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8 Business Use Cases for Microlearning

KathrynGirou061's avatar
2 years ago

Are you excited to try out microlearning, but unsure when to use it? Below, we outline eight common workplace situations that benefit from a short-form course. Each situation includes a sample microlearning. At the end, learn how you can customize these templates for your own company and training needs. 

1. Create Organizational Alignment 


To hit a business target, everyone needs to be moving in the same direction. Creating that alignment starts with clear, frequent communication of the shared mission, vision, and values. Microlearning can help. The following editable template shows how you can align employees through regular executive “micro” updates:

2. Highlight HR Information, Notices, or Reminders


Educating employees about annual events like open enrollment, tax season, and compliance training is a critical function of HR teams. The problem? Important announcements often get missed when they’re embedded in long paragraphs or endless emails. Grab the following templates to see how microlearning makes HR communications more digestible and engaging:

3. Strengthen Company Culture and DEI Initiatives

Fostering an inclusive company culture is a continuous process—not a one-time effort. A series of microlearnings can support your larger culture-building and DEI efforts. Check out the following examples for ideas on how to get started:

4. Streamline Business Processes

You can also use microlearning to document and streamline business processes or workflows—such as employee onboarding or performance management. Notice how the following examples make it easy for employees to work through the steps of a process independently:

5. Increase Security Awareness

Most successful data breaches, phishing attacks, and other cybersecurity incidents are caused by human error. Adding refresher microlearnings throughout the year can fortify your defenses. See an example for safeguarding against phishing attacks below:

6. Enhance Employee Wellness


A successful business needs thriving employees. But employee wellness training often ends up buried under competing priorities. Microlearning makes it easy for employees to fit in short breaks for self-care throughout the workday. Check out these two wellness-related microlearning examples:

7. Provide Quick-Reference Guides

Microlearning is the perfect resource for one-off training questions: Employees can quickly find the answers they need—when they need them. Below, we’ve created templates for product and software training. But you could easily create quick-reference guides for sales, customer service, and other teams.

8. Reinforce and Assess Key Takeaways

Finally, who says you have to choose between a more sizable course and microlearning? Repetition aids retention. Consider following up longer training sessions with a microlearning quiz, scenario, or summary. The examples listed below demonstrate how you might do this:

Wrap-Up

There’s no shortage of creative ways you can use microlearning to achieve your business training objectives. The examples above are just a starter list. You might also check out submissions to one of our weekly community challenges, 40+ Microlearning Examples Created in Rise 360 #407.

Interested in customizing one of these examples for your team? If you’re an Articulate 360 subscriber or trialer, you can edit all of the examples linked throughout this post by choosing the course from our Rise 360 microlearning content templates. Here’s a short video showing how to do that:

What’s the latest microlearning course you’ve created? Tell us about it in the comments—and feel free to ask any questions you might have!

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Published 2 years ago
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  • There are some great templates here! I am always interested in streamlining learning experiences, so microlearning has always piqued my interest. I did notice a lack of evaluation or practice at the end of most of these courses. Is there a particular rationale for that in microlearning?
    • KathrynGirou061's avatar
      KathrynGirou061
      Staff
      We’re so glad you’re enjoying the templates, Carmelita! And that’s a great question about whether microlearnings should or shouldn’t have evaluations and practice activities. I think the big picture is that microlearning is similar to any other type of content in that it can serve a number of purposes. It might serve as a follow-up training refresher to leverage the spaced practice effect—or it can be used as a just-in-time job aid or for simple FYI knowledge transmission. Because the purposes vary, evaluation and practice activities may or may not be called for.

      For these specific microlearning examples, we’ve moved away from adding assessments in the following situations:

      1. Simple information transmission. This includes templates such as the Company Newsletter, Executive Update, and Open Enrollment. We might also cut an assessment when we want to focus on the bare essentials and the content is simple enough that a practice activity feels unnecessary.

      2. Just-in-time job aids and quick-reference guides. We avoid assessments when the microlearning is designed to be used in the flow of work (Desk Stretches, New Hire Checklist, and Performance Review). And we also don’t want to bog down employees who are using microlearning frequently as a quick-reference guide (Software Training).

      3. When learners are asked to apply what they’ve learned through specific action items. This last situation I believe you could make a case for either way (adding an assessment or leaving it out). We left out assessments on the Tips for Better Naps and 5 Allyship Roles microlearnings because they included specific action items that we saw as serving the same role as a “practice what you've learned" activity.

      But the great thing about the templates is that they’re easy to adapt. So you can totally add an assessment to any of them should your use case call for it. Spot the Phish, Gossip-Proof Your Workplace, How to Stop Using Ableist Language, and Recovering From a Workplace Mistake are all examples of microlearnings that we felt called for assessments.

      I hope that provides some insight into our thinking so far! But I’d also be curious to hear thoughts from you and other L&D professionals.
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    jimmyjoelson
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  • jimmyjoelson's avatar
    jimmyjoelson
    Community Member
    Well-researched content: It is important for the article to be well-researched with accurate information and reliable sources to back up any claims or statements made., and conclusion that flows well, keeping the reader engaged from start to finish.Relevant and interesting topic: The article should be on a topic that is relevant and interesting to the target audience, providing value and insight to the reader.
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