Issue: My audience forgets what I teach them, no matter how engaging my session is.
Solution: Spaced repetition through microlearning tools.
A person learns something and remembers 100% after your session, yeyy!
By day 1 they only remember 60%
By day 4 they might remember 20%
The solution: time-spaced reminders. Preferably short and sweet. The ideas is that key training takeaways keep coming back to the learners after the session is finished (in different modalities ideally) and help them stay fresh and move from the short to the long-term memory.
Microlearning tools are your best friends here. They are learning activities that provide a short engagement intentionally designed to help the brain review, retain and transfer information from the short-term brain to the long-term brain.
Examples of microlearning tools and activities include:
- visuals (infographics, graphs, charts)
- job aids
- a quick discussion in a team meeting
- a strategically-placed question
- video or audio (short and to the point)
- reading a blog post (or even better: writing it)
- quizzes
- case studies or scenarios
The point is that they have to be intentional and built into your learning design.
❓ QUESTIONS ABOUT MICROLEARNING
Q. How long should a microlearning activity be?
A. Billboards convey a message in 5 seconds. A team discussion can take 10 minutes. A video clip can be anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes long. Plus Lola will take much less time to make sense of an infographic than Katia just because she is a visual-type of person and maybe more experienced. The microlearning activity has to be the right amount of time to cover the objective while fitting in the right amount of time that the participant has.
Q. What is a common mistake when creating micro-learning tools?
A. To focus too much in the content and little in the context. For an employee that is on the road constantly, anything that is papers or hard copy will be more of an annoyance than help. They need digitally accessible materials. For an audience whose second language is English, more visuals and less written / spoken words might work best. Go back to considering who is your audience and what is what they need and want.
Q. Are there more resources about microlearning?
A. Plenty of them. One of my favourites is this podcast episode by Endurance Learning:
https://trainlikeachampion.blog/microlearning-basics/
Take Action:
Use microlearning in your training strategy as part of your Learning Guru toolkit and help your audiences retain your teachings in their long-term memory! Use your Guide with 31 learning activities that aren’t Slides for inspiration.