Through guided worksheet activities, you’ll design a customized time tracking approach tailored to your organizational structure whether you work in an all-in-one or federated L&D function. You’ll leave with a practical tracking tool you can implement immediately, real examples of how data analysis drives operational improvements, and strategies to demonstrate measurable value to organizational leadership.

Learning Objectives:

• Differentiate between baselines and benchmarks and the value of each toward L&D operations.
• Draft customized time-tracking frameworks that align with their L&D function.
• Implement practical strategies for overcoming common barriers to time tracking.

The post From Tracking to Baseline: Creating Your L&D Operational Standards appeared first on Learning Guild.

The post From Knowledge to Performance: A Cognitive Science Approach to Microlearning Design appeared first on Learning Guild.

However, implementing a microlearning strategy that aligns with organizational outcomes and sustains performance is no small feat. Learning and Development (L&D) leaders often grapple with questions like: Where do we start; How do we ensure our efforts are effective; and What factors should we evaluate?

The Microlearning Effectiveness (MLE) Framework offers a practical approach to addressing these challenges. Instead of rigid rules, the framework acts as a guide, encouraging leaders to evaluate their efforts against six key components:

• Goals or measurable outcomes
• Purpose
• Potential
• Evaluation
• Implementation
• Distributed practice

By breaking down these components, L&D professionals can identify strengths and gaps, develop strategies that align with current capabilities, and create a roadmap for future growth. This article explores how to leverage the MLE Framework effectively, providing actionable tips and a reflective activity to take back to work.

Why frameworks matter

A framework like the MLE is not a set of rules; it is a tool to prompt meaningful questioning. Frameworks enable L&D leaders to:

• Examine where they are currently excelling
• Identify gaps in their strategy
• Assess the capacity and capability of their team and resources
• Make informed decisions about what to prioritize and how to approach challenges

Starting with what you already know or what feels most manageable provides short-term gains and builds momentum. Addressing gaps, on the other hand, helps create a clear game plan for long-term success. The following sections highlight each part of the framework with a key question and rationale for what insights each question can yield for your L&D function.

Gaining insight from the framework

Goals or Measurable Outcomes

• Key question:  What business results do you expect from your microlearning strategy?
• Why it’s valuable: Clear, measurable outcomes create a foundation for alignment and accountability.

Purpose

• Key question: Why does this microlearning initiative exist?
• Why it’s valuable: L&D needs to know if they are solving a specific problem, supporting a broader strategy, or providing foundational knowledge.

Potential

• Key question: What opportunities exist if the purpose is actualized?
• Why it’s valuable: This helps to put into focus the measurable outcomes or if it is a true need for L&D to address.

Evaluation

• Key question: How will you measure success?
• Why it’s valuable: Defining metrics that track learner progress and link to business impact ensures that the design of these pieces is part of the overall solution and implementation plan.
  Additionally, this is a way for L&D teams to evaluate needs as they continue to incorporate microlearning. The team needs to understand where the L&D function is in terms of its capabilities and capacity—and whether something else is needed to ensure or maintain success when it offers microlearning.

Implementation

• Key question: What does the rollout look like?
• Why it’s valuable: Consider timing, resource availability, and stakeholder involvement.

Distributed practice

• Key question: How will you reinforce the purpose over time?
• Why it’s valuable: Using strategies like spaced repetition, desirable difficulties, or push-pull content delivery ensures sustained performance improvements. Knowing how the microlearning strategy will be implemented also helps determine the distribution cycle and touchpoints.

Tips for applying the MLE framework

Start where you are

• Key Action: Identify one component of the framework that feels easiest to address or most familiar to your organization.
• Example: If your goals are already aligned with business outcomes, focus on refining them.
• Why It Matters: Short-term gains build momentum and confidence for tackling more complex challenges.

Audit for gaps

• Key Action: Evaluate which components of the framework feel less solid.
• Example: If distributed practice is underdeveloped, reflect on what’s missing and what steps are needed to enhance it.
• Why It Matters: Auditing gaps is not a critique; it’s a proactive way to identify areas for growth and improvement.

Plan strategically

• Key Action: Align your strategy with your current capabilities and capacity.
• Example: If your team has limited experience with evaluation, focus on simple metrics before building more complex systems.
• Why It Matters: Pilot new efforts in low-risk areas to build capability and test new approaches without overextending resources.

