TikTok is a popular platform for creating and sharing short videos. But why are we mentioning TikTok in an article about workplace learning? What is the relationship between a social-media-heavy short video creator and eLearning, microlearning, and online professional development? Here is the thing. The video production design of TikTok (and similar apps) limits users to 15 seconds to one minute of filming time. It enforces many users to give the most critical information in a short amount of time due to this.
With a 50 percent audience under the age of 34, 26 percent are between 18 and 24. The app is seeing a 5.5 times increase in older users in as many as 150 nations (Wallaroom Media, 2021). As a result, microlearning is available to a wide range of people.
Now, let’s see how the concept of microlearning with social media is applicable in the corporate world.
Table of Contents
What is Microlearning?
Microlearning is an educational strategy in which learners get bite-sized, tiny learning units with just enough information to help them reach a goal. The utilization of short, fast movies that are jam-packed with content enables improved learner retention and engagement.
As more companies use microlearning for professional development, safety, and soft skill training, employers see increased engagement, retention, and efficiency. Learning in bite-sized chunks facilitates the transfer of knowledge from the classroom to the desk and increases student engagement. Microlearning has become an efficient approach to instruct adult learners because of its simplicity.
In short, microlearning is a technique that encourages students to learn in small bursts. You can facilitate this through various channels, including social media, when well-constructed training modules linked to course learning goals are made through multiple social media channels – while keeping tabs on privacy concerns. Such short bursts of learning appear to come naturally to employees. Microlearning can provide both official and informal cooperation options outside of the corporate sector as well.
Microlearning With Social Media: A Detailed View
Every day, informal microlearning takes place on a variety of levels. Employees have become accustomed to gathering and consuming information in bursts due to the widespread use of smartphone technology and the influence of social media.
Microlearning is a pedagogy that fosters learning in brief bursts and with support from a variety of platforms. Many companies use microlearning in their classes because it connects employees with the subject matter and encourages them to relate it to their daily lives and the world around them, resulting in deep learning. Knowledge retention improves as a result of this.
Supporting social media platforms in the academic setting is a simple technology decision for IT providers:
- The use of these social spaces is unrestricted.
- Due to their widespread use and familiarity, most employees actively use these platforms for social purposes. As a result, support and training are limited.
- Platform independence and mobile-first experience design are two areas where social media tools shape and drive the industry.
- These environments do not require IT employees to provide maintenance because they are hosted and managed externally.
- The technologies frequently include their methods for integrating or embedding them into courses.
Concerns about faculty and employee privacy, on the other hand, have been identified as a significant obstacle to faculty adoption of social media in the classroom in research.
Though trainers and trainees will need to be reminded of the significance of protecting the privacy of users who demand it, multiple social media sites now support users who wish to do so. Some platforms even believe that a single person is authoring and partaking in content under various user names and personas.
We will come to the obstacles later. Let us first discuss the upsides of using microlearning with social media and how you can deploy this methodology in your firm.
How to Deploy Microlearning With Social Media in the Corporate Setting?
There are three aspects to social microlearning: technique, technology, and the platform. We must distinguish between social media technology and the application of microlearning techniques to social media. The methodology would be contradicted if social media platforms were used without assignments that supported microlearning. For microlearning to be effective, the content must be both brief and provided in the appropriate location.
The term micro in microlearning translates to the length of interaction with the learning activity or learning item, regardless of whether it is social. Microlearning objects, which are content items designed to provide direct instruction or foster analysis or reflection, may usually be consumed fast, in a single sitting, to enable participation in a burst.
When deciding if a microlearning learning object is “micro” enough to support the learning burst while still being successful as a learning activity, we’ve found the following questions to be helpful:
- Will the learner spend fewer than 15 minutes with the microlearning object or activity?
- Is the object or activity helpful in achieving a learning objective or contributing to achieving a learning goal?
- Will the object or activity assist a learning goal by expanding on it or providing practice/repetition?
- Will the object or activity assist the student in evaluating their grasp of a course idea or learning goal?
The Whole-Part-Whole Learning Model
While microlearning is new, and social media platforms are new, educators may recognize the Whole-Part-Whole Learning Model as a related concept. By first teaching the complete scope of an idea, the Whole-Part-Whole Learning Model enables contextualized learning.
The knowledge is then split into sections to make the finer aspects apparent, and further education and practice opportunities are provided, often repeatedly. Finally, the lesson takes a step back to give the concept’s more comprehensive picture, complete with its constituent elements, giving context and allowing the student to consider how those parts support the notion as a whole.
Read More: Accelerate Compliance Training Adoption Using Micro-Learning!
During the middle or end stages of this approach, microlearning could be beneficial. Small content pieces or short-duration exercises reinforce smaller aspects of the idea throughout the intermediate stage, allowing students to build a micro-perspective on what is being taught while sustaining interest and focusing attention on tiny chunks to be mastered in order.
The last stage would also provide an opportunity to test retention or reflect on the overall experience. Microlearning exercises that require students to create social media material can also be utilized to ensure that they can practically apply the knowledge they have absorbed and draw conclusions about what they’ve learned.
Read More: 8 Factors to Consider Before Choosing a Micro-Learning LMS
Students can learn from their peers, practice communicating their knowledge, and form learning communities through social microlearning. Ilona Buchem and Henrike Hamelmann talked about the advantages of microlearning with social software, noting that social tools are naturally suited to “short and flexible formats or rapid delivery of knowledge, but also social interactions based on that content.” Online social groups require this type of informal social interaction around content.
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How to Create Objects for Microlearning With Social Media?
