Back in 1963, when Hector Correa first used the term ‘microlearning’ in his book titled ‘The Economics of Human Resources’, none had perhaps any inkling of how it would in over 50 years’ time become such a vital part of corporate Learning and Development ecosystem today where both time and money are at a premium.
New world learning
‘Micro’ as the word itself suggests is something ‘extremely small’. Suffixing it with the word ‘learning’ creates a new world of ‘micro-learning’. It’s quick to deliver, and smarter in content designing, easily digestible and more significantly a most engaging way of training and skilling both professionals and new employees, in no time.
Cost effective
In a post covid-19 situation, when businesses continue to grapple with the aftermath of a long reign of economic inactivity, sluggish or no income and the daunting task of retaining talents, who are going to be the engines of growth, micro-learning gives hope of continuing the learning process in a cost effective and smart way.
Easiest and effective
Though pundits contest the efficacy of micro-learning in imparting knowledge to learners through ‘small bit-sized lessons’, an overwhelming sections of learning and training experts in organisations cutting across a vast sections of sectors have given their thumbs up to this easiest and most effective way of learning and training.
On the go learning
No wonder, micro-learning has become the darling of an impressive number of reluctant learners as against proponents of lengthy and heavy learning contents. For, here the content is ‘curated’ for the intended learners in short, crispy format in audio-visual and words and can be delivered on the go on any smartphone device, 24×7 and 365 days.
Better accessibility
Micro-learning through a mobile device is what is transforming learning and training. With people surfing their smartphone devices no less than nine times an hour, as per a study, the accessibility of micro-learning has assumed gargantuan proportion.
Micro-lessons
Such small bite-sized micro-lessons have since caught the fancy of adult learners as well, who scoff at the very idea of any training. For organisations micro-learning is the most inexpensive way of training their staff round the clock. First of all, here the company does not need to hire any content designers who according to a study generally spend 29 to 145 hours just to prepare an hour of training lessons.
Content in a jiffy
And, if the content designer charges on an hourly basis then the cost of hiring could as well go through the roof. For organizations using learning management system with multiple templates they can create interactive, highly engaging micro-learning course contents in jiffy with no extra cost.
Benefits galore
Clearly, then, micro-learning has an edge over the conventional workplace learning processes.
From a purely business point of view, enterprises have many reasons to opt for micro-learning for their long term learning and development needs.
- Most significantly, micro-learning does not scare away prospective learners.
- The courses are easier and faster to create and deliver to learners for their application in a fast-paced business environment.
- The ‘basic chunking strategy’ inherent to a micro-learning process ensures learning is sticky.
- The smaller size of course content is easier to retain and effectively apply in specific job role scenarios.
- It makes learning so much of a fun through gamification and interactive, competitive micro-lessons.
- The course contents can be easily and quickly updated at any point of time making learning so much more contemporary and modern.
- The very small file sizes of micro-learning courses do not require much space on your devices like mobile and can be downloaded as and when required.
- Lessons can be completed quickly and on the go.
And, finally
There are more benefits of using micro-learning than one can actually enlist. It has answers to many of the today’s corporate learning puzzles and offers learning solutions that make sense to its real beneficiaries – the modern, aspiring, young learners, always on the move.