Getting started

To begin applying the MLE Framework in your organization, start with your strengths and determine how you can leverage those to support other areas of the framework. Choose one component of the framework that feels easiest to accomplish or most familiar. Write down three reasons why this component is a strength for your organization: For instance, have a good handle on it, or you have the infrastructure in place, or it’s firm/fixed and you know it’s not changing.

If you are seeking to challenge where you need to go to develop your capabilities or capacity, select the component you feel least confident in. What’s holding this area back? What steps could you take to strengthen it? Who on your team could help?

Based on your reflections, create a simple, actionable plan. Make sure it includes:

• An equal comprehension of the term microlearning to level-set all expectations.
• One short-term outcome (e.g., improve the alignment of goals and outcomes).
• One long-term objective (e.g., build capacity for better evaluation methods).
• Key resources or stakeholders to involve.

Closing thoughts

The MLE Framework offers a practical and flexible approach to developing or affirming your microlearning strategy. By focusing on short-term wins, auditing for gaps, and planning strategically, L&D leaders can create initiatives that deliver meaningful, sustained results. Incorporating tools like reflective activities and low-risk pilots ensures that efforts are realistic and aligned with current capacity while paving the way for future growth.

Remember, the key to success is not perfection but progression. Use the framework as a guide to evaluate and evolve your microlearning strategy, one step at a time in 2025.

The post A Practical Framework for Microlearning Success: A Guide for Learning Leaders appeared first on Learning Guild.

If the term microlearning still feels fuzzy to you, that may be due to the way in which microlearning is spoken about. Whether the conversation focuses on microlearning as a concept, method, or product, we can liken it to preparing a series of small, exquisite dishes rather than serving a single elaborate banquet. These bite-sized learning products typically focus on one learning outcome (sometimes two), are a relatively short engagement in an activity, and will commonly elicit an action from the participant outside of the microlearning product.

Like any successful culinary endeavor, introducing microlearning into your learning ecosystem requires careful planning, thoughtful execution, and the right ingredients for success. This article broadly explores integrating microlearning and managing resistance to the introduction of this change. Like a well-crafted recipe, change management practices have specific ingredients that are essential for the successful incorporation and adoption of a change. These approaches are just as effective and necessary when adding microlearning as part of the organizational learning strategy.  

Understanding the need for change

Traditional training approaches resemble preparing a large feast—time-consuming, elaborate, and challenging to digest all at once. These programs often end with some form of certification or mastery assessment with a score that exists in an LMS. However, let’s recognize that for some, mastery is achieved by showing necessary skills, such as interpersonal skills in sales or customer care.

Microlearning is usually a disruptor to these traditions, especially because its value lies in supporting developmental needs that require assessing performance on the job.

For example, microlearning breaks down larger topics into small, manageable portions that are often designed to be delivered in the flow of work. Unlike traditional learning ecosystems, which commonly have set timeframes for taking training in the LMS and require significant time away from work, microlearning may not be delivered through the LMS. Assessment methods can also differ, such as observation, reviews, rubrics, and checklists, which may not rely on the LMS at all.

These comparisons highlight a strategy underlying microlearning that diverges from traditional development processes and delivery of learning products like eLearning. Microlearning creates an opportunity to strategically align with organizational goals, demonstrate ROI, and drive movement toward strategic outcomes. For many organizations, embracing microlearning represents a significant change—a shift in learning culture, stakeholder engagement, and the philosophy of L&D as a pivotal business function. (Yes, I, consider L&D to be a business function.)

Managing the change requires navigating these shifts effectively. While L&D’s role is to build and implement solutions, the success of these solutions often hinges on addressing resistance and fostering adoption throughout the organization. So how does L&D do that?

Managing the change

If microlearning is going to create a big shift that impacts culture or paradigms, we need to consider how to manage such significant change.

That is not to say that L&D does it alone; we will need to leverage other work functions or capabilities across the organization to ensure that the change is successful. After all, it takes an entire kitchen crew, from hostess to busboy, the dishwasher in the back, and every employee in between to make a dining experience amazing—consistently and with a high volume of repetition. It also requires things like great produce and sundry vendors, a well-designed venue, and impactful marketing.

Think about it this way: If the L&D function operated like a family-style buffet, then transitioned to being a tapas bar, and you were hoping to retain at least 35% of your former patrons, you would have to manage a lot of change, both to retain those former patrons’ business and to increase business overall going forward. A successful approach would impact the capabilities and capacity of the entire restaurant staff—again, big changes.

So let’s try to manage that change by addressing the biggest hurdle that is common to change management: resistance.

Who is resisting the change?

