The term microlearning refers to the practice of breaking down long-form training content into bite-sized chunks of information.
Microlearning is not a new trend and has been a trending buzzword in training circles for many years. Mostly used in the form of short videos, microlearning is a widely accepted practice for delivering training and offers a variety of benefits to learning administrators or organizations that are delivering training.
In this article, we will discuss some of the benefits of microlearning that organizations can enjoy when it comes to online training for employees.
Let see what these are:
Benefits For Learners:
As mentioned earlier, microlearning has many benefits. In this section, we will be discussing the positive influence of microlearning on training metrics like engagement, comprehension, and retention. While the learners are the primary beneficiaries here, these benefits also apply to the organization/learning administrator that is delivering the training.
Less Fatigue, More Engagement
As the name suggests, microlearning distills the information of a lesson in a small and focused piece of content. Generally, the average time required to consume a piece of microlearning content is between five and twenty minutes.
In such a short time frame, the chances of a learner experiencing fatigue are minimized. As a result, they are able to be more attentive to the information being shared in the lesson.
Similar To Popular Content Formats
As mentioned earlier, videos are commonly used to deliver microlearning lessons. In the age of social media, many of us are used to consuming short videos.
With microlearning, learning administrators are able to deliver their training content in a similar format. Being already used to consuming such content, it becomes easier for learners to stay focussed during the entirety of the short lesson.
Microlearning Improves Retention
Thanks to the previously mentioned benefits of microlearning, it is able to improve the overall retention of training material.
This isn’t mere speculation. In a study conducted in 2015, students that were provided training in the form of microlearning content performed over 22% better than students that were trained with long-form training content.
Benefits For Organisations:
The following benefits of microlearning are directly applicable to organizations employing this style of training.
Cheaper And Quicker Development
Since microlearning based training content is shorter, it is naturally easier and less time consuming to develop. Moreover, since most modern tools already support the development of microlearning content, there are templates and themes that will help you speed up the training content development process further.
With fewer man-hours and efforts expended on the training content development, the costs involved in the whole process is also minimized.
Versatile Application
Finally, the applications of these short, focussed snippets of content are not usually limited to a single training scenario. If, for instance, you have developed a short video about a certain product function, you can use the same video to train your sales team and your support team.
Similarly, there may also be instances where these snippets of content can be used as standalone pieces of content. Moreover, microlearning videos can also be used as on-demand refreshers for employees that have gone through the training and are simply looking to brush up on a specific topic or concept.
Conclusion
These were just a few of the multitude of benefits of microlearning. Have you tried microlearning? Share your experience with us in the comment section.
