Let’s start with basic understanding. Basically, micro-learning
describes a method of learning, whereby concepts and ideas are presented (or
retrieved) in very small chunks, over very short time-scales, often at the
point of need, or at the point of maximum receptiveness.
Depending on frames and domains of reference, micro and macro aspects
vary. These are relational concepts. For example, in the context of language
learning, one might think of micro aspects in terms of vocabularies, phrases,
sentences, and distinguish them from situations and episodes and socio-cultural
specifics or complex semantics. In general discourse on learning, one might
differentiate between the learning of individuals, group learning or learning
of organizations and the learning of generations or societies.
Furthermore, microlearning marks a transition from common models of
learning towards micro perspectives on and the significance of micro dimensions
in the process of learning. The microlearning approach is an emergent paradigm,
so there are no hard definitions or coherent uses of the term yet. However, the
growing focus on microlearning activities can be seen by web users' activities
on the subject, who tag their corresponding weblog postings and social
bookmarks with the term "microlearning"
Some people do talk about sending text (SMS) messages to learners –
perhaps a question or a brief statement of fact/opinion. But, unless this is
something the learner has asked for, it’s unlikely to make much of a
difference, and may even just be ignored.
Micro-learning can be based on any type of media, but the key thing is
that the media should be in small chunks. A one hour video, with a piece of
useful learning somewhere in the middle can be painfully difficult to use in a
micro-learning context. But a pack of videos put together in a Youtube playlist
is perfect – as each video is individually addressable, and can be linked to.
Similarly, there’s no point just giving someone a 60 page PDF document.
You need to be able to point them to the particular page, or even paragraph, in
the content that will help them at their point of need.
Now let’s move to examples & applications. When customers call a
bank, they are pleased to receive perfect, courteous service. When customers
bring a car in for service, they don't want to be told the job will take two
extra days because the mechanic will be in class. They want results now.
Business is about productivity, not learning. The learning challenge is to keep employees productive and learning simultaneously. Micro-learning can be a critical component of the strategy because it satisfies immediate knowledge needs to enable performance. As technologies advance, micro-learning evolves to match the needs and pace of business.
Learning and consumption have several similarities. According to the FDA, the most beneficial eating patterns include eating six small meals through the day when one is truly hungry as opposed to when a clock says it is time to eat. In other words, consume when needed. There is a lot to be said for applying the same strategy to learning as to nutrition. The analogies include:
a) Too much consumption at one time can be painful and stressful, and the value can be lost.
b) It is often wasteful. Investments of time and expense may not satisfy the true need.
c) No one wants to clean up after a big meal. It can be messy and exhausting to redo learning and restore order.
Micro-learning strategies facilitate knowledge acquisition, employee learning and performance support, when and where needed. It is just enough and always available should learners need to partake more as demanded. However, it is just as important to enable employees to learn where they are and to have learning be integrated tightly into their work.
Sometimes this may involve a smartphone, tablet or presentations though an online, corporate intranet. Eventually e-learning may be accessed in a manufacturing plant or hospital by scanning a QR code and reading resulting content on a handheld device. Consider current standby micro-learning examples such as instant messaging, blogging and even the telephone and water cooler. These are now ubiquitous in the workplace. The expertise needed to be tapped belongs to top performers, and their knowledge transfer is not specific to a certain delivery mode.
Since micro is a relative term, let's give it some bounds in reference to what has been common in the learning industry for years. A five-day instructor-led course would not be considered micro-learning, nor would an eight-hour e-learning course. However, each lesson and its assets could be made available for easy reference when demands for performance arise. Recall that first reference to a phone call to the bank. Perhaps the bank representative is referring to information from the latest course about the new mortgage program restrictions to satisfy a customer's call.
Business is about productivity, not learning. The learning challenge is to keep employees productive and learning simultaneously. Micro-learning can be a critical component of the strategy because it satisfies immediate knowledge needs to enable performance. As technologies advance, micro-learning evolves to match the needs and pace of business.
