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“Adults in the workplace need and want to improve their knowledge and skills, but not at the expense of completing their tasks, or achieving their KPIs, or giving up their personal time,” said Michael Gullan, CEO of G&> Advocacy, South African e-learning provider aimed at providing innovative solutions to corporates to upskill and reskill their employees. Microlearning is essential to assisting adult learners to achieve their learning goals. “Our data shows that microlearning, using our Content Capsule methodology, results in higher engagement and retention, better completion rates, and increased application in the workplace,” added Gullan.

What is microlearning?

Microlearning, as the name suggests, features short, sharp snackable learning moments, each one designed to achieve a specific outcome and trigger the employee to apply their new learnings. “Ideally, microlearning capsules are designed to be five to seven minutes long, and normally don’t exceed 10 minutes,” said Gullan. “They’re supported across devices, from desktops and laptops to smartphones and tablets, so that learning moments can be completed on the go.”

What are the eight characteristics of microlearning?

1. Flexible – Employees can select from a suite of relevant courses on the device of their choice that matches their work and lifestyles.
2. No age restrictions – Always informative, accessible, interesting, and easy to access, and resonates with all adult learners, young and old.
3. In a day’s work – Available and enticing so that employees want to snack on and complete a learning capsule in their free time.
4. Actionable – Ensure employees are challenged, propelled to the next level, and are given the opportunity to practice and apply their learnings successfully in the workplace.
5. Adaptable – Can be completed as a stand-alone learning moment, or as a series of connected capsules through a learning path.
6. Personalised – Courses are created by employee profile based on proficiency, role, and preferences, so they can get the training they need and want.
7. Interesting – Learning content is rich, varied, interesting, and optimised to deliver the right learning experience for the employee.
8. Adaptable – Based on insights gleaned from the data, learning material is easy to update and quick to deploy.

“When microlearning is deployed in ‘capsules,’ it results in higher engagement, better retention, and accurate and confident application,” said Gullan.

A study conducted by Microsoft puts the human attention span at a mere eight seconds, which they say is only marginally lower than that of a goldfish.
“I’m not sure how Microsoft measured the attention of goldfish,” Gullan chuckled, “but I do know that adults are bombarded by multiple distractions and need to multitask to get through their to-do lists. Few of us have enough time to devote to training, which is why microlearning is so effective.”

What’s more, research proves that adults forget nearly 80% of what they learn within a month, so your learning must address these real-life challenges to be effective and enduring. Gullan concludes that microlearning provides reinforcements to flip the “forgetting” curve to the “recall and retention” curve, address most corporate training needs, and result in radical performance gain and measurable impact on the business.