Why Comfort Is Not A Learning Strategy
Microlearning works for busy people. And maybe that’s not the kind of understanding you’re here for, but it’s a place to start. A strong argument for microlearning is their simplicity. But can and should everything fit into such a bite size? That’s a question I see many organizations struggling with. There is no time (or budget) to allow for lengthy training that can address all of the many learning gaps. Given the many concerns around the world, there is also a lack of guidance for managers to focus on non-focused training.
If such a vast business environment wasn’t bad enough, the emergence of social media platforms such as YouTube shorts and TikTok has disrupted attention spans. A commonly cited argument is that our attention span has dropped to 8 seconds and that the forgetting curve after training is between 50% and 80%.
So why not stop and introduce as many small learning materials as possible? If the data says we don’t interact and forget quickly, surely the best thing we can do is package the information in the shortest format possible. I hope that keeps us engaged in some way. And, don’t get me wrong—I love microlearning. They are an amazing tool that every L&D professional should absolutely use. But maybe instead of accepting that our students are lost beyond the point of recovery 8 seconds after clicking on their new training, we can consider when you should and when you should never use microlearning.
For Busy People, Few Reinforcement Tools Are As Useful As Microlearning
Please note the use of a subtle word in this article, which I think, makes a difference: “strengthening.” If you’re not trying to teach someone a completely new concept or framework, learning a little bit is often a good tool to have at hand.
The fact that they take 300% less than the average bandwidth of the L&D team is something I’m not entirely sure about, but I think we can say with a fair degree of certainty that they take very little time and effort. More importantly, although it may not be 300% less, it is that extra time that will allow your L&D team the time and energy needed to conduct long-form training at the same level of engagement as your micro-learning.
Another really good argument is that many people hate long-term compliance training. The one you needed to be vetted by your legal team, to be stripped of all personality, fun, and engagement. Many people, especially those who work in large organizations, think about content like that when presenting business eLearning modules. And for such students, reading a little is a breath of fresh air that reminds them that learning can be fun and really easy.
And it’s not just fun and games. If you need to quickly correct compliance errors made across different departments, it may make more sense to release a small quick learning that respects skills-based principles rather than spending time creating lengthy content. Urgency ensures faster content and you can get more stakeholders on board to quickly QA the material.
I remember seeing a company face potential lawsuits because employees often forgot to follow simple redaction protocols after handling sensitive PII (personally identifiable information). It’s hard to argue with simplistic declarations and little study in situations like this. It’s not that employees didn’t know the basic facts and procedures, they just needed to be reminded of the critical importance of these and the compliance consequences the organization could face if these were not respected. In situations like that, nothing is better than a little reading.
Microlearning as Part of Meaningful Long Form Content
With that said, let’s go back to the data I shared earlier. This is where the microlearnings situation starts to look a little shaky. Also, to be blunt (bear with me here), I didn’t write this article all at once. Like most people, I’ve been distracted—checking email, looking at my phone, or changing my music. It would be really easy to just pull from that experience and conclude that, given our dwindling attention spans, only short content can work.
In that sense, the best format for what I write would be a two-sentence paragraph. That’s really fast, easy to use, and doesn’t even take much of my time. But that argument may just be the book’s logical fallacy. Taking two related observations—regular distractions and short bursts of attention—and stretching them to a false conclusion about how people learn. And yet, this is the rationale that is often invoked to justify replacing long content with small studies.
L&D teams don’t have enough time? Can’t I? Well, then build a business case to prove that your L&D team should have more time to create engaging and high-quality learning modules. Show that retention rates can improve and that this increased retention can lead to improved relative performance, reduce turnover by increasing employee satisfaction, and free up organizational funding for more exciting training content (one can only dream).
People lose interest in your training after 8 seconds? Find a way to bring them back and engage them and do this throughout. This is especially important for compliance and the development of new skills, such as AI training, where learning nuances and new skills is not compatible with the microlearning format. Or, even worse, if you have AI integrated with compliance and you have to establish a long EU AI Act training.
In situations like this, it’s very important to figure out how to build meaningful relationships and skill building throughout the training process. You can’t just accept “oh well, we’ve had them here for 8 seconds and that’s it.”
Interpreting the Forgetting Curve and the Role of Minors in It
And, to go back to the area of perhaps the most shocking data, if your long form content was forgotten at a rate between 50% and 80%, what was your next step after seeing such data?
Don’t get me wrong, people are scrolling through TikTok and their attention spans are gone. But people are still being trained for very difficult jobs. With the right training programs, they are authorized to obtain complex cybersecurity certifications such as CISSP, become lawyers or doctors, all of which require complex and detailed knowledge. There is nothing stopping people from learning this new information, unless they find that the delivery of the training content is too dry or they are unable to fully process the information.
So, how is it a possible solution to break a 60 minute compliance module into 3-4 minute microlearning? Unless the original module had so much soft or “must-know” content within it that you could exclude 90%+ of the content, the stats don’t seem to add up. So before you see all this data suggesting that the only thing you can do is base your training on microlearning, consider:
- That there may be a good conflict of just reviewing the engagement and way of long-form content, if you see some bad data to end.
- If it sounds like you may need microlearning. However, not as a substitute for your longer content, but as a reinforcement tool to support your original reading.
And perhaps now is as good a time as any to return to my original argument. Microlearning is a great tool to empower busy people and will help tackle the forgetting curve. And many people are busy and need to be guided through long-form content, micro-reading, social reading, and all the other tools at our disposal. There are absolutely training gaps that microlearning will likely identify and solve. Then, there’s something that requires more skill building and long content, where you’ll need to prove that engaging in long content is worth the organization’s time and investment to get it right.
Instead of thinking of microlearning as a replacement, we should just think of it as part of a system. One where each format plays a role in how people begin to learn, create, and retain information. And our goal should never be to learn less. It should be a better and more organized learning structure.