Learning and consumption have several similarities. According to the FDA, the most beneficial eating patterns include eating six small meals through the day when one is truly hungry as opposed to when a clock says it is time to eat. In other words, consume when needed. There is a lot to be said for applying the same strategy to learning as to nutrition. The analogies include:
a) Too much consumption at one time can be painful and stressful, and the value can be lost.
b) It is often wasteful. Investments of time and expense may not satisfy the true need.
c) No one wants to clean up after a big meal. It can be messy and exhausting to redo learning and restore order.
Micro-learning strategies facilitate knowledge acquisition, employee learning and performance support, when and where needed. It is just enough and always available should learners need to partake more as demanded. However, it is just as important to enable employees to learn where they are and to have learning be integrated tightly into their work.
Sometimes this may involve a smartphone, tablet or presentations though an online, corporate intranet. Eventually e-learning may be accessed in a manufacturing plant or hospital by scanning a QR code and reading resulting content on a handheld device. Consider current standby micro-learning examples such as instant messaging, blogging and even the telephone and water cooler. These are now ubiquitous in the workplace. The expertise needed to be tapped belongs to top performers, and their knowledge transfer is not specific to a certain delivery mode.
Since micro is a relative term, let's give it some bounds in reference to what has been common in the learning industry for years. A five-day instructor-led course would not be considered micro-learning, nor would an eight-hour e-learning course. However, each lesson and its assets could be made available for easy reference when demands for performance arise. Recall that first reference to a phone call to the bank. Perhaps the bank representative is referring to information from the latest course about the new mortgage program restrictions to satisfy a customer's call.
Microlearning – Learning, not Training
The learning may occur during the call to satisfy the customer and the employee aspiring to deliver excellent service.
Consider that service in a mobile environment. Now that the housing market is picking up in parts of the country, home shows and conventions are experiencing a comeback. Banks and mortgage companies may be onsite to assist with financing. They must be untethered and ready to support buyers. Perhaps they are equipped with a state-of-the-art tablet with a high-speed network connection. The same scenario can be replayed face-to-face.
Or, consider a chemical manufacturing plant that has just moved, so the location and operation for some equipment is new. Rather than expecting employees to retain everything about the facility from a class conducted a month earlier, engineers can scan a QR code using their smartphones to access documentation for the new equipment, a video of its use and directions for shutdown if necessary. Ideally, all of this would have occurred in the workers' native language.
The learning needed for the representative and the engineers was just enough, and when and where it was needed. In both the public and private sectors, organizations have recognized the value of leveraging learning content in relevant, worker-consumed chunks.
A global engineering company might employ the strategy and realize significant savings by downsizing an expensive help desk which supports employees after the roll-out of new business applications. In a large public school system, employees across the jurisdiction might access bite-sized learning assets relevant to their task at hand, enabling record keeping being flawless in the schools and main offices.
According to Cushing Anderson of market intelligence firm IDC and his 2010 Modality Survey, "Measuring the impact of training on the enterprise is frequently weak. Most are unable to describe the business impact that successfully trained or skilled workers will have on the performance of the related technology." This drives a trend to match more targeted micro-learning investments to specific job needs.
An IDC survey also documented changes in delivery modalities into 2012. The drastic increase in asynchronous e-learning points to the workforce's need to access what they need when they need it.
There are some common issues with micro-learning in an organizational learning strategy.
1. Retention
IDC research and anecdotal data shows that knowledge retention from traditional learning methods is 20 percent at best. Perhaps the right strategy is to assume low retention and focus on leveraging all assets from the classroom as performance support. Current data and folklore indicates 70 percent of learning happens on the job.
2. Performance Support
To match employees' working environment, learning leaders may have to modify classroom development and think ahead to where else content will be accessed and on what device or channel.
3. Collaboration
As recently as 30 years ago, this looked like a tap on the shoulder, but it is powerful, and it has evolved into an electronic action. For synchronous micro-learning, techniques such as instant messaging, social media and email are well understood. However, employees cannot always rely on experts' availability, especially with the global reach of today's organizations. Subject matter experts and mentors may be anywhere. Facilitating a platform on which it is easy to consume and contribute is a solid component of an effective micro-learning strategy.
