What is Microlearning? How to Use Microlearning for Mobile Learning

What is microlearning and why you should care?

In simple words, microlearning means learning something that is divided into small units. Microlearning is time efficient as one can learn on the go and since the lessons are short, therefore, they can be taken anytime and anywhere. It is usually organized in the way so that learners can take regular short lessons and then assess their level of understanding of the content from time to time.

Umesh Goyal
VP

Microlearning is the new technique of delivering information these days. The fact “less is more” stands out to be true. The typical microlearning courses are short 5 min long lessons on a specific topic. These short episodes generally have just one objective and are completely independent of each other. It attracts people towards this learning system as it is less time consuming and yields an output just in 5 minutes. Microlearning can be very easily integrated with mobile learning and here are some tips on how you can do that.

Tips on How to Use Microlearning for Mobile Learning

Simplicity is the key here

Focus on just one aspect at a time instead of pouring out everything you know. People are more likely to learn if you focus on a single objective in one lesson. Keep in mind that the idea behind successful microlearning is ‘one lesson – one skill’. Keep your lessons as short as you can.

People remember more of what they see; therefore, use Words, Images, and Animations

The human brain processes things in image form, for instance, if someone asks you to “Not to imagine a red horse”, you would imagine a red horse and then think I don’t have to imagine it. You can play with a human brain in numerous ways and one of those ways is multimedia. Show something that one cannot forget.

Good read: How Effective is Video-based Learning?

Make sure to use multimedia content relevant to the lesson you are delivering
Multimedia is a great way to learn new stuff but if the images are irrelevant, your audience may get distracted. You should always avoid stuff like this so that the primary focus stays on the lesson and skill one wants to gain.

Try to include all the latest technical advancements in your application to provide a clean and up-to-date User Experience

If your application lacks latest user experience, you may lose a valuable amount of the audience. The people, who use mobile phone applications to learn new skills, expect that your application supports all the latest gestures and has an intuitive interface.

People can retain something more easily if they can relate it to something. Therefore, Apply Storytelling

Just imagine a person has 5 minutes to surf around and opens your application to see what you are offering. If your content is not up to the user’s expectations, he will not waste a single second on your application. Because of the time limitation, your content has to be extremely engaging. In those 5 minutes if you can connect with your audience emotionally you will land more traffic.

Providing Offline Functionality is always an added bonus for your audience.

You must have noticed when you are connected to the internet you get various notifications and you get distracted. It applies to your audience as well if they can learn something only when they are connected they are more likely to get distracted by other application notifications. You should provide the offline functionality so that people can stay offline and learn something without getting distracted.

The crux is, to create a learning culture and engage your employees to learn, the learning method and resources should be available on any device, and at all times at any place. Talk to an eLearning expert to help you derive the right learning strategy and program.