At a Glance
- Engagement and gaining learners attention is not enough for a microlearning lesson.
- Aim of a lesson design: for a learner to know, remember, do, or improve.
- Not all learners need the same kind or extent of support, hence, microlearning too must be targeted and adaptive.
- lesson completion isn’t the aim. It is to ensure that learning sticks and helps each one perform better.
- Microlearning platforms support: targeted delivery, adaptive learning, retrieval practice (questions to strengthen recall), reinforcement ( with spaced repetition ) and learning analytics.
Completing a five-minute microlearning lesson doesn’t mean that learning has happened. Scrolling through screens, answering a few questions correctly and moving on to the next task means little if what was learned is forgotten or not applied at work.
Sometimes, we overlook the basics while working on the content or sticking to the format.
Trainers are often required to work within tight constraints, with challenges like making content concise, or sticking to a certain format. What’s most important is for trainers to know that microlearning is not about creating shorter content.
A good microlearning lesson is one that is useful to learners, helps retain critical information, and supports performance.
To make that happen, 3 basic filters can help you deliver the intended outcome for your microlearning initiatives
1. Is It Relevant Enough to Earn the Learner's Attention?
A learner is surrounded by lots of noise.
For a microlearning lesson to be engaging, it needs to reflect the learner’s role, context, needs and the problem they face. That gives the learner a reason to pay attention.
Relevance creates engagement.
Every learner is different. This makes it challenging to create one learning experience that works equally well for everyone.
A tip for trainers:
Ask yourself while designing a microlearning lesson:
‘What does my learner need to notice, understand or remember to perform a certain task?’
2. Does It Actually Help the Learner Perform Better?
Your microlearning lesson must help your learner deliver better performance.
For instance, if the microlearning lesson is designed to help perform a certain task, then your learner must hit the ground running after engaging with your microlearning lesson. If they don’t, then it has failed.
For instance, if you are designing a lesson for renewable energy engineers in installing a new kind of solar panel, then what should be the intended outcome of your lesson? Answer: It is NOT lesson completion or enjoyment. After completing the lesson and assessment, your engineers should be able to follow the correct SOPs to install the solar panels.
Before designing the lesson, ask yourself:
- What content is actually needed?
- Which Key Learning Points (KLPs) are critical?
- What must the learner be able to recall?
- What needs to be practised?
- How will you assess it?
- What evidence will indicate real-world performance capability?
3. Can the Learning Experience Adapt to the Learner's Need?
Learners are different. Each one comes with a certain level of prior knowledge, experience and confidence. Even the same learner may need different levels of support at different points in the learning journey.
So, should every learner receive the same learning intervention? Not necessarily.
Trainers need to ask: What does my learner need next?
This could be:
- more practice
- timely reinforcement
- remediation of a knowledge gap
- increasing the level of complexity with more challenging content and questions
- revisiting a concept ‘just before forgetting’
- moving towards a higher level of content when continued expertise/proficiency is evident
The 3 Filters for an Effective Microlearning Lesson: a Snapshot
| Filter | Question to Ask | What Should It Result In |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant, engaging | What makes my learner pay attention? | Content that is relevant to your learner’s role, risk and context, with clear Key Learning Points (KLPs) |
| Performance-focused | What needs to improve after the lesson? | Content, practice and quizzes/assessments must be linked to the desired outcome |
| Targeted & adaptive | What should my learner get next? | Timely reinforcement, remediation (correcting gaps), practice and capability building |
Once the learning needs, gaps/goals and your microlearning maps (the blueprint) are clearly defined, a good microlearning LMS can make the learning experience more targeted, relevant and measurable.
For instance, an AI-powered microlearning platform like MaxLearn can provide targeted learning assignments, adaptive learning, retrieval practice, spaced repetition and analytics.
A learner gets help in this sequence:
- A learner learns → retrieves and recalls from memory → receives reinforcement through spaced repetition → retrieves again → applies the learning at work.
The platform’s analytics suite helps track the learning journey for each learner. Based on this data, the platform’s adaptive capabilities can provide additional support when needed.
The key is to create useful learning moments that improve performance.
