What do you need?

A piece of microlearning shows you exactly the information you need. No lengthy introduction, no list of the learning objectives, no nice 3-level navigation. Only what you need. If you remove 1 sentence or 1 photo from it, it would not be useful. So just enough. That's a good bit of microlearning. And that can be a beautifully designed animation with voice over. But a clear PDF, a video that someone filmed with their smartphone, or a short tutorial works just as well.

When do you need it?

You can quickly find and consume this piece of microlearning just when you need it. Think about your home situation for a moment. How are you supposed to descale that coffee maker again? Or what does that red light on the washing machine mean that has never been on before? If you then find the correct information in 2 minutes, you have a great piece of microlearning under your belt. No hassle, just content.

And not unimportant, of course, is the “how”. Logging into a company laptop with two-factor authentication, then surfing to the LMS and looking for “fast learning” in “My Learning” is not convenient. This type of “just in time” learning must be accessible from any device. Scan a QR with the smartphone, a direct link in that difficult business application, or why not use a bluetooth token at a machine or at the entrance to the warehouse?

Maybe that doesn't even have to be in an LMS or an LXP or other acronym. If the content is not business-sensitive, it may also be on YouTube or Vimeo.

As a creative agency, our specialty is to build beautiful, fun learning moments. And of course, microlearning doesn't necessarily have to be ugly. But this is where speed and convenience for the user predominate. He must find out what is needed at almost a glance.

The Power of Motivation

A lot of research has already been done into how people prefer to learn, how retention (what lingers) is highest, so how a learning moment is most effective. And one of the big factors is motivation. If someone is convinced of the usefulness of a piece of learning content, they will look at it differently than when it comes to the mandatory annual compliance training. And is the motivation ever higher than when you are standing in front of a machine or piece of software, and you have no idea what the next step is?

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There are many possible ways to offer microlearning. You can find dedicated tools for that, or you build it into your favorite tool, Axele-on-the-job!
In the author environment you can quickly and easily create branching scenarios which guide someone through a certain process or problem.

To talk about descaling a coffee maker, you can have these choices:

1. What type of machine do you have? You get a choice of 4 types. Based on that choice, the content of the following slides will differ.
2. Is the capsule tray empty? Yes, then you show the next step - no, then you show 10 seconds of video how to undo that tray.
3. Fill the water tank halfway with water. You get 3 photos showing how to unclick the tank and fill it under the tap.
4. Pour the contents of a descaler bag into the water tank. 1 photo of this action.
5. Press the A+B+C key combination and start the process. You see a video of someone pressing the buttons and starting to descale the machine.

Once all steps have been created, you can, for example, generate a QR code that links to the content. And then you hang it near the coffee machine.

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