What is Microlearning? Best Practices, Benefits, Challenges

| Updated on March 27, 2024

The world of online education changes quickly. The latest trends alter fast as we live in a continuously changing world. Such quick development allows companies and organizations to reach new heights and benefit from implementing new approaches and technologies. Microlearning is one of those game-changing trends that affect work-time learning. 

Microlearning pays off great time by being a reliable and efficient way to meet the company or organization’s goal by improving and enhancing learning. E-learning software providers compete—who will add this feature sooner and make it more convenient for their users? In turn, this article shares insights on the microlearning best practices to help your business compete and prosper in this troubled time. 

What are Microlearning Best Practices?

To define microlearning, it is crucial to highlight the problem it is meant to resolve. Learning is the cornerstone of humanity. Whether we wanted to teach children or upskill the workers due to its time-consuming nature. Children learning is less prone to this issue, but adults have trouble finding free time for learning. The situation became even worse since our content consumption habits changed. Social media, networks, and messengers changed our ways. Microlearning appeared as the solution to this difficulty. What is microlearning?

It adapts the learning process to modern trends. With numerous distractions, classic learning becomes inefficient. If we make learning content feel similar to what we see on social networks and messengers, it will enhance learning. AcademyOcean allows the creation of small and accessible from any device learning courses that a learner can adhere to when they need. With such a modern means of online education, designing lessons with microlearning in mind became more like a game than a challenge.

It is crucial to mention that microlearning is deeper than splitting large courses into several smaller materials. Every microlearning course should be independent and must cover a small topic or aspect. Here I am giving examples of microlearning and the best practices you can implement in your company or business. 

Learn Only As Much As You Need To

The first efficient practice is to avoid any bonds and timeframes. Learners should be given a chance to follow their learning pace. The idea of micro lessons is to give learners the freedom to decide when to learn and absorb new material in small bits. This increases the overall speed of learning as people get more confidence and get fewer negative emotions. 

Identify Objectives

Before taking any step, it’s crucial to set the initial goals of your training course. Common goals for microlearning are to upskill learners give them hints and insights, and improve their performance. The reason is that microlearning courses are very convenient to use to address information and return to work without delays. You benefit from two aspects. Setting goals and objectives helps to see the bigger picture and track goals. Microlearning is a convenient tool that allows one to reach goals through improved learning.  

Select the Technological Environment in Which Microlearning Will Be Implemented

The market is filled with multiple offers, but choosing the proper employee onboarding tool is the key to success. Often, a proper LMS is a real game-changer that dictates how effective the training will be, as it includes multiple tools for results tracking and convenient content delivery to your learners. It will also give advanced control over the learning courses, managing learners, permissions, and control. 

What are the Benefits of Microlearning?

Doubting whether to start implementing microlearning in your company? Look at the key benefits you will get from using a new approach to learning to encourage you to overcome difficulties on the way to enhanced learning. 

Requires Less Time to View Content

LinkedIn found that learning time is the largest barrier to learning. A study run by Josh Bersin for Deloitte confirmed this finding and found that the average employee can only dedicate 1% of a week’s work time or 24 minutes to training. With an average course lasting for about 15 to 30 minutes, it is easy to estimate that an employee can only take a single one per week. 

In turn, micro-learning modules are much shorter than traditional e-learning courses, which means that an employee per week can master multiple modules at once.

Increases Learners’ Engagement

With a proper LMS, creating a small-sized learning course is easy and fast. It allows you to save time to make more quality content. It results in getting more engaging and increases learners’ retention rates as time flows. The time frame depends on the quality of the course, and it is crucial to choose the LMS that allows quick and efficient making changes without creating a brand new course.

Provides Training on the Go (Mobile Learning)

Micro lessons only require several minutes to complete. It means that one can learn anytime when feel convenient and efficiently search for the necessary info in a short lesson. As a result, it strips one from the need to set priorities, as learning can be done conveniently and easily, even during short coffee breaks. 

Challenges of Microlearning

As I have already mentioned, there are certain challenges that one will face when implementing microlearning, but how to prepare for them when planning your microlearning course? Check the insights on the biggest challenges of microlearning.

Problems with Teaching Complex Topics

Teaching complex topics via small lessons can be tricky. Some matters just aren’t made for being split into smaller pieces. Even in this, microlearning can be used as an additional tool to supplement the learning of topics that require more attention. Such short lessons solely won’t cover the whole matter, so traditional will remain in use. 

Increased Pressure on the L&D Team

Building microlearning courses is no trivial task, as it involves a tremendous amount of analyzing to split larger matters into smaller lessons. It also requires L&D teams to coordinate their efforts to develop new learning programs. 

Struggles with In-person Learning

Microlearning is about giving learners a nice and reliable tool to learn online. In turn, it struggles when one also needs to conduct classic classroom classes. In this case, microlearning may not be the best shot but can be a handy tool to supplement learning. 





Akansha Singhal

EdTech Writer


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