It’s only been of late that I’ve discovered the fascinating world of microlearning. Perhaps it’s the novelty of this new term or more realistically, it’s a term that I can support and have been practicing by accident for many years.
As a technical writer with almost twenty years of experience, I have always embraced short and succinct learning material by separating the need to know from the nice to know. This often challenges my Subject Matter Experts as they do not always appreciate my style, especially when it comes down to removing many lines of text that they’ve worked hours to create. Though I understand the hard work that goes into creating content, I’ve always embraced a policy of less is more.
So when I stumbled across the term microlearning, I was naturally intrigued. For once, chunking as it’s affectionately known in the Instructional Design world is king! Just what is chunking? It simply means breaking larger pieces of content or instructional material into bite size pieces. Research has shown again and again that learners lose interest in as little as five minutes. For someone such as myself, with ADHD, this comes as no surprise, but I was shocked to learn that this is all learners and not just us ADHD types. What a relief! It’s great to know that Instructional Designers are now embracing my style of learning!
I am eager to apply this concept, or shall I say reapply this concept in new ways. How so you ask? Right now, I’m working on a campaign to reinforce training materials, through short and targeted emails. Each email will focus on a particular learning objective and be no greater than five lines. This method for microlearning was proven effective when used by Google. Please stay tuned for more as I take a deeper dive into this fascinating new old way of learning