The Definitive Guide to Microlearning

Microlearning has become a popular way of training employees in the flow of work. Over the next few weeks and months, we will be doing a micro-series on microlearning; delivering short, micro-content on the what, why, and the how-to guide to microlearning.At the end of this blog series, we will publish a downloadable guide to microlearning

Microlearning’s power comes from the shorter duration of learning. In this microlearning blog series, you will discover an in-depth look and understanding of why microlearning is effective. Microlearning is a logical response to a fast-paced society, driven towards learning efficiency:

• How do you learn faster?
• How do you retain more information?
• How do you retain information for a longer period of time?
• How do you learn and retain the right information?
• How do you learn, retain, and know how to transfer your knowledge to other challenges?
• How do you scale and manage the quality of learning to different people from different places, with different backgrounds and different motivations?
• How do you do all of this simultaneously?

Chapter 1: What is Microlearning

Chapter 2: A Micro-History on Microlearning

Chapter 3. What’s the difference between Microlearning and Macrolearning?

Chapter 1. What is Microlearning?

Let’s break the word down into 2 chunks:

Microlearning has a few nicknames:

• Micro-elearning
• Short courses
• Bites/Bite-sized learning
• Chunks
• Snacks
• Bursts
• Micro-content
• Micromedia

Microlearning can be defined as:

Short and small chunks of information used to meet a specific learning outcome. There is no definitive time requirement for microlearning, but typically microlearning content takes the learner 1-10 minutes to consume.

5 Micro-quotes about Microlearning from the experts

1. “[Microlearning] is based on the idea of developing small chunks of learning content and flexible technologies that can enable learners to access them more easily in specific moments and conditions of the day, for example during time breaks or while on the move” (1).
2. “Microlearning content is short and focused enough to meet an immediate need. It is a video, article, blog, ebook, audio clip or another form of content that can be indexed and found easily” (2).
3. “...things we can quickly read, view, or consume and they only take 10 minutes or less. These may be a video, a blog, or a set of instructional questions that help us think differently than we did before. We as information-seeking animals consume this kind of material all day, and most of the news sites and social networks now offer such learning in a massive, curated stream” (3).
4. "No matter if learning refers to the process of building up and organizing knowledge, to the change of behaviour, of attitudes, of values, of mental abilities, of cognitive structures, of emotional reactions, of action patterns or of societal dimensions, in all cases we have the possibility to consider micro, meso and macro aspects of the various views on more or less persisting changes and sustainable alterations of performances" (4).
5. “Learning from content accessed in short bursts, content which is relevant to the individual, and repeated over time to ensure retention and build conceptual understanding” (52).

Chapter 2. A Micro-History on Microlearning

Once upon a time, we lived in a world without computers, the internet, mobile phones, devoid of the power to access information that was buried in stacks of paper. Take a look at the 200+ year micro-history of Microlearning: