4 Areas To Consider Before Determining If Your Organization Is Ready To Implement Microlearning
When training is done right, it helps not only grows the employee within their position and career, but creates an engaging learning experience and better retention of information. The rise of eLearning has helped organizations gain engagement through rich media, personalization and mobile learning. One eLearning trend, microlearning, has helped organizations train employees to achieve a specific performance objective. In addition, microlearning includes a focused learning activity and helps create lasting behavioral changes not found with traditional training.
However, not every organization is cut out for microlearning within their current work environment. Curious to see if your organizational training is a good fit? Take this microlearning quiz to find out. Furthermore, below are 4 areas to consider that will help you determine if your organization is ready to implement microlearning into your training program(s).
- Employees' Learning Styles.
As a manager, do you know each of your employees' individual learning style? Many times, organizations make the mistake of lumping the same training programs together for every employee, which can cause lower engagement. Employee training and development is most effective when training is catered to the individual and the ways they best learn and retain information. At AllenComm, we explain that “behavior change comes when you give employees the right information, in the right way, at the right time”. Have management take the time to survey employees to see how they best learn and what tools are helpful in the process. With microlearning, it takes a personable approach that matches the training to the learning style and helps the employee better apply what they’re learning to real-life situations. When organizations take the time to know employee learning styles, microlearning can help create autonomy within the learning process. - Training Concepts.
One of the many goals of microlearning is to help the learner quickly apply what they’ve learned, which can only work with certain training material. As such, microlearning doesn’t work with every training program and their outcomes. If the training concepts can’t be broken down into small segments, microlearning might not be the best option. Microlearning aims at specific performance objectives and behaviors that can’t be grasped when concepts are long and complex. - Evaluate Design Options.
Like other eLearning tactics, microlearning thrives with the use of rich media. Is your training program backed by creative presentations and/or videos? How accessible and searchable is it? Behind this rich media design should also be easily searchable and tagged items to help the user find the skills they’re looking for. This eliminates frustration on the users’ end and helps them focus on the material. When design and training content is digestible on the user’s end, the easier it is to implement microlearning tactics. - Training Goals And Outcomes.
Do you know what your goals/outcomes are with corporate training? Take the time to plan out goals and outcomes your organization hopes to gain with your training programs and employee skillsets. This should be the basis of your training program. Furthermore, don’t be afraid to include employees as part of this brainstorming process. Their input can help shape programs that are more user-friendly and engaging. Remember, microlearning is best implemented when it targets specific learning and behavioral outcomes.
In sum, the answers to these 4 areas can help implement microlearning into your organization correctly as well as help organizations understand where they’re at with corporate training and what additional steps need to be taken to keep training innovative and effective.
Download the Microlearning Techniques eBook to learn where in your curriculum microlearning works best.