Resistance can come from a lot of different entities within the organization, including the L&D function. Here are a few examples of what that resistance might look like:

• Your L&D team, who are comfortable solutioning the way they always have
• An SME who, while reviewing the microlearning products, seeks to alter the product—back to something more traditional
• The IT team, who may fail to follow the delivery plan for implementing a microlearning campaign via email
• HR, denies L&D access to data from performance reviews which are needed to evaluate the performance associated with the microlearning campaign, insisting there are legal implications

Change management process

Whether feedback turns your seven-minute micro-eLearning product into a 20-minute training or the resistance comes more from the people you need to help L&D implement or evaluate the microlearning, the change process outlined below can get you going:

1. Identify key stakeholders and what their role addresses as part of the change. This ensures that, rather than telling your collaborators that they have to do it, you are building the change together, at the pace your organization can manage.
2. Discuss the benefits of the change as it aligns with the strategic goals of the organization. This is a great way to gauge how well collaborators align with the organization’s strategic goals. It can also indicate which collaborators may need more direct partnering to support their critical involvement in the change.
3. Express your vision for how you see the stakeholder’s role in helping to drive that success. Again, you are inviting the stakeholders to collaborate with you on this change. Cue into their responses: This can inform you of their support or resistance and/or their ability from a capability and capacities standpoint to support the change.
4. Provide opportunities for your stakeholders to gain clarity and to raise any concerns. If the stakeholders are not the decision-makers on the capacity load of their business function, here is an opportunity to demonstrate support to gain the buy-in needed. For example, IT does not have the capacity or capability to track click-open and click-through rates on emails; how does this alter the ways that microlearning can be implemented until there is capacity and capability? How can you help your IT partner work with their leadership to ensure they comprehend the need and value of these actions?
5. Craft a plan to resolve concerns with key stakeholders in which you and the stakeholders are equally invested. Keep these updates transparent to all collaborators participating in the change. Sometimes, seeing progress with one business function can help you gain additional traction in areas that aren’t moving along. It can also garner champions to help move along the change (because success often is incentive and motivation!).
6. Establish a governance framework that acknowledges all parties impacted by the change. The key is not to overcomplicate governance with restrictive decision-making. For example, specifying detailed procedures for every aspect of microlearning implementation may stifle innovation and adaptability, whereas setting broad guidelines that encourage experimentation and local adaptation can foster creativity and ownership across different business functions.
7. Determine the most effective communication channels for addressing updates, decision-making, and planning. This is just not communication between the business units managing the change; it is also about communicating awareness of upcoming changes, how those changes impact workflows or processes, how individuals in business units will help to address and manage those changes, and when those changes will take effect. Then there are the communications around the rollout: For example, letting those who will use the microlearning campaign know how it will be distributed, what and where should be looking to gain access and engage with the products, and how, when, and why they should be tuning into these new performance products.
8. When successful change moves forward, celebrate; when it doesn’t, reflect and pivot. Managing this significant change doesn’t end when the first microlearning product is implemented. It is important to keep your cross-functional team active, not just to celebrate a success but also to look at what aspects of the planning and execution you could refine or enhance.

The driver of this change framework is to prevent the change—or resistance to the change—from halting the process of adopting and incorporating microlearning.

Just as chefs test new menu items before making them permanent, introducing microlearning may require adapting its initial implementation to align with existing training processes in your organization. This approach helps identify necessary adjustments to your organization’s traditional methods of implementing and delivering content. It also provides the rationale for your cross-functional change team and ensures a smoother integration of microlearning into your learning ecosystem.

Conclusion  

Introducing microlearning into organizational learning frameworks requires a strategic approach akin to culinary mastery—combining creativity, precision, and attention to detail. By addressing resistance early on using effective change management strategies, learning leaders can strategically plan for the integration of microlearning as a transformative tool for continuous learning and skill development. Like a skilled chef crafting a memorable dining experience, you must lead the charge—ensuring that microlearning initiatives are not only adopted but embraced as a cornerstone of your organizational learning culture.

Explore microlearning strategy at Learning 2024

Examine your learning strategy from every angle at Learning 2024. Don’t miss Robyn Defelice’s session, Unlock the Potential of Strategic Microlearning, along with dozens of sessions on learning in the workflow, ensuring that your L&D strategy aligns with organizational goals, and how AI fits into all aspects of leading the L&D function. Join us December 4–6, 2024, in Orlando. Register today!

The post Resistance to Change: A Recipe to Set Your Microlearning Initiative in Motion appeared first on Learning Guild.