4. Enablement
Enabling experienced experts to articulate their knowledge and stories is easier than ever. Given available technologies, they can record their actions or their voice to enable those who need to know. A smartphone could equal a movie studio. The value of subject matter experts is not in their knowledge, but in their ability to share that knowledge and expertise, especially as they prepare for retirement or for that next job within the organization or at a new company.
Enabling those who are required to know is the next challenge in a micro-learning strategy. Search, search, search should be the mantra. It does not matter how much valuable content is available for micro-learning if no one can find it. Searching text contained in the content is easy. However, when the asset is a video or an online simulation of a business transaction, searching must be enabled by attaching tags and keywords relevant to the learner and in the learner's specific context and language.
The case has been made for employee-generated content. However, just because experts have something to contribute does not mean they should. Platforms can be governed in such a way that publishing comes after composing, and learning leaders can provide all the tools and methods to make the development and review easier.
5. Prove It
If leaders, experts, mentors and consultants are going to invest their time to share their knowledge to be consumed in bite-size meals, it may behoove learning leaders to ensure team members consume it. Then, assess learning reception and comprehension.
The value of employee learning is measured on the job. Think about the bank representative in those two environments described. The measures of the learning to enable his or her performance could be customer satisfaction as well as new consumer loans from new and existing customers.
Imagine if learning leaders could correlate the data about the consumption of the micro-learning assets to business outcomes. The business case develops itself to continue the efforts. Learning is not an industry where process compliance is externally mandated. It can be policed internally.
Does micro-learning adoption mean that all learning content should be scrapped or converted? No. Innovation is demonstrated by leveraging existing assets while investing in content to satisfy the descriptors.
According to Yvette Cameron, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research Inc., managing work is the true focus in the workplace. When recently addressing an audience of human resources professionals, she highlighted the characteristics of effective work management tools.
She also recognized that learning is the stickiest part of the HR sphere of influence and action.
Micro-learning is about employee performance support, but the label is not as important as the effect. Remember, business is all about productivity. It's not about learning. Therefore, the tight integration of learning and business enables a culture to thrive and expect integrated learning in the workplace - just in time and just enough. Size does matter.
The learning may occur during the call to satisfy the customer and the employee aspiring to deliver excellent service.
Consider that service in a mobile environment. Now that the housing market is picking up in parts of the country, home shows and conventions are experiencing a comeback. Banks and mortgage companies may be onsite to assist with financing. They must be untethered and ready to support buyers. Perhaps they are equipped with a state-of-the-art tablet with a high-speed network connection. The same scenario can be replayed face-to-face.
Or, consider a chemical manufacturing plant that has just moved, so the location and operation for some equipment is new. Rather than expecting employees to retain everything about the facility from a class conducted a month earlier, engineers can scan a QR code using their smartphones to access documentation for the new equipment, a video of its use and directions for shutdown if necessary. Ideally, all of this would have occurred in the workers' native language.
The learning needed for the representative and the engineers was just enough, and when and where it was needed. In both the public and private sectors, organizations have recognized the value of leveraging learning content in relevant, worker-consumed chunks.
A global engineering company might employ the strategy and realize significant savings by downsizing an expensive help desk which supports employees after the roll-out of new business applications. In a large public school system, employees across the jurisdiction might access bite-sized learning assets relevant to their task at hand, enabling record keeping being flawless in the schools and main offices.
According to Cushing Anderson of market intelligence firm IDC and his 2010 Modality Survey, "Measuring the impact of training on the enterprise is frequently weak. Most are unable to describe the business impact that successfully trained or skilled workers will have on the performance of the related technology." This drives a trend to match more targeted micro-learning investments to specific job needs.
An IDC survey also documented changes in delivery modalities into 2012. The drastic increase in asynchronous e-learning points to the workforce's need to access what they need when they need it.
There are some common issues with micro-learning in an organizational learning strategy.
