As micro-learning continues to gain more traction for corporate training, here are 5 micro solutions to deliver some major training issues:
You need to teach several related skills or topics.
Often, employee training involves educating learners on many related skills; all equally important but distinct enough that learners need to master each skill separately.
For example, you might need your new trainees to learn how to use several different hand tools. You could dedicate an entire day to learning hand tools, but our brains aren’t built to remember all the different tools with equal efficiency.
It’s a lot like the party game where you are asked to remember all the items on a tray after viewing them for a minute. You can immediately recall at least one item but as the list gets longer, you struggle to recall all the items.
Our brains tend to remember the first item and last item on a list, respectively known as the Primacy Effect and the Recency Effect. Your learners will leave recalling the first and last tool best which might be problematic when they need to use a tool that was presented mid-day!
Micro-learning allows learners to focus on one skill at a time. If you must only learn about a hammer today, your brain can make the required connections to store the hammer information into your long-term memory. Then tomorrow, you can do the same thing for screwdrivers.
Full day training doesn’t work equals brain fatigue.
Full day training might not be ideal for your workplace. If you are running a boutique hotel with 15 staff, you can’t pull all employees away from their post and still serve customers.
You might adopt micro-learning out of necessity so that each staff member can spend 10 minutes of their shift learning without compromising guest services.
You might hear complaints from staff that a whole day of learning is too tiring. Mental fatigue or cognitive fatigue is the same effect that causes more car accidents on the way home from work than on the way to work.
To learn, your brain uses fuel (glucose) to release, receive, and reassemble a host of neurochemicals. Like your car engine running on an empty tank or overheating after a full day of driving, your brain reaches a point where it needs to stop to rest and refuel before it can function at full capacity again.
Micro-learning circumvents poor retention due to mental fatigue because learners can complete a lesson in a matter of minutes and pick up the next lesson after a good rest and refuel.
Your online training requires computers that your employees don’t have.
Online training works well for staff at desks with computers but what about the multitude of employees who don’t work at a desk with a computer? Some staff may not even have a computer at home. Most staff, however, probably have a cell phone! Unlike large online courses, micro-learning is well suited to mobile learning. It might be difficult to complete a four-hour course on your cell phone but a 5–10-minute microlearning lesson is well tolerated on a mobile device.
You want your learning to extend beyond your own employees.
Learning isn’t always just for staff. The head chef at your restaurant might want to show your serving staff exactly how he garnishes his signature crème brulé so they can quickly garnish it before it is served. Why not release a clip from the video on social media to highlight a signature dish? Your staff will still get the full micro-learning cycle when the chef observes each of them garnishing the dish, but your customers get a sneak peek behind the scenes.
Employees have varying levels of competency on the subject.
I accidentally interrupted a professional development day at my child’s school recently. Later, in conversation with one of the teachers, I apologized for my intrusion. They laughed and replied, “It’s not like I was learning anything new”. My children adored this teacher, I have the utmost respect for them, they are the teacher who you can find in their classroom in the middle of August. They aren’t a lazy learner; they just have 20+ years of experience and it’s hard to develop professional development that they haven’t seen before!
With micro-learning, more experienced employees can move quickly or skip over lower-level lessons, focusing on gaps in their skill set. At the same time, it allows less experienced employees to do and redo each lesson at their own pace to mastery.
Do any of these reasons resonate with your organization? Can you see how it can help you achieve corporate benchmarks? If so, what are you waiting for?
We can help. Reach out and let’s chat about what you need to implement a micro-learning strategy to help solve your training challenges.
References
Khlaif ZN, Salha S. Using TikTok in Education: A Form of Micro-learning or Nano-learning? Interdiscip J Virtual Learn Med Sci. 2021;12(3):213-218. doi: 10.30476/ijvlms.2021.90211.1087
Shail MS. (August 02, 2019) Using Micro-learning on Mobile Applications to Increase Knowledge Retention
and Work Performance: A Review of Literature. Cureus 11(8): e5307. DOI 10.7759/cureus.5307