Forbes outlined key statistics and trends from 2023 pertaining to various challenges HR faced in 2023—things like new-hire turnover rates, organizational culture, engaging a remote workforce, and developing a future-of-work strategy. These highlight HR’s responsibility toward optimizing organizational capacity by way of aligned and optimized workforce capabilities. For HR teams to succeed, they need to have a strong—but adaptable—performance development strategy.

In considering our 2024 challenges, let’s consider how to leverage microlearning to achieve many of our most pressing demands. This article dives into the basics of microlearning while highlighting several opportunities to consider its incorporation into your HR performance development roadmap.

How you define microlearning matters

For HR leaders unfamiliar with the term, “microlearning” is commonly used to mean three different things: A concept, a method, and a product. It’s important to keep this in mind as you work with your team or your L&D function or make an effort to convey expectations.

Microlearning is often spoken about as a broad concept that fosters continuous learning. Here the term “learning” is also broad, as it covers the likes of knowledge, skills, and behaviors. Consider here the onboarding of new hires or exemplifying the organization’s learning culture, e.g., sharing and managing the exemplary ideas, tactics, and tools that bring success to your organization.

From a standpoint of method, microlearning is flexible and accessible. It can be delivered through various channels such as eLearning platforms and mobile apps, or even be integrated into daily work tools. This adaptability ensures that employees can access learning materials whenever and wherever they need them, promoting continuous learning. It’s an ideal medium for compliance-based topics, which often sit stagnant each year, or to sharpen essential interpersonal skills that all employees need, like conflict resolution or active listening.

We then have the most common definition of microlearning, as a thing or training product. Microlearning products are often defined by characteristics like how many objectives they address, duration of seat time, or the use of technology. My co-author of “Microlearning: Short and Sweet,” Karl Kapp, and I developed the following definition of a product: An instructional unit that provides a short engagement in an activity intentionally designed to elicit a specific outcome from the participant. Microlearning products include a range of content formats, from interactive quizzes and videos to infographics and morning huddles or weekly briefings.

Microlearning can make HR activities matter more

With these definitions in mind, let’s turn our attention to HR activities around the growth of the employees and their capabilities. Specifically, let’s focus on trending HR topics where the use of microlearning provides flexible and employee-centric development opportunities.

Onboarding and retention

Statistics from the Forbes article reveal that 30% of new hires leave within the first 90 days, often due to unmet expectations or poor cultural fit. Microlearning can address these challenges by offering engaging onboarding programs: Forbes also cites data showing that companies with structured onboarding programs retain 58% of employees for three years, demonstrating the impact of effective onboarding.

Skill development

Microlearning is especially effective for skill development. According to the Forbes data, 75% of companies plan to create custom learning programs; microlearning offers a tailored solution. HR leaders can curate microlearning content to align with organizational goals, ensuring that employees acquire the skills needed to fill gaps and advance their careers.

Employee engagement

Comprehensive onboarding experiences make employees 18 times more committed to the company and 38% more effective at their job, according to the Forbes data. Microlearning contributes to positive onboarding by delivering bite-sized, relevant content.

Engaged employees, in turn, are more committed and effective, potentially leading to a 147% increase in company earnings, compared with competitors.

Remote work integration

With 17% of HR leaders struggling to integrate remote workers into their teams and 15% facing challenges in conveying company culture virtually, microlearning offers a solution. Short, engaging microlearning products that focus on key attrition issues can bridge the gap, fostering a sense of inclusion and connection among remote employees.

Future of work strategy

In a landscape where, according to Forbes, 43% of HR leaders lack a future work strategy, microlearning allows HR departments to adapt quickly to changing work dynamics by providing timely updates and skill development opportunities aligned with the organization’s evolving needs.

Example of an HR-related microlearning campaign

To illustrate the practical application of microlearning in HR, consider a microlearning campaign (a series of products themed on a developmental goal) focused on improving onboarding experiences. The campaign could include short products covering company culture, job expectations, and career development opportunities. Microlearning products may include interactive videos introducing key team members, infographics summarizing company values, and activities that have direct job application to reinforce critical information.

This microlearning campaign benefits HR by streamlining parts of the onboarding process while providing a consistent message. To take it a step farther, HR can create an accompanying microlearning campaign that departments can use with their staff when onboarding a new team member. Developing clear and consistent organizational messages ensures that microlearning content aligns with the company’s values and goals. Consistency fosters a unified learning experience across the workforce.

How HR gets started also matters

Hopefully this has you excited about the prospects of where you can take HR activities for 2024, but to make sure it’s a success from the start, here are a few points to consider.

