Did you know that the average attention span of a person has dropped from 12 minutes in 1998 to only 5 minutes in 2008? Consequently, conducting training workshops to have a real impact is more and more of a challenge; little is retained and still less is applied on the job.
At THTE, we have addressed this by creating very engaging, relevant training that rarely, if ever, takes more than a few hours. In addition, you can choose either traditional facilitation or microlearning as your method of delivery, at no additional cost, for most of the topics we offer.
The Microlearning Approach
Imagine instead of a 90-minute in-person workshop on Workplace Harassment, the training is broken into 10 or so components, each taking no more than 5 minutes. Users can take them in any order, at any time, from any location, online – even from a mobile device.
There’s more to it, of course. Microlearning is much more flexible and cost-effective than typical online training (which can be very expensive to develop), nor does it completely replace live delivery. Supplemental materials could be viewed and/or downloaded, assignments or tests given, and periodic live or web-based “check in” workshops held to ensure the material is learned.
Microlearning Advantages
- The microlearning approach offers a great deal of flexibility:
- Users can take the training segments when they want.
- Because the components are so short, users can take just one or several at a time.
- Components can be taken in any order, or there could even be a test-out option to skip some entirely.
There are other advantages as well:
- The expense and logistics of getting all participants to attend regular training is vastly reduced.
- Organizations can now send individuals through a program instead of waiting until they have a sufficient number of participants to conduct a classroom session.
- When executed properly, the ROI between traditional training and microlearning is the same or even slightly higher for microlearning, depending on the expense involved in bringing employees together for a training.
Is Microlearning for You?
Go with microlearning delivery if:
… you have a difficult time getting all of your people to attend even a weekly meeting, let alone ongoing training sessions (for example, Leadership Training for your managers).
… you only have a few people every quarter that need training (such as new hires for Workplace Harassment).
… you want to allow participants to focus only on components that affect them the most, and provide the capability of skipping the rest.
