5 Awesome Examples of Microlearning

If you’re a human resources professional, you know how important it is to provide your employees with the best possible training.

However, you’ll agree that telling your employees they need to find time during the work day to take courses in your company’s LMS will likely be met with excuses and groans.

Work and traditional workplace learning—it’s a tricky balance for them to maintain.

So how do you pass on the training without interrupting your employees’ working hours? Or how do you ensure they complete the training while ensuring they’re productive at work?

That’s where microlearning comes in as a handy tool.

You can break down your training materials into small, concise, and digestible chunks. That way, your trainees can feel that they’re getting value from each piece of content in a short amount of time.

In this guide, we’ll dive into detail about microlearning. We’ll also highlight its benefits and show examples of microlearning that you can incorporate to make your training smooth and valuable.

What is Microlearning?

Microlearning is a training method that includes bite-sized content that is easy to digest and remember. Generally, microlearning content is concise without sacrificing crucial information.

Consider microlearning as a method of offering online training using small bursts of information on a given topic, allowing your trainees to finish them in a few minutes and move on to the next activity.

This type of learning is best suited for corporate or commercial settings.

Instead of your trainees taking full-sized courses as long as an entire season of Game of Thrones (at least GOT is chaotic and entertaining), they can take one short lesson they’re likely to remember.

Learning can also take place on mobile devices, allowing for greater flexibility and various triggers to promote educational goals. Some microlearning courses incorporate the learning process into daily activities to improve retention and course completion rates.

What Are the Benefits of Microlearning?

As a short and punchy type of online training, microlearning offers many benefits, especially in commercial and corporate training.

Here are the benefits of microlearning:

High Learners’ Engagement

To begin with, microlearning engages learners better since it is focused on a specific learning topic and objective and is shorter.

Usually, microlearning takes less time. Your trainees can go through the bite-sized lessons and quickly grasp the concept without feeling the fatigue factor they experience in full-fledged courses.

Despite taking about 5 modules, they are able to engage with the materials without feeling bored or rushed.

Improves Knowledge Retention

People generally forget what they’ve learned if they don’t use the information.

Microlearning uses a spaced repetition strategy to ensure learners remember what they’ve learned.

It enhances learning by repeating information obtained in previous microlearning chunks. The interval between repetitions is progressively increased until the knowledge is transferred to the learner’s long-term memory.

Easier to Fit into Learners’ Schedules

Offering employee training can take time and effort.

That’s because fully-fledged courses require your employees to spend long hours to complete the course.

This means your employees would need to reduce their time working on learning or find their own time during the weekend to take the course.

Microlearning helps solve such obstacles. It takes less time to complete just a module, and the time commitment required by learners is way less than traditional online training.

They can progress through the training course even if they only have a few minutes.

Reduces Cognitive Overload

Cognitive overload is one of the main culprits behind poor e-learning performance.

In traditional e-learning, you bombard your learners with too much information at once. This makes it hard for their brains to process it all and easily grasp it.

Microlearning helps fix the challenge.

Providing your learners with brief and straightforward learning materials allows their brains to process and store the information in their permanent memory.

Supported Across All Devices

Since microlearning is based on brief, bite-sized training sessions, it is simple to adapt to any device.

Employees may struggle to keep up with larger training courses.

They might need to take a break in the middle of a course.

That implies they may lose their place or forget earlier material and must retrace their steps before continuing with the course.

Microlearning complements mobile learning, allowing you to study on the go. Short, bite-sized courses are easy to fit into a hectic schedule.

And with your smartphone or iPad, you can access them at any time and at any place.

Examples of Microlearning

Microlearning is being hailed as the next big thing in learning and development (L&D) and as the successor to traditional eLearning courses.

The reason for microlearning’s resounding success is the fact that it is a completely learner-centric learning methodology.

Microlearning can take different formats. In this section, we’re going to highlight the best microlearning examples and why they work.

Microlearning Videos

If a picture is worth a thousand words, video content is worth twice as much.

Compared to other content formats, video-based content has greater engagement and retention.

