Herman Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist considered as father of micro learning, came up with ‘Forgetting Curve’ which illustrates that human beings tend to forget 80% of what they learn in 30 days! To add to that, 75% of the workforce would consist of millennials by 2025 and their average attention span is 90 seconds. Companies have to overhaul the way they are training employees in- house.
Micolearning is delivering short term courses of about 3 to 5 minutes for learning abilities of employees realizing their cognitive and performance augmentation on multiple devices.
Budget constraint is always in the background but you have to see at the bigger picture- the impact, better return of investment (ROI) and the learning outcomes of the employees. It should lead to increased productivity and performance. With attention spans of each generation falling, customized learning is the way to go. Everyone has access to smartphones or tablets and this fact must be exploited for smart delivery of such courses.
Employees prefer to have on the go learning and flexible timings to learn as and when they want. The course must be fun, succinct and not preachy. On the other hand, organizations have a hard time helping employees jump the hurdle of forgetting and retain as much as possible to augment their engagement and performance.
Through microlearning the challenges and expectations of modern generation and organizations can be effectively met. Interactive PDFs, kinetic animations, whiteboard animations, interactive videos and apps can be supplemented for formal training. A range of learning outcomes such as behavioral changes, soft skills, professional skills, compliance and application simulations can be achieved cogently.
Microlearning combats the problem of dwindling attention spans which organizations face while making learning fun and flexible for employees. It is just the perfect approach for the millennial generation which believes in brevity.
