Tip 1: Less Is More

As a trainer, nothing is more dissatisfying than spending months on a learning course only to discover that it failed to engage the target audience and deliver the desired results. Employing “microlearning,” or “microlessons,” may be an effective way to get more from your training content, according to panelists from CMR Institute’s recent LTEN webinar on “Microlearning: How Bite-Sized Nuggets Can Super-Size Your Results.”

One benefit to “going small” is that development time is often shorter, although it still takes time to get the design of microlearning right. Microlessons also may be easier to update—a key benefit given the dynamic nature of the healthcare market. What’s more, microlessons may help you make the most of your training budget. Some research suggests that organizations may be able to cut their development costs in half with microlearning.

And, learners are hungry for smaller portions of the training. “Smaller lessons are more manageable and appetizing to today’s learners who are often overwhelmed, impatient, easily distracted, and have short attention spans,” said Carrie Garrett, director of learning strategy at CMR Institute. “When content is short and entertaining in some way, it keeps the learner’s attention.” Here is a key takeaway from the microlearning webinar that trainers should know.

Types Of Microlearning Tools

“Microlearning is a strategy that enables learners to easily digest bite-sized pieces of information in highly engaging and interactive ways, consuming content when and where they want,” Garrett said. When you give learners short bites of content instead of a 100-slide mega course, lessons feel achievable. In this way, microlearning is easier to take on and easier to get through, than traditional courses.

Yet simply chunking existing content into smaller pieces is not microlearning on its own. Microlessons—once known as “reusable learning objects”—need to be presented in a way that will not only make sense to learners but also engage them.

The following training tools can be structured as microlessons:

  • Short videos
  • Infographics
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Scenarios
  • Whiteboard animations
  • Interactive PDFs
  • Case studies
  • Polls
  • Games
  • Interactive flip cards

Providing content in a variety of rich media formats helps you eliminate the monotony in training programs and keeps your curriculum fresh.

Stay tuned and subscribe to our blog as we continue the microlearning conversation with more tips for trainers in the coming weeks. 

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