Try reading about baking a cake; it’s painful compared to watching a chef’s video showing how to make it.

Microlearning videos, as their name implies, are brief, focused videos meant to achieve a specific learning objective.

They can be used by the learner to meet their various learning needs, such as:

• Learning something new.
• Diving deeper into a given aspect.
• Solving a specific problem.
• Practicing to gain proficiency.
• Applying the acquired learning.

An excellent example of a micro-learning video is this product demo in our community that walks our new customers through our product.

In the 20-minute video, they can discover how to use GroupApp to build their community and launch their first online course.

Good examples of microlearning videos include:

• Explainer videos
• Brief & interactive videos
• Product demos
• Micro-lectures
• Whiteboard animations
• Kinetic text-based animations
• Performance support intervention

Microlearning Mobile Apps

Microlearning apps have taken the world by storm. They’re easily accessible and can be used at any time.

A microlearning app combines the easily digestible nature of microlearning with the advantages of a mobile learning app. Examples of awesome microlearning apps include:

• Duolingo
• Amazon Kindle
• TED
• YouTube

Microlearning applications allow learners to learn at times when they would not have been able to otherwise. For example, you can listen to mobile learning apps at the gym, while commuting, or during your morning jog.

Infographics

An infographic is another excellent example of microlearning. An infographic offers a visual representation of training topics, trends, and complex tasks.

That’s done by combining images with text to provide all the essentials and keep online learners engaged.

Infographics are handy microlearning tools since learners will likely remember the information in a visual format.

Our brains are hardwired to consume visual content faster than written content.

In that case, an infographic allows you to present direct comparisons and representations of the concepts you’re trying to convey without confounding your information. You won’t run the risk of learners becoming confused or bored.

Quizzes

Virtual quizzing is a viable microlearning model for continuing education on a large scale.

That’s because repetition is an essential element of learning, and one way to repeat content is through quizzes.

Quizzes allow you to assess learners’ prior knowledge, and the results may also be used to provide only the necessary instruction.

It highlights the learning gap, which must be addressed through training to reach the intended outcome.

Learning as a Game Show

Game-based microlearning nuggets will assist you in simulating the immersive atmosphere that genuine games provide.

It simply entails creating a fully playable game based on your instructional content. Incorporating badges, scoreboards, and leaderboards will stimulate learners to engage with the learning content rather than making studying a chore.

Because microlearning focuses on a single learning target at a time, each one may be gamified to sharpen specific abilities. Short, game-based nuggets also help to improve retention and application.

How to Use GroupApp for Microlearning

GroupApp is an online community builder and course platform that allows you to bring your peers together and monetize your expertise.

Besides being an all-in-one community builder, you can also use GroupApp as a microlearning platform.

Here’s how.

Drip Content

Microlearning aims to provide your trainees with small, digestible chunks of content.

That is possible with GroupApp. You can release your learning materials in small bursts after a specific time interval.

This gradual delivery of microlearning content allows learners to follow their own pace instead of being overwhelmed with course materials all at once.

Embed Different Content Formats

The option to embed video and other dynamic media makes your material more relatable and helps bring complicated topics to life.

Speak of videos from different hosting platforms like Youtube or Wistia, PDFs, worksheets, and audio files. This is something that we don’t limit you to at GroupApp.

Powerful Analytics

Tracking your learners’ progress is essential, as it helps you gauge the overall performance of your microlearning strategy.

Using GroupApp as your microlearning platform, you can track your students’ course progress and activity level.

This makes it easy to know what type of learning material they engaged with most and where they struggled.

Conclusion

In many businesses, the average employee is busy and pressed for time. These employees desire to gain new skills, stay current on industry trends, and advance their careers.

However, they need more time and attention to go through tedious lectures, long-winded content, or slow-paced instructional products.

That’s where microlearning comes in as a valuable tool.

Microlearning helps you develop online courses that appeal to your students and inspire them to study. That’s by delivering knowledge in bite-sized modules that are easy to absorb, mobile-friendly, and entertaining.

Try GroupApp for free and launch your microlearning platform today.