From shopping to communication, from social media to education, technology has influenced our behaviour in many ways. Yet it’s in the area of microlearning that technology has had its most profound impact.
Microlearning is one of the latest trends within E-Learning. It reflects how technology, and especially mobile technology, has influenced our brains and how we relate to, and consume, educational information.
Within the next decade, our global workforce will be comprised mainly of ‘millennials’, people who have come of age around the year 2000.
Because of this demographic – and how this generation learn – is a key driving force behind microlearning. Uniquely, this generation has been more exposed to technology than any other, and how they learn and interact with the digital world is a vital component for the future of education.
Research suggests that millennials have a concentration span of around 90 seconds. It is this short span which influences the ‘micro’ in microlearning. While such a short concentration span may sound disconcerting, there are advantages to it when applied to learning.
In our age of mass information, microlearning aims to act as a filter and not to overload the end user with too much information. By presenting people with bite-sized chunks of information, they can learn at their own pace and not feel overawed.
Furthermore, microlearning aligns information with how people accommodate learning in their working lives, and also the disparate need for specific information, especially in the area of technology.
As technology increases, so does the demand to keep abreast of it. It is unrealistic to expect regular colleges and course providers to fill this gap with courses; therefore, it falls to microlearning to bridge this gap. And how does microlearning attempt to fill it?
As with all emerging trends, its definition is still in a state of flux, yet microlearning has a number of key features. They include brevity, granularity and variety.
Let’s start with brevity. Microlearning is about learning small bits of information, one bit at a time. The learning could be textual – from a web page, for example – or if might be a short instructional video or a PowerPoint presentation.
Microlearning’s brevity stems from, in part, how we microlearn; typically, we access this information via a smartphone or a tablet. Short videos, or bite-sized educational nuggets, are perfect for a mobile phone; also, unlike a traditional educational environment, we tend to microlearn on the move.
While mobile learning has always been with us, the ability to access vast amounts of information while on the go, has not been. Curiously, here lies a contradiction: while our smartphones are able to access all this information, it may not be presented in the way we like to digest it. This is the contradiction which is at the heart of microlearning, and therefore, its need for brevity.
Granularity refers to microlearning’s ability to fine-tune and deliver information about an exact topic. For example, as microlearning videos are short, there’s pressure on the content creator to deliver exactly what the end user wants, and to the correct level, too. If content is too vague, or too complicated, it will not be watched.
Unlike traditional learning where books are divided into chapters, sections and paragraphs, microlearning is concerned with nuggets of information which aims to close a knowledge gap for the viewer and typically, without the viewer spending time on reading ancillary information.
Lastly, there is variety. While stated earlier in this article, web pages, videos and PowerPoint presentations are some of the ways that we can microlearn.
For example, we might learn from a web page via straight-forward text (a definition from Google) or through a quiz, or by subscribing to a daily email on a given topic, not to mention the many YouTube videos and podcasts which add to the growing library of microlearning content.
Alternatively, a microlearning environment might be an instructional animation which we are forced to engage with, thus introducing the idea of ‘gaming’ into education. This potential for variety is what sets microlearning apart from traditional learning.
While microlearning will never replace traditional learning, it offers a revolutionary way to supplement education for a mobile and technically capable workforce.
Article Published: 17/08/2016