The Hustler's Digest StaffNowadays, technology plays a significant role in education. Students learn through digital courses, websites, and applications, but sometimes that isn’t enough. Sometimes students need additional help when it comes to mastering specific skills or subjects. That’s where microlearning comes into play.
In this article, an expert in education and an academic writer from the top DoMyEssay, will define microlearning in education and explore the benefits and limitations of microlearning in modern academia.
What Is Microlearning?
Microlearning is a type of instruction that involves short, focused learning experiences. It combines information with hands-on experiences so learners can apply what they’ve learned right away.
A microlearning experience is typically 3-10 minutes long, made up of a few brief segments, and should be immediately actionable.
Examples of Microlearning
Udemy/YouTube
Today’s most famous example of microlearning is Udemy courses and instructional YouTube videos. These platforms have mastered delivering instructional and actionable videos in little bits.
Flashcards
Another good example would be flashcards. Flashcard learning is a type of microlearning where the learner is presented with little cards containing restricted content such as new words, formulas, concepts, etc., to help memorize them.
Quizzes
An instructor might use it to help students grasp new concepts more quickly or as part of a routine to keep the knowledge fresh.
For example, after you successfully teach students how to write essays, you can follow up with a quick quiz or game. If the students complete the quiz correctly, you can reinforce their accomplishments by providing additional feedback. You can even offer them other material on how to further excel in that area, for instance, by sharing links to any professional research paper writing service or law essay writing service and their blogs that contain additional information on academic writing.
Best Practices of Microlearning
If you’re considering adopting microlearning, there are a few best practices to keep in mind as you look to make it work. These practices will help you effectively incorporate a microlearning program into your curriculum.
The first step is choosing an effective platform for delivering your content. Successful microlearning platforms include progress tracking, self-assessments, social media integration, and gamification.
The next step is deciding how much time to devote to each topic. It’s not enough to choose topics. You also need to know how much time each will take. Choose wisely—you don’t want people spending too little or too much time on any one topic.
Microlearning is not a one-size-fits-all solution. To maximize its efficiency, you need to think about things like different student profiles, location, education level, and the goal of each module.
Finally, ensure that your microlearning course has a clear path from beginning to end, so students know what they need to do next once they finish a lesson or module. This can be accomplished by including checklists at critical points throughout your course so learners can easily track their progress and get excited about moving forward.
Benefits of Microlearning
Learning on the Go
Large-scale, long training courses can be challenging for students to finish. To continue learning, they must sometimes take a break, which may cause them to forget some information, meaning they’ll have to do a recap anytime they want to return to the course.
Microlearning, being delivered in small units of time, can work on any device and at any time. By combining it with mobile learning, you can work on your lessons whenever and wherever.
Personalized Learning
People learn at different paces, and with a standard course, it may be hard to carry everyone along at the same time. Microlearning fixes this by allowing students to find a method that suits them.
In microlearning, people can easily find a flexible solution rather than being restricted to a standard course that’s not suited to them. Students have the freedom to study on their own time, in a subject they may excel at or one in which they need more time to improve. If a student needs to review specific details, they can do so without interfering with the rest of the class.
Improved Peer-to-Peer Learning
Unlike other presentation methods, when information is available online and in small bits, it’s simpler to share with others. Due to this, microlearning reinforces peer-to-peer learning by empowering students to share courses and recent news with their colleagues in bite-sized form.
Through this collaboration, everyone will understand the content, and there will be self-managed teams that encourage one another. Such connections go a long way to help increase morale and retention rates.
Disadvantages of Microlearning
Complex Topics
On the one hand, microlearning is a great way to deliver small tidbits of information, but it isn’t appropriate for all complex concepts, especially in college. You will need to divide it into bite-sized portions that’ll carry a lot of information, which can be overwhelming for some students. On the other hand, it’s still possible, but you’ll have to put in more effort.
Hard to Create
Most people think microlearning content creation is as easy as creating a few short videos on a particular topic. Still, the truth is microlearning content is the most challenging type of learning content to make because you’ll have to distill vast quantities of information into manageable, helpful amounts, which is not an easy task.
Conclusion
If you’ve been thinking of using microlearning, we hope this article has convinced you to go ahead with it. Bigger isn’t always better for the brain, so microlearning is fast becoming the most used form of learning in 2022. The lighter the load, the easier it is for the brain to retain information and use it effectively.
