other articles and videos that you may consume in those spare 5 minute moments you may have. These spare moments are a new uncontrolled area that we, as learning professionals, have the opportunity to design for and where we must compete for attention.

We recently analysed learning data across 12 different companies that have microlearning at the core of their learning strategy to understand what is working, what isn't and what lessons need to be replicated as a standard (Hilti, Harris & Hoole, Vodafone UK and Carpetright to name a few). We learned that engagement is extremely different for those whose content isn’t bite-sized. For those who adopt a microlearning strategy (which dovetails well with mobile), we see peak learning during travel to and from work, downtime, breaks and even after work hours. Learning after work hours? This is hugely interesting and exciting for our industry as people are consciously choosing to consume micro-content in their own time through articles, one-pagers and videos.

The learning data indicates that microlearning designed well has the potential to allow our learners to pick and choose how, what and when they want to learn. Whether that is through discovery, searching or browsing, it mirrors the choices that we make in our personal consumption of content and the technologies we have universally chosen to consume, e.g., Youtube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Flipboard, WeChat, etc. Almost all of our personal consumer choices are for microcontent, so it's no surprise that a learning strategy that follows our consumer choices is far more likely to succeed.

But what real benefit does designing for this new method of learning bring? How is continuous learning engagement affected and what happens to an individual and organisations' performance when this strategy is embraced?

At the heart of this answer is data, and it always tells us the same story. On average, the people that engage daily with microlearning perform at least 10% to 15% better than those that don’t. Those that have successfully enabled & implemented microlearning strategies can show the significant difference in business KPI performance and the benefit that the L&D function can bring. 

Microlearning allows a new type of learning measurement to be tracked - and we call this continuous learning. With this, it is now possible to see which business areas are continuously learning and which ones aren't and then to correlate that engagement directly with business data. When we dive deeper into the data to analyse the root cause of engagement and performance data we also see the huge difference a line manager can make. There is approximately a 10% difference in learner engagement when the line manager is involved and leads their team.

Video - Vodafone Retail, an example of a client who has embraced microlearning through a mobile-first content strategy 

 So how does one go about starting a microlearning strategy?

The first step is to detach ourselves from the Matrix and break away from the rules given to us by a traditional view of L&D. Rules which restrict our capability to move our companies and our learners forward into the future. So here are my five tips to moving into the brave new world:

• Discard the concept of heavy content e.g. no more 30-page process documents, 50 slide powerpoint decks, 1-hour e-learning courses and paper manuals that rarely get re-opened. 
• Build engaging short-form content that people will choose to watch and read rather than what we would enjoy designing and building. Holistic experiences from bite-sized content where each concept or procedure maps to one searchable and reusable asset.
• Facilitate the finding of experts within your organisation and bottle their greatness into bite-sized chunks for your audience consumption.
• Think of learning in non-linear fashion e.g. learning is not constrained by an event on a Thursday but instead recognised as a continual process of learning something new every day
• Research and make sure your learning technology is frictionless and a great user experience.
• Have fun - microlearning gives you the opportunity to start from scratch and make it an enjoyable experience for the curator and the learner

As a final word, I don’t believe that microlearning is a silver bullet or the whole answer for a successful modern learning organisation. I do, however, wholeheartedly believe that without it an L&D function cannot move forward and become successful unless they fully embrace the benefits that our digital world can offer to an L&D team, their learners and an organisation. Without it, not only can you not move forward into designing amazing and engaging learning experiences today but you won't be ready for the all the benefits that the next generation of learning technology will bring which is machine learning and true algorithm-driven personalised learning. If you put a 70-page document on Facebook or Scorm eLearning course on YouTube, it doesn't matter how amazing your technology is; it will still fail, the same is true of learning and communication. 

In order to ensure that organisations keep up with the future of L&D, we need to embrace the research, by transitioning towards a more consumer-grade experience and guarantee micro learning as part of the strategy that evolves the way people learn naturally.

Want to know more about how you can build microlearning into your learning strategy? Then join us on our dedicated webinar next week.

 If you would like examples, feel free to send me a message, and I’ll share some great examples.

www.fuseuniversal.com | 0207 247 3166 | hello@fuseuniversal.com