Social media companies’ mobile-first designs encourage learning and interaction anywhere and at any time. We discovered that social media platforms are particularly well-suited to microlearning since they meet learners where they are already. Furthermore, social media provides learners with a tailored learning and social environment to control and expand.
We’ve found that considering four aspects while designing microlearning content and exercises is beneficial:
- Objective
- Content
- Delivery
- Integration with training goals
Objective
The instructor’s goal for the activity or assignment is referred to as the objective. The pedagogical aim must be considered when considering a microlearning activity, and content and tool selection must be made accordingly.
The instructor might curate or develop the information. Employees could generate the content as part of an assignment to reflect on the content area and provide micro-learning opportunities to other peers. A learning goal and aim should be supported and fed into the purpose.
We’ve seen the following goals, which you can highlight via social channels:
- Assign home assignments or encourage instructor-learner or peer-to-peer conversations via online forums to help employees refine their concepts.
- Provide an opportunity for trainees to practice applying concepts in a day or week’s worth of situations.
- Learners can begin to generalize based on a sequence of instances by sending digital examples that illustrate concepts (or asking students to send samples).
- Facilitate action learning activities that require employees to document and reflect on a specific action, either in a group or individually.
- Create a shared “bulletin board” to capture challenges for problem-based learning or to brainstorm solution components.
- Evaluate the mastery over topics via assessments.
Content
The subject of the microlearning object, expressed in the form of tiny units, restricted subjects, rather simplex concerns, is known as content or content area. The goal of content is to keep employees engaged by focusing on only the most critical information in short, well-planned chunks of units or activities.
A trainer can successfully teach the most relevant knowledge while avoiding student boredom and burnout by developing and administering bits of content utilizing microlearning technology. Microlearning has evolved in response to ever-changing learning settings and procedures, as well as the shrinking human attention span.
You can build Microlearning content with a variety of tools. Many tools facilitate the remixing and curating of content created by others, in addition to self-made content. Infographics, videos, photos, and stories are tools you may use to create or curate microlearning objects. You can find them on social media handles like Piktochart, Twitter, Canva, Snapchat, and TedEd.
Delivery
The tools that allow you to post stuff to your learners and post developed content back to you, and the class is referred to as delivery. Each of the platform-tools we looked at can be used to make annotated or altered video, photos, links, and text.
Some even let you share information you’ve developed using other tools and sources with your network. They usually have some filtering and searching system in place, such as tagging or inserting searchable hashtags in your message. The following are the most prevalent ones we’ve seen used for microlearning: Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook.
New tools are continually being developed, and the best tool for your needs will be determined by the purpose and content requirements.
Integration With Training Goals
The importance of integrating with learning objectives cannot be overstated. You must blend learning objectives for the course or lesson with social micro-learning objects and activities. To feel comfortable in this medium, employees will need to understand how you will evaluate them and how these activities complement more significant learning objectives, which they may not have encountered in the course environment before.
The interactive feature of microlearning, which allows learners to practice their abilities and apply new knowledge, is a significant factor in why this training methodology is so effective. Professors can also use microlearning to assess their students by administering little quizzes, reviewing the curriculum, and completing other short activities.
Examples of How Popular Social Media Channels Use Microlearning
Twitter is a mature and versatile social networking site known for its 140-character message restriction, fostering succinctness. You can include photographs, videos, and links to other websites in your posts. Anyone in the world can see your tweets.
There is no privacy on Twitter, except for the massive amount of data that would be required to locate an individual’s content. When you follow someone, their tweets will appear in your feed. You can use a hashtag to make the conversation searchable and easy to follow, even if you don’t follow an employee or if an employee doesn’t follow you.
Snapchat
We can send images and videos in 10-second increments on Snapchat. You can send messages to a single employee or a group of employees. Directly emailed posts will vanish after the recipient has watched them once, so if you’re aiming to make content time-limited, this could be useful in gamification.
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You cannot, however, form a separate group and send a post to that group regularly. If you want the Snapchat to expire after the initial viewing, you must choose each receiver independently. Thus such distribution is more ad hoc.
Instagram is similar to Twitter in terms of functionality, but it is mainly visual media. Images and 3–60 second videos, as well as text descriptions, are supported on Instagram. Photos can be organized into composite layouts to provide various images on a topic or a visual representation of chronological progression.
For easy searching and sparking discourse, hashtags, mentions, and people tags can be used in the text. Instagram comments on photographs are threaded, but Twitter comments follow the timeline, making it harder to follow conversation threads.
A large percentage of the population uses Facebook. Text, image, audio, comments, and even apps are all supported. In some aspects, it is pretty flexible, but in others, it is very stiff. Conversations are threaded, and you may even reply to other people’s replies. Posts can be multimedia or text-based, and the content is searchable.
Groups are fully supported, and they can be public or private. Some people object to Facebook because it uses data for commercial purposes and provides data to affiliates (albeit privacy settings can be altered and some information is anonymized).
Conclusion
When contemplating adopting Social Media as a Microlearning delivery medium, keep the following factors in mind. Because microlearning is based on small, targeted learning experiences, keep length in mind. Encouragement of contributions to the social environment also allows children to synthesis knowledge and apply higher-order thinking abilities.
Incorporate microlearning into the lesson and promote fact-checking. Microlearning on social media platforms allows for a discussion of digital literacy and a review of fact-checking techniques. Students should be aware of their roles in developing ethical communications and the consequences of propagating false information.
Ad: PlayAblo’s Enterprise-Grade Micro-Learning platform is built for millennial learners. Micro-Learning, along with assessments and gamification features, ensures learning outcome measurement along with sustained engagement.
Find out more and request a custom demo!
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