This article was originally published by the Forbes Human Resource Council. It has been updated since.
40%—That’s just over 7 hours—of U.S. adults’ waking hours are spent interacting with screens daily.
At the same time, corporate trainers are trying to grab employees' attention long enough to educate them and ensure the information sticks. Tools like EJ4 let viewers watch five—to 10-minute training videos, while Google Primer provides five-minute interactive lessons on the go. Our platform, The Training Arcade, offers three—to five-minute microgames to reinforce information and assess learner knowledge. Each of these bite-sized and user-friendly tools takes the limited time (and attention) users have into account.
Microlearning
This reframing of content through microlearning can be easily applied to any corporate training program. Instead of long, constantly interrupted courses, microlearning is brief and easily digestible. It’s ultra-focused with precise, measurable goals. Above all, microlearning helps make training simple and fun.
Is it necessary to update tried-and-true training methods? We say yes. Millennials are claiming the place of baby boomers as America’s largest adult generation, and as digital natives, they think differently. That’s why passive training doesn’t always work anymore. Across multiple platforms, microlearning can increase learner engagement with audio, video, and games without wasting valuable time.
Microlearning is built on cognitive science. It uses spaced repetition, a proven retention-boosting method of breaking down learning topics into more manageable pieces and repeating them with adequate spacing between lessons. This learning technique accesses the learner’s working memory bank, which makes microlearning worth consideration for any employer seeking to teach candidates hard skills.
Let’s explore industries that have implemented microlearning:
Manufacturing And Transportation
Through a combination of retiring experts, rapidly advancing technologies, and underskilled newcomers, these industries are facing an uphill battle when it comes to training. Keurig Dr Pepper has acquired several distributors and bottlers over the years, resulting in a geographically dispersed workforce and different standards of business. To train employees on a standard way of doing business, the company developed a series of brief training videos available on desktop and mobile that cover a variety of topics, including HR compliance, sales techniques, and communication skills.
Technology
As an industry leader on the pulse of what’s next, it’s easy to see why Google entered the microlearning space. In 2014, the technology giant launched Google Primer, a free mobile app with five-minute interactive lessons designed to empower startups and small businesses with knowledge about search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, audience measurement, branding, business planning, and many other subjects. Courses can be taken on the go, in a plane, on the subway, at a coffee shop or just about anywhere else. Today, over 10 million learners have downloaded the app.
Healthcare And Pharmaceutical
Healthcare professionals deal with high-demand situations every day: long hours, patients in need, and sometimes life-or-death situations. ELB Learning created Dr. Neb, a game that helps clinicians who treat patients with uncontrolled COPD to identify the best solution to prescribe. These games offer a series of branching dialogue, virtual conversations between doctors and patients, laid out with a storybook narrative much like a comic book with voice bubbles.
Merck, a multinational pharmaceutical company, leveraged Axonify’s microlearning, gamification, and adaptive learning platform across 52 global manufacturing sites to improve its safety culture. With an 80% voluntary participation rate, the company saw a decrease in recordable incidents and a decrease in lost time injury frequency rates.
Beyond games and videos, here are a few solutions worth considering when creating your microlearning strategy:
- Animations
Animation is a powerful tool. In a recent study published in Neuron, researchers discovered that the brain absorbs about 80% of an environment’s sensory information. This hyperdigestion is why corporations and government institutions like Cleveland Water utilize video-creation services like Vyond, Powtoon, or Moovly to produce studio-level videos.
Learners are easily distracted by texts, instant messages, emails, social media, phone calls, fitness trackers, etc. This means every second counts. When fighting for their attention and retention, a well-crafted video enables you to pull your audience away from everyday distractions and deliver memorable content. By creating videos with relatable characters, environments, and situations, training leaders can help learners remember concepts and details that they might otherwise forget. - Infographics
Infographics help learners digest information, show a hierarchy of data, and illustrate a point in a condensed visual manner. Beyond training, IBM uses infographics to streamline recruiting. HR professionals can find infographic tools like Piktochart and Visme handy in building a stronger company culture.
Do you believe the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words? A well-designed infographic is worth even more. Visuals can help learners process information faster and store information longer by appealing to emotions. When designing your infographic, follow these rules:
- Write a headline that clearly states the purpose of the infographic.
- Choose a simple layout with lots of blank space.
- Write clear and concise text.
- Ensure all visuals (e.g., charts and graphics) are clear without explanation.
- Make all fonts and color combinations easy to read and appropriate for the topic.
- Chatbots
When it’s time for coaching and reinforcement of training, some teams bristle. Older methods — like dreaded compliance meetings — can feel patronizing, or worse, like a big waste of time. Chatbot platforms, such as Mobile Coach, create chatbots for meaningful outreach and useful conversations on the employee’s schedule.
As consumers, most of us are familiar with chatbots, but this technology has evolved and is being used more and more for new employee onboarding, customer service, sales training, diversity training, and several other topics. Designing a chatbot is as much an art as a science, but when done right, it can be a very effective tool for introducing new concepts, providing reminders, tracking goals, and assessing knowledge.
Train The Next Generation With Microlearning
Younger learners will increasingly be joining the workforce, so it’s time for industries across the board to meet their training needs. Companies that do, with innovative and scientific learning modes like microlearning, will find themselves ahead of the curve, with employees who are engaged in training and can recall what they’ve learned.