Have the right relationships

If HR is not doubling as the learning and development function, HR leaders should initiate collaboration with the L&D team—or work with a trusted vendor if there is no internal L&D arm. Building strong ties ensures a cohesive approach to implementing microlearning strategies. An important aspect here is having a common definition of microlearning and its purpose and potential for the organization or minimally for HR.

Goal alignment

Consider opportunities that align with departmental or organizational goals. Whether it’s addressing retention challenges or enhancing remote work integration, microlearning should be a strategic tool supporting broader objectives.

Piloting strategies

If this is new for your team, decide whether to pilot microlearning with a specific department or organization-wide. Pros of piloting with a specific department include targeted feedback, but it may limit the broader impact. Pros of organization-wide implementation include scalability but may pose challenges in catering to diverse departmental needs.

In conclusion, microlearning presents an innovative opportunity for HR leaders to address the evolving challenges in talent management. By embracing microlearning concepts, methods, and products, HR can enhance onboarding experiences, promote skill development, and adapt to the changing dynamics of the modern workplace. Initiating a thoughtful integration of microlearning aligns with the future of work strategies, ensuring that HR remains a strategic driver of organizational success.

For more

For more information, download my new checklist, Getting Started With Microlearning: The Basics.

The post Make It Matter: How HR Leaders Can Maximize Microlearning appeared first on Learning Guild.

The post Getting Started With Microlearning: The Basics appeared first on Learning Guild.

In an earlier article, I showcased a microlearning product and highlighted how the microlearning design principles were at play, but what I did not discuss was a key bridging element between setting goals and actually designing a product. Because we are dealing in performance-based microlearning, each campaign and product will have its own purpose and potential (P&P).

The P&P are not derived from the organization’s definition but by the goals of the campaign itself. Doing this step of defining campaign goals and extracting the P&P serves two purposes: It helps to keep alignment as you move to determining the microlearning products in the campaign. And it helps to determine the type of outcomes and actions to elicit from the participants.

So how do goals inform the P&P? Performance Pathways (Purpose) and Use Cases (Potential) provide opportunity to think through the alignment to a campaign goal while preparing for the design of the microlearning products.

Purpose: Performance pathways

When reviewing the goals and evaluative measures developed for your microlearning campaign, you need to determine whether some or all of your audience needs to have a skill, competency, behavior, or attitude:

• Enhanced? You are seeking to Augment their performance.
• Redressed? Your audience requires Remediation of their performance.
• Supported? You want to Reinforce their performance.
• Solidified? You want to Supplement initial learning with focused resources targeting specific performance scenarios.

The best approach is a single microlearning campaign that addresses all four pathways and audiences. But there is no requirement to use all four; your purpose may use any combination of the four, so long as it answers:

• What focus will the campaign have to best serve performance of the participants?
• Which audience will get this pathway and why?

Now that we have highlighted the purpose, we can determine how it drives the potential impact of the campaign. To do that we have six use case types to guide us!

Potential: 6 use cases

The design of your microlearning campaign and its products are responsible for progressing toward goals you have defined. This entails making decisions and determining if the goals or evaluative measures will require data from activities or actions that demonstrate/provide:

• Stronger awareness? These require Pensive elements in your design. For example, Have you done this before? How does your plan align to the expected plan? Do you think they handled the situation using the right policies?
• Support in the moment? This leads you to a Performance-focused design. While often conflated with JIT (just-in-time) training, these are often designed differently and cover more than one objective, whereas a microlearning product covers a single objective.
• Insight into the modification of behaviors and attitudes? The use case here is Persuasive. This differs from Pensive, which deals in self-reflection. Persuasive is very much about a means to change behavior, mindset, or attitude.
• A way to reinforce or perpetuate performance after a larger learning or training engagement? The Post-Instruction use case is an excellent way to carry forward salient points from training in the LMS or workshops and facilitated programs.
• Opportunities to hone, refine, or develop skills, attitudes, and/or behaviors? The Practice-based use case does this with real-time or timely feedback, mentoring, or coaching.
• A way to equalize participants prior to attending a larger event or engaging in an activity? This means you are choosing a Preparatory approach to level-set all participants.

The six use cases (6P’s) can be intermingled at the campaign and product level. For example, a Post-Instruction campaign may use Pensive and Practice products. To help in thinking through the 6P’s for developing performance-based microlearning, determine:

• The primary reason for the campaign. Examples might include get learners reflecting, help them adapt to a new culture, ensure everyone has equal understanding, etc. Are there secondary or tertiary uses?
• How the selected use case(s) support the goals and evaluative measures.

