Here's 3 reasons why.
Micro-learning is an eLearning strategy that supports learners to digest information in bite-sized pieces. It’s often 5 – 10 minutes long, and is designed to meet a specific learning outcome. It’s flexible, allowing employers to tailor modules to their exact needs and culture, and modules are easily layered onto existing learning ecosystems. Perfect for blended environments.
Micro-learning offers employees a means to get information quickly and conveniently, delivering real-world value for employers. Focusing on performance and skill gaps organisations can improve productivity more rapidly and efficiently. Whether it’s from,
- supplemental learning to reinforce traditional training events,
- just-in-time information when it’s needed,
- or as a catalyst to enact behaviour change,
The icing on the cake? It works for employees too — resulting in a greater sense of autonomy and engagement.
Let’s look at why.
1 – People focus less than goldfish
We are not wired to maintain focus for long periods of time. According to a Microsoft study, the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds since the availability of mobile devices to the general public in the year 2000. That’s one second less than a goldfish!
The stats speak for themselves:
- We read without interruption for an average of two minutes and 46 seconds
- 32% of internet users abandon a slow site after one to five seconds.
- When consuming digital information we only spend 20 seconds on a piece of content before moving on to the next
- On average, people can only work on a task for about 11 minutes before being interrupted
Turning our attention to learning we know that attention fades after 18 minutes. This can rebound however when training is chunked into smaller intervals or delivered via another means such as micro-learning. When employees are given the opportunity to schedule smaller, bite-sized learning chunks into available time slots they can give their full attention to it, without interruption and distraction.
2 – The tools already exist
The time we are spending on digital devices is on the up. The average office worker checks their email 11 times every hour, and with the number of mobile connections in NZ equivalent to 135.66% of the population we are spending more time on our mobile devices — 18 hours a week (up from 15 hours a week in 2015).
We are conditioned to look for the fastest path to the information we need. Our lack of attention means that instead of reading long articles or watching lengthy videos, employees are looking for quick bites of information for the task at hand (sound familiar? - we sometimes refer to this as just-in-time learning)
The good news is that employees already have the devices and are accustomed to using them to connect with information. Micro-learning already has a home, and employees already have the behaviour ready to adopt it.
3 – Multi-tasking is a myth
Information is filtered in the brain’s hippocampus; it makes a quick judgement about the importance of the information and sends the important information from the working-memory to the long-term memory. There is about a 20-minute window — if information isn’t converted to long-term memory it is discarded and no longer available for future reference.
What’s more is that we can only process one piece of information at a time — when we multitask we are less productive. When we add in more sources of information our hippocampus only collects the vital information, resulting in large holes in the information it stores.
This is where microlearning can help. Focusing on a single learning outcome helps the hippocampus to sort and store information. The brain stays more alert and is able to focus, meaning employees are more likely to recall information long after the completion of learning.
In fact, Microlearning improves focus and supports long-term retention by up to 80%.
Build your own Microlearning portfolio to help build your teams capabilities.
