Blog Post
BrianSeaman1
Community Member
While I agree that micro-learning is very important, I also feel that this is the new buzzword that has taken our industry by storm and some have the wrong idea of what it really means. I attended an e-learning conference back in October and one of the presenters spoke to this topic. His primary point was that we need to keep our training as short as possible due to attention spans. I would disagree with the idea that all learning needs to change to two minute learning segments. If a concept needs ten minutes of explaining then it takes ten minutes. It is the job of the designer to keep the learner engaged and keep the content to what the learner needs to know.
Making learning segments too short could lead to confusion on how larger concepts relate or tie into each other. I would say to learn your audience before applying micro-learning to all of your coursework. I think micro-learning within a 10 minute lesson has worked best for us because of the ongoing feedback we have gotten back from our learners. You can present some short content, have an interactive knowledge check, and so forth. This allows you to present content that is very focused and then tie it all together, if needed. I feel this is especially important when training on software, which is what I am involved in. Thanks! :)
-Brian
Making learning segments too short could lead to confusion on how larger concepts relate or tie into each other. I would say to learn your audience before applying micro-learning to all of your coursework. I think micro-learning within a 10 minute lesson has worked best for us because of the ongoing feedback we have gotten back from our learners. You can present some short content, have an interactive knowledge check, and so forth. This allows you to present content that is very focused and then tie it all together, if needed. I feel this is especially important when training on software, which is what I am involved in. Thanks! :)
-Brian
AlexArathopon
9 years agoCommunity Member
Hi Brian, currently I'm building a whole range of modules as part of an on-boarding process for a courier company. Whilst most content is 10-15 mins in length some topics are vast one module being 40mins! Without much time to reflect and apply the content will get lost. Due to time pressure, we had little time to prepare and had to 'get it done' - sound familiar. After the launch, it's been decided to break these monster modules and save the poor darlings from falling asleep whilst listening to accounting guidelines.
I am now more in favour of producing 1x module per discrete topic - 5 mins at most. After all the modules will serve as a reference tool post course so content needs to be found easily. I do like the idea of producing a summary module to link the content together. If out LMS had 'folders' to group modules that would help unfortunately, we have a scroll of death but that's the pay-off I guess.
I am now more in favour of producing 1x module per discrete topic - 5 mins at most. After all the modules will serve as a reference tool post course so content needs to be found easily. I do like the idea of producing a summary module to link the content together. If out LMS had 'folders' to group modules that would help unfortunately, we have a scroll of death but that's the pay-off I guess.