Putting it together

What might it look like when you put the Purpose and Potential together in designing a campaign? Let’s use a common subject, onboarding new hires, and play out purpose and potential.

Let’s say that your organization has been rigorously hiring; currently, over 50 employees are between Day 1 and Day 120. The goal of the campaign is to show that new hires demonstrate behaviors and attitudes that support the organization’s culture. The organization used a microlearning campaign during onboarding for these purposes:

• Augmentation/Preparatory Campaign– Day 1—new hires need their current knowledge enhanced and level-set prior to taking on the major tasks and responsibilities of their job roles. Providing equal understanding of the expected behaviors and attitudes and how they fit to the organization’s culture is critical for framing the job for the new hire.
• Reinforcement/Post-Instruction Campaign – New hires, post-onboarding, need to have certain behaviors and attitudes supported as they continue to learn their job roles and responsibilities. New hires should not be expected to recall this from their larger training. They need to be engaged on these topics from different perspectives to ensure not only comprehension but an ability to demonstrate skill acquisition or specific behaviors or attitudes as they perform their work.
• Remediation/Performance Campaign – Any new hires between Day 90 and 120 who are not demonstrating integration of the desired behaviors and attitudes while performing their jobs need additional exposure to topics. Here, the microlearning products can be the same, but the outcome or call to action (aka the activity the participant performs) could be different.

If you are wondering what other use cases are at play, they would be predominately Pensive and Practice. Let’s take a look at Pensive in each of these situations:

• Pensive. All three new-hire performance pathways can encourage reflection, but the questions for each audience can be different. For example:
  • New Hire, Day 1 (Augmentation): Highlight three ways in which your current work philosophy aligns and deviates from the company’s philosophy and provide examples.
  • Post Onboarding (Reinforcement): Over the last two months, you have observed the company’s work philosophy in action by your peers and leaders. Identify a moment that you thought embodied this philosophy. Elaborate to address all tenets of the philosophy.
  • Day 90 to Day 120 (Remediation): Select the tenet(s) that you are currently not demonstrating of the company’s work philosophy. Compare and contrast your current behaviors and attitudes against the definitions and examples. For any item where you differ from the company, list up to three ways in which you can alter your approach to better align.

Notes on practice and performance

A product can deploy practice as a call to action. Any of the use cases can elicit practice from the learner, and I encourage it to not be solely contained within the product. Remember: Calls to action should be contextualized and relate to the learner’s performance on the job. While practice may be part of a microlearning product (contained within the product), it should not be considered the outcome of that product. However, there are some instances where that may occur.

By this I mean, practice may (or may not) vary by pathway. Ways to provide practice and have it also be the outcome are through using an AI-enhanced application (think like Interflexion, (k)Nudging or Presentr), a virtual coaching session, or even a workshop.

Microlearning offers tremendous creative flexibility when products and campaigns are planned out with consideration for what may impede data collection, timely roll-outs, and impactful product design. However, if this is your first go at microlearning and you are finding the opportunities overwhelming—go micro!

Don’t stop yourself from mapping out all the possibilities; just take a moment with your team or stakeholders and prioritize the options so you can focus on just one purpose (and potential) for now!

Dive into microlearning for performance at Learning Solutions 2023

In addition to multiple sessions in the Micro- and Workflow Learning track at Learning Solutions 2023 Conference and Expo, April 12–14 in Orlando, Florida, you can spend a full day exploring the potential to put performance-driven microlearning to work for your organization. Robyn Defelice will present her workshop, “Make Performance-Driven Microlearning Work for Your Organization,” on April 11. Register today!

The post Power Performance with Microlearning’s Purpose and Potential appeared first on Learning Guild.

Microlearning is far more than “short training.” Effective microlearning can engage learners, change behavior, build skills, and drive performance toward improved KPIs and achieving organizational goals.

The key, of course, is effective microlearning—from how it’s designed into a campaign to how it aligns to organizational strategies focused on performance.

This interactive session looks at the early steps of developing a microlearning product for its campaign. First, we’ll take a big-picture view, exploring the role of strategic design in making decisions about the primary use case for the product (the 6P’s) and evaluative measures that align to that product. This guides the use of the 7 microlearning design principles. We’ll then walk through designing pieces of a sample microlearning product that illustrate a few of the 7 design principles. Using chat and polling questions, you’ll explore the role of microlearning design principles like context, conciseness, and eliciting action—and how they work together to drive effectiveness.

