Why Video Is The Best Medium For Microlearning

Why Video Is The Best Medium For Microlearning
Summary: Microlearning is where training is headed; but which is the best medium to deliver your content in order to improve knowledge transfer?

3 Reasons Why Video Is The Best Medium For Microlearning

Let’s go back in time 5 years. It was 4 PM and I was bored, frustrated, and confused. I had been staring at my computer screen for the last 8 hours completing a sales training eLearning class. The first 20 minutes were exciting and engaging because I was looking forward to learning something that was going to help me improve my sales skills, make money, and help my company grow. The next 7 hours and 40 minutes made me want to throw my computer out the window.

Fast forward 5 years to present day. Not much has changed in corporate training or, for that matter, the corporate eLearning space. Yet, the world around enterprise learning is changing at an extremely rapid pace. There are 3 billion Internet users across the globe, 6.9 billion mobile phone subscriptions, and 2 billion active users on social networks. The very employees that organizations are training can, in the blink of an eye, Google or watch a YouTube video to learn the skills they need to do their jobs.

If organizations want to better align with employees, educational content has to be just-in-time, easy to access, and broken up into shorter, more easily digestible pieces. Enter Microlearning: For a full definition and 3 keys to making great Microlearning, check out: Why Microlearning is Hot in Professional Education.

Now that we agree Microlearning is where training is headed, the next most important thing to consider is the medium you choose to deliver your content. Could it be possible that the medium we choose be more important to improve knowledge transfer than our beloved content that we can’t get under 30 slides? The answer is YES. As Marshall McLuhan, the great Media Philosopher, said in 1964: “The Medium is the Message.” Simply put, the medium in which you deploy content to your people is more important than the content. It’s actually crazy to think about! But let’s not get too caught up philosophizing and get to the point.

Since the medium can make or break your training, which medium should you choose? The answer is VIDEO. Here are the top 3 reasons to support this claim:

  1. Alignment. 
    75% of Millennials visit YouTube monthly. Millennials coincidentally are going to make up 75% of the workforce by 2025. But they aren’t alone. Regardless of age, people simply prefer video over other mediums. According to Neilson, video is the most popular content consumed globally. Think about it; if given a choice between watching an instructional video and reading a 3 page document, which would you choose?
  2. Retention and Transfer of Knowledge. 
    Video is the most effective medium for communicating information in a short period of time. Most people are visual learners, so combining visual examples with audio creates a higher likelihood of knowledge transfer. Studies show that humans only retain 10% of heard information after 3 days Vs 65% when visuals are added.
  3. Easily Produced. 
    Because of the advances in cameras and software, video is the easiest and cheapest to produce than it’s ever been. Check out this one minute video we built using an iPhone and the Splice App to show how we make Microlearning. It no longer takes an expert in video production to produce high-quality video that people want to consume.

One of my all time favorite quotes is from John Wayne: "Courage is being scared to death.... and saddling up anyways." Saddle up and commit to video as the Microlearning medium of choice for your organization.