microlearning sydney

Microlearning: the future of learning

Voiced by Amazon Polly

Generation Z, which is also known as the millennials, grew up with electronic devices like phones, tablets, and desktops or laptops and are known to be tech-savvy, they are comfortable with them, and using them to study would be quite comfortable and fun. Businesses that require constant employee training while using the minimum cost possible, and individuals who are looking for a quick fix to a problem all make use of what is known as “microlearning”.

What is microlearning?

Well, there is no specific definition of micro-learning, some might define it as a holistic approach for skill-based learning and education which deals with comparatively small learning units and short-term learning activities while others might define it as a type of learning that offer just the appropriate amount of information needed by a learner in a short period usually between 2-5 minutes.

The definition of micro-learning is based on each individual. All microlearning-based education shares one key characteristic which is brevity. Microlearning may be long-term or short-term. Micro-learning contents can be given and received through texts, images, videos, audio, tests and quizzes, and games. Microlearning is a very engaging, less time-consuming, and cheap type of eLearning training. Microlearning may not the best solution for your training/learning need, but it is surprisingly very effective.

Consider how a staff of a company gains information outside their work, they get this information in little fragments. They watch videos online, consult google, check social media posts, and just run around the internet. Everything comes into the brain quickly and in small pieces. Employees and tech users have been trained to focus on a small bit of information and assimilate it quickly. Businesses should take advantage of this and engage them in micro-learning. micro-learning is a big factor in today’s fast-growing education and skill acquisition programs.

There are hundreds of microlearning courses you can check out online. By the end of this article, you will know what microlearning is, its benefits, how to implement microlearning in your training, the best microlearning tool in Australia, and how to use build your microlearning online training content.

How to implement microlearning in your online course

Before you do start using microlearning you need to evaluate your goals, know what kind of microlearning is essential to your business and what is supplementary. For example, how necessary is technical skill development to the long-term success of your company? Are you getting into this training for teamwork or soft skills? Once you’ve realized what you want, you can venture into microlearning. The following are strategies you can use to implement microlearning:

microlearning

Before you do start your microlearning training you need to evaluate your goals, know what kind of microlearning is essential to your business and what is supplementary.
For example, how necessary is technical skill development to the long-term success of your company? Are you getting into this training for teamwork or soft skills? Once you’ve realized what you want, you can venture into microlearning. The following are strategies you can use to implement microlearning:

  1. Identify Your Organization’s Learning Needs

    microlearning

    Building an efficient microlearning program needs to start with thoughtful planning, even before you start wondering how to implement microlearning. Start with tools and analytics to assess the difference between your current knowledge state and the future, goal state to identify the skills that are in demand in the company and areas where the employees are struggling. Remember to involve the learners in this process. Outline the skills that are in high demand and work on them.

    Next, decide which course will require long-term learning and which will require microlearning. At this point, you should take a full review of your options of learning vendors. When considering the right vendor to use, you should get an image of what kind of content they provide, the format they offer, and the quality of the learning system they provide in your head, you need to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of each option, including how much assistance will be available. This preparation process is necessary because it will determine your progress and it’s also the perfect opportunity to generate interest and motivation within the company.

  2. Creating Microlearning content

    microlearning content

    If you want to create your microlearning content, there are some basic principles we need to take into consideration. Firstly, simplicity is pivotal. Avoid the use of heavy English words, voluminous workload, and long duration courses; each course should focus on a central idea, focus on the main target of this topic and avoid substantive information. Secondly, make the courses engaging. The use of images, graphs, and visual illustrations will make the microlearning content you are working on very engaging. You should also make sure that you have clear, regular style and content development guides.
    As you’re working with more miniature sections of content, you need to ensure that the different writers and curators remain on-brand. In addition, target your learner’s progress. You might want to add tests and quizzes, you might also want to break down competency frameworks to identify the knowledge, skills and, behaviours that each role requires. With that done, you can build competition between learners which will increase learner’s performance, Alternatively, you can think of your learners as a customer with their needs while your role is to satisfy their needs.

  3. Organize Your Microlearning Content

    organise elearning content

    Micro-learning content needs to be very easy to find. Make sure you put related courses in the same group. Make sure micro-courses are easy to find.

  4. Monitor, Review, And Improve Your Learning Training

    Actively seek feedback from users on a regular basis and try to adjust the system to meet the user’s needs. You will need to work on reviewing and improving the learning experience, creating a system that makes sure you don’t overlook outdated information on your site, and manage the process that brings about great user intent and review is crucial.
    As your business grows, you need to upgrade your learning resources to meet your learners’ needs, to do this, you have to regularly assess the performance of your microlearning program and track the learners’ engagement and effectiveness to be able to spot when you need to upgrade your learning resource.

Benefits of microlearning

  1. It’s Affordable: Microlearning is very cheap to produce thereby making it affordable
  2. It’s Faster to Deliver: Microlearning requires few resources therefore it’s easy to deliver it to the learners. This makes learners engage more in the courses.
  3. It’s Flexible: Microlearning can cover any subject that regular eLearning courses can in a bite-sized way.
  4. It Boosts Knowledge Retention: When you read an article repeatedly and revisit it repeatedly when you forget something about that article, you are always likely to retain the article much better, the same goes for courses on electronic learning, microlearning.
  5. Learners Find Microlearning More Engaging: Microlearning is similar to checking your social media apps, it’s very engaging, once you forget a topic, you can easily go back and it is easy to use.

How to Find the Right Microlearning Tool in Australia?

There are hundreds of microlearning tools you can find online. There are many tools you can use to decide which tool is the best for you.

One of the important perks of microlearning is its quick consumption. The HR team can develop content on microlearning on a tight schedule, and your learners get the information with ease and speed. However, you need an eLearning authoring tool that is ideally suited for the job to offer high-quality eLearning content. These are some tricks that you can use.

Firstly, you need to redefine what microlearning is. As I said earlier, Microlearning is defined based on the user’s perception. These are some of the questions you should ask yourself before going into microlearning, do you have strict time constraints in place? Are there certain eLearning activities you want to remove from your required course? There is a broad range of eLearning content that needs to be considered.

From eLearning videos to serious educational games so you need to think of what you need. There are few microlearning activities you might want to consider which are: task simulations, Real-world experience, infographics that explore relevant trends, and competitive games. Secondly, Narrow down your learning objectives: Learning objectives impact every part of the tool selection process.

This will give you the ability to choose the microlearning authoring tool that meets the learners’ needs which in turn helps you achieve the desired outcomes. For instance, you need to develop mutual reciprocal microlearning content that imparts real-world occurrences.

Thus, you may want to search for a microlearning authoring tool with a built-in online library. Before you start creating the list of the eLearning tools you need, meet with your eLearning team to analyze the research and develop clear learning objectives. And lastly, look for responsive design features

The preference for microlearning software tools depends on the users. We will outline several online tools for microlearning in Australia.

  • Moodle LMS: LMS stands for learning management system. Moodle LMS is an operative and engaging learning management system developed to provide a top-class training experience. Moodle LMS enables students and administrators to achieve their coaching and learning goals by administering a wide range of tools. It comes with an online course assembly, learner and subject dashboards, question banks, competencies, automated registration, and so much more.
  • Synap: This is one of the most used microlearning tools in Australia. Synap is an exceptional online solution for question-based learning. Educational bodies and organizations across the world use Synap to develop and deliver practice tests and exams. It is easy to use and very effective.
  • Talent LMS: Simplicity is one of the things this type of learning management system takes very crucial. Its simplicity makes it one of the most preferable learning management systems. It’s one of the best ways to create bite-sized courses, share them with your teams, and track the learner’s progress.