You’ll leave this session with both a micro- and macro-view of how effectively designed microlearning products fit into strategic learning campaigns, which move learners toward specific performance and organizational goals.

In this session, you will learn:

• What the 6 P’s and 7 design principles are and why they matter
• Why considering the “bookends” of use cases and evaluation methods is the key to effective microlearning design
• How to recognize and apply the design principles to boost the effectiveness of your microlearning products

The post Follow These 7 Principles to Design Effective Microlearning appeared first on Learning Guild.

You’re an amazing L&D leader: You have successfully navigated the leadership landscape and aligned your department’s work to the organization’s strategic initiatives. You collaborate across the organization, embedding the capabilities of your department where appropriate for strategic gain!

As a matter of fact, you are teaming up with sales, marketing, HR, and customer service to address the retention issues in the sales department. There are a couple of KPIs in particular that, through data and analysis, have been identified for performance support in the form of training.

Your team has developed a learning solution that will use microlearning, in part, to reinforce the overall retention initiative. The microlearning campaigns and their products need to align to the performance goal(s) of the training solution. How do you even do that!?

In Behind The Scenes: The Making of Microlearning Campaigns, we looked at the mechanics of a process, key terms, and the need for goal development and alignment. To conclude this two-part discussion, we pick up by mapping the campaign to ensure alignment of the products, the implementation plan, and the evaluative measures. For us to be able to do that, we need to think in more multifaceted ways.

Omitting singular thinking

Very little about performance-based microlearning is truly singular, so let’s keep the focus on what benefits an organization pursuing performance-based microlearning.

What I mean by “singular thinking” is designing products as “one-and-done.” Microlearning, in contrast, is about building skill over time. For example: negotiation isn’t a skill that comes from a single eLearning or a three-day workshop.

Microlearning is very much about envisioning what the outcome looks like; not only in the action of the salesperson executing the skill but also in the impact of that skill on the individual, their team, the division, and even the organization’s outcomes.

That is a journey!

Journeys do not commonly follow a single path, do not move quickly from A to Z (sometimes we need to repeat step K, maybe three times), and they do not always equip us with everything we need. Sometimes we have to pick up things along the way to keep moving our journey forward.

That is why it’s essential to map a microlearning campaign—a collection of microlearning products packaged together to focus on the development of a discrete skill—to plan how the skill will develop over time, with measurement. This entails more than creating a set of microlearning units: Part of the plan is mapping how the journey will actually occur and how progress will be measured.

We’ve talked about some of those facets before, like whether your microlearning campaign will be part of a larger curriculum or be pushed to the participants or pulled by them when they need it. These aspects of implementation affect the entire campaign, so let’s start with a look at implementation considerations.

Considering the campaign map through implementation

Because the philosophy of spaced repetition is an effective practice for skill development, we need that at the forefront of our thinking with this journey. In our example we are focused on attitudes, as well as skill and competency development, to minimize turnover with a sales team. The following questions provide the beginnings of mapping the campaign and breaking it down in meaningful ways for the salesperson.

• What is an average time frame to see changes in these attitudes, skills, and competencies manifest with consistency? This will help to put focus on how often to space opportunities and how many microlearning products need to be “released” (whether pushed or pulled) during a certain time frame.
• Are the attitudes prevalent enough? Or is time needed to develop them? Can they be developed through focusing on skill development? For example, confidence may be a larger issue than negotiation—or confidence may be tied to negotiation. If part of your analysis indicates that confidence is very low based on self-reports and that it isn’t associated to a specific skill or competency, then you might consider a separate microlearning campaign focused on confidence. It’s not usually the case but when dealing with attitudes and skills, we cannot always see them as cause and effect to one another.
• How many journeys are needed? Is it one big microlearning campaign that an individual can experience as they see fit, or do we need to guide them by building specific attitudes and skills to take on other parts of their journey? Does each attitude, skill, or competency get a discrete journey, and then more complex journeys put all three together to challenge application? Figuring this out helps to determine what tools the journey needs to start with and which ones can help equip the participant along the way. That means that as you map for alignment, you may put specific topics or objectives before others or in tandem, etc.

These implementation considerations begin addressing evaluative measures, as well. If part of the journey needs participants to equip themselves with a tool prior to moving on, then you know that some form of performance-based assessment or evaluation must occur.

Evaluating the performance of the journey

Development of skills and competencies for performance comes with a host of needs that rely on more than multiple choice and true-false questions. Again, the individual needs the opportunity for self-application, evaluation, and reflection, as much as they need to demonstrate competency and have it assessed.

