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Maximizing Training ROI with a Robust Microlearning Platform: A Comprehensive Guide to Enhanced Learning and Retention

 


When it comes to choosing the right microlearning platform for your organization, the key is simplicity, efficiency, and the ability to complement your overall training strategy. A good microlearning platform is not just another tool added to your training toolkit; it’s one that enhances your efforts, solves pain points, and ensures a sustainable return on investment (ROI) in your training programs.

Understanding the Importance of Microlearning Platforms in Today’s Workplace

In today’s fast-paced work environment, employee training needs to be agile, engaging, and results-driven. Traditional learning methods, while foundational, often fall short in ensuring knowledge retention and skill development over time. This is where microlearning comes into play. By offering short, focused learning sessions, microlearning platforms provide bite-sized lessons that are easily digestible, making it simpler for learners to absorb and retain crucial work-related knowledge.

However, not all microlearning platforms are created equal. A truly effective platform goes beyond merely offering short lessons. It must be designed to make your job easier across all aspects — content creation, lesson development, launching courses, and tracking learner progress. The ultimate goal is to seamlessly integrate with your training initiative and alleviate common training challenges while delivering a sustainable ROI.

Key Features of a Good Microlearning Platform

A high-quality microlearning platform should work for you, simplifying and streamlining the entire training process. Here’s a closer look at what it should offer:

  1. Ease of Content Creation
    A good platform allows you to easily develop or upload training content. Whether you are creating lessons from scratch or adapting existing materials, the process should be intuitive and efficient. The platform should offer tools like customizable templates, drag-and-drop features, and multimedia support to make the content creation process hassle-free.

  2. Effective Delivery and Lesson Launching
    Once the content is created, the platform should enable quick and easy delivery to learners. It should offer options for delivering content across multiple devices — computers, tablets, and smartphones — to ensure that lessons are accessible anytime, anywhere. The user experience (UX) should be smooth and engaging, encouraging learners to complete the lessons.

  3. Learner Progress Tracking and Analytics
    Monitoring learner progress is essential to measure the effectiveness of your training program. A good platform offers robust analytics that allows you to track which employees are engaging with the content, how well they are retaining the information, and where there might be knowledge gaps. This data can help you refine your training strategies to ensure the best results.

  4. Sustainability and ROI
    Finally, an excellent microlearning platform should drive a significant ROI. By delivering highly effective, easily retained training content in small, manageable chunks, microlearning reduces the amount of time employees spend away from their core tasks, boosting productivity and reducing costs associated with training. Moreover, with better knowledge retention, employees can apply what they’ve learned in their day-to-day work, leading to long-term organizational improvements.

Achieving Four Key Training Purposes with Microlearning

A robust microlearning platform should enable you to achieve four essential training purposes, ensuring a comprehensive approach to employee development.

1. Supplementing Current Training Efforts

No matter how well-designed your traditional training program is, employees often need additional support to fully grasp and retain new information. A microlearning platform supplements these efforts by providing ongoing, bite-sized lessons that reinforce key concepts. For example, after a week-long onboarding session, employees can receive periodic microlearning lessons to review core topics and solidify their understanding. This ensures that the knowledge gained during the initial training phase isn’t lost over time.

2. Reinforcing Critical Work-Related Learning Content

One of the most powerful aspects of microlearning is its ability to reinforce critical work-related learning content. By delivering focused lessons that emphasize key takeaways from larger training programs, microlearning ensures that important information is not forgotten. This reinforcement helps to keep employees’ skills sharp and knowledge fresh, making them more effective in their roles.

The science behind this lies in concepts such as spaced repetition and retrieval practice. Spaced repetition is a learning technique where information is presented to learners at increasing intervals to strengthen memory retention. Retrieval practice, on the other hand, involves the use of testing or questioning to help solidify information in the brain. Both of these techniques are embedded into good microlearning platforms, enabling learners to revisit key information and reinforce their learning.

3. Augmenting Current Learning Materials

Microlearning can also serve as a valuable tool to augment existing training materials. For example, if your company offers a comprehensive eLearning course, a microlearning platform can deliver supplementary lessons that delve deeper into specific topics, helping to break down complex concepts into more manageable segments. This way, employees can build on what they’ve already learned, boosting their confidence in performing work-related tasks.

By integrating microlearning into a broader training initiative, organizations can ensure that learning is more engaging and relevant. Employees will not only remember the material better, but they will also feel more confident applying it in their work.

4. Facilitating Remediation of Poor Performance and Behaviors

One of the most significant benefits of a well-designed microlearning platform is its ability to remediate poor performance and correct negative behaviors effectively. If an employee struggles with a specific task or doesn’t perform well on an assessment, microlearning lessons can be tailored to address those shortcomings. Personalized content can be assigned to individuals based on their specific needs, allowing them to work on areas where improvement is required.

By providing targeted remediation lessons, microlearning ensures that employees can correct their mistakes and enhance their skills without feeling overwhelmed or discouraged. This personalized approach not only improves performance but also boosts employee morale.

Battling the Forgetting Curve with Microlearning

At the heart of every good microlearning platform is the ability to combat the “forgetting curve.” The forgetting curve, discovered by Hermann Ebbinghaus, shows how information is rapidly forgotten if not reinforced over time. Within 24 hours, individuals can forget up to 70% of newly acquired knowledge if it isn’t revisited.

A robust microlearning platform tackles this problem head-on. By incorporating spaced repetition and retrieval practice, the platform helps to ensure that employees regularly revisit important information, reinforcing their learning and embedding it into long-term memory. This not only prevents the rapid decay of knowledge but also helps employees to retain and apply what they’ve learned more effectively.

Spaced repetition, for instance, ensures that lessons are delivered at increasing intervals to promote better retention. The microlearning platform schedules content delivery in a way that ensures employees repeatedly engage with the material at optimal times, combating memory decay and ensuring that knowledge sticks.

Conclusion

To put it simply, a good microlearning platform is one that complements your overall training initiative and alleviates your pain points in delivering a sustainable training ROI. It should make your work easier — whether you’re creating content, developing lessons, launching them, or measuring learner progress. A robust microlearning platform helps supplement, reinforce, augment, and remediate your training efforts while effectively battling the forgetting curve to ensure long-term retention of work-related knowledge and skills. By integrating such a platform into your training initiatives, you not only enhance the effectiveness of your programs but also ensure the continuous development of a highly skilled and competent workforce.
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