1. Retention
IDC research and anecdotal data shows that knowledge retention from traditional learning methods is 20 percent at best. Perhaps the right strategy is to assume low retention and focus on leveraging all assets from the classroom as performance support. Current data and folklore indicates 70 percent of learning happens on the job.
2. Performance Support
To match employees' working environment, learning leaders may have to modify classroom development and think ahead to where else content will be accessed and on what device or channel.
3. Collaboration
As recently as 30 years ago, this looked like a tap on the shoulder, but it is powerful, and it has evolved into an electronic action. For synchronous micro-learning, techniques such as instant messaging, social media and email are well understood. However, employees cannot always rely on experts' availability, especially with the global reach of today's organizations. Subject matter experts and mentors may be anywhere. Facilitating a platform on which it is easy to consume and contribute is a solid component of an effective micro-learning strategy.
4. Enablement
Enabling experienced experts to articulate their knowledge and stories is easier than ever. Given available technologies, they can record their actions or their voice to enable those who need to know. A smartphone could equal a movie studio. The value of subject matter experts is not in their knowledge, but in their ability to share that knowledge and expertise, especially as they prepare for retirement or for that next job within the organization or at a new company.
Enabling those who are required to know is the next challenge in a micro-learning strategy. Search, search, search should be the mantra. It does not matter how much valuable content is available for micro-learning if no one can find it. Searching text contained in the content is easy. However, when the asset is a video or an online simulation of a business transaction, searching must be enabled by attaching tags and keywords relevant to the learner and in the learner's specific context and language.
The case has been made for employee-generated content. However, just because experts have something to contribute does not mean they should. Platforms can be governed in such a way that publishing comes after composing, and learning leaders can provide all the tools and methods to make the development and review easier.
5. Prove It
If leaders, experts, mentors and consultants are going to invest their time to share their knowledge to be consumed in bite-size meals, it may behoove learning leaders to ensure team members consume it. Then, assess learning reception and comprehension.
The value of employee learning is measured on the job. Think about the bank representative in those two environments described. The measures of the learning to enable his or her performance could be customer satisfaction as well as new consumer loans from new and existing customers.
Imagine if learning leaders could correlate the data about the consumption of the micro-learning assets to business outcomes. The business case develops itself to continue the efforts. Learning is not an industry where process compliance is externally mandated. It can be policed internally.
Does micro-learning adoption mean that all learning content should be scrapped or converted? No. Innovation is demonstrated by leveraging existing assets while investing in content to satisfy the descriptors.
According to Yvette Cameron, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research Inc., managing work is the true focus in the workplace. When recently addressing an audience of human resources professionals, she highlighted the characteristics of effective work management tools.
She also recognized that learning is the stickiest part of the HR sphere of influence and action.
Micro-learning is about employee performance support, but the label is not as important as the effect. Remember, business is all about productivity. It's not about learning. Therefore, the tight integration of learning and business enables a culture to thrive and expect integrated learning in the workplace - just in time and just enough. Size does matter.
Microlearning is best used as a part of a blended learning solution and
is suitable for:
ü
Initiation: Activating knowledge before a
classroom (or virtual classroom or even and eLearning session)
ü
Windups : Summarizing (after one of those
sessions – delivered soon after the session)
ü
Follow-up: Recall (or reactivating knowledge –
probably a week or two after the session. This ensures key concepts are
revisited and helps in transferring the new knowledge to long term memory –
especially for learners who may not get a chance to apply new knowledge immediately
after the sessions)
ü
Hammering: Providing application opportunities
(through pop quizzes or learning games on mobile)
ü
JIT: Just-in-time search support by letting
employees search in company’s knowledge databases (wikis, blogs, forums) using
their mobiles
ü
Increasing Reach: By creating microlearning
courses compatible with mobile devices, we can bring about a paradigm shift in
the way we learn at the workplace
I have tried this at many cooperates for my PMO, Agile & CMM
migration classes these techniques are very effective for me. If you have any
specific questions please share with me at ravindrapande@mail.com .
