What is microlearning?
Microlearning is an educational strategy that breaks complex topics down into short-form, stand-alone units of study that can be viewed as many times as necessary, whenever and wherever the learner has the need. Microlearning instructional modules are designed to be consumed in about five minutes and address one specific skill or knowledge gap topic.
The modern learner is easily distracted, highly visual, on the move, impatient and wants access to information on-demand.
We all may well find ourselves:
- surfing the internet three times (or more) per hour in the working day.
- looking at our smartphone dozens of times per hour
- prone to solving on-the-spot problems by accessing our smartphone for solutions
- learning more from search engines than books or manuals
- often asking a colleague how to solve a problem or sharing new findings with a peer
- considering taking a course on LinkedIn Learning, Udemy or Coursera to learn something new
- often feeling impatient, distracted and overwhelmed.
Microlearning is a strategy to engage the modern learner with bite-sized learning units with just enough information to achieve a goal, typically 3-5 mins. Unlike more traditional forms of learning, microlearning fits more naturally into the daily workflow and should include a mix of activities in addition to text and images including video, animation, quizzes, games, activities, reflection opportunities and possibly even user-generated content (through social sharing, videos, comments or forums).
For more information you can read this article by Christina Brembilla
This video provides suggestions for free microlearning apps and websites that use a short-form approach to learn something new.