This makes considering evaluation an essential preparatory step to mapping and implementing your microlearning campaigns.

• How do we help our sales reps plot their journeys? How do they know where to start on the map? Do we do a pre-assessment to help them get a better sense of where they should focus their time? Do we leave it to personal preference? Do we create structured goal development and achievement pathways for them? For example, one pathway may be more about building confidence and less about the competency, whereas another may be more about the skills and less about the attitude.
• How often should self-assessment and reflection occur compared to assessment that is external? External assessment by a regional manager, peer, or mentor may be something different from the norm and require more time of others. That, in turn, might mean that you must consider change management as yet another factor in successful execution of a microlearning campaign—along with implementation and evaluation.
• When or where should external assessments occur? After a specific number of days, so many microlearning products achieved/completed out of the campaign, as part of passive observation (like in a meeting), or as part of a staged evaluative event (such as at a workshop)? The nice thing here is that not every “evaluation” has to be formal, but if there is no plan in place that prompts external evaluation, your learners’ journey may be stalled if they lack the input that allows them to move forward.

By now it should be clear that evaluation feeds other aspects of implementation. In addition, operational factors may need addressing: For example, are there platforms in place to distribute assessments and manage that process? If no, where is assessment data going? It could be that there are no tools, no platform, and no dedicated staff to manage assessment needs.

The operations aspect can require new technology or obtaining support from other departments. This could have even greater impact on shifting the culture of how the organization embraces and supports employee development.

Once you’ve considered (and, ideally, addressed) implementation and assessment concerns, you can finally get to mapping out your microlearning campaign.

Mapping the campaign

Considering goals, implementation, and evaluation is a lot of mental heavy lifting that happens prior to mapping the campaign. However, there are good reasons for doing all of that. Had we done traditional mapping, breaking down content to develop skills into a content outline of sorts, we would have missed a lot of nuances that would make successful performance within the learning intervention more difficult.

To assist in remembering those nuances, use the following to reflect on performance-based microlearning your team has developed or to guide your approach when planning for microlearning:

• The person taking the journey. Did we hand them a map with no compass?
• The person or people and tools that aid in the journey, whether alongside the individual on the journey (like a coach or a manager) or something supporting behind the scenes to keep the journey going (a set of goals and milestones). Did we tell them where the journey-takers are coming from, what they should have, and how they can be moved on?
• The markers or milestones that help the journey-taker know they are headed in the right direction. Does our map have a legend to help identify what is on the map and the distance between items on the map?
• The capacity of the organization to support that type of journey. Do these journey maps overlay the workflow or require time outside of it? Does either approach require more time of individuals (whether journey taker, journey observer, or journey evaluator) to operationally support the journey then previous?

Remember, taking the time to recognize that jumping from an organization or department goal to selecting topics and breaking them down into microlearning products is oversimplifying the process of developing effective, performance-based microlearning campaigns. Considering the factors presented here, plus others that may be more relevant to your organization’s environment, is critical to the future success and use of microlearning within your learning ecosystem.

Explore microlearning in depth

Join us for an in-depth look at microlearning. On February 6–7, Robyn Defelice offers a hands-on workshop on using microlearning to drive performance at your organization. Then, on February 8–9 Robyn is one of eight experts sharing microlearning innovations and best practices in our online conference. Register today to explore chatbots, augmented reality, personalization, and much more.

The post Map Microlearning Campaigns with Focus on Performance Goals appeared first on Learning Guild.

In “Infographics as Job Aids: Design for Showing, Not Knowing,” I highlighted the use of microlearning design principles through an infographic-based microlearning campaign. This contextual example demonstrated how a carefully designed microlearning campaign can help reduce mistakes and costs to a healthcare facility as part of a larger, organization-based initiative. This is what I mean when I encourage using microlearning for performance and performance-focused training—which starts with performance-focused goals.

What I mean by “performance-focused goals” is the way we make determinations and decisions that shape the design of a microlearning campaign and its respective products. This process is not familiar to the majority of L&D departments; nor do they have the opportunity to align performance-focused training to higher organizational goals.

This two-part article takes a step back from analyzing tangible microlearning campaigns and products and focuses on the process—what goes on behind the scenes and informs the creation of microlearning. We’ll start with a look at microlearning as a driver of performance (and why you might do that!) and define some essential concepts.

Why focus on performance?

To successfully implement a performance-driven microlearning program, you, as a learning leader, need a voice in shaping your organization’s strategic plan. Begin making your case for it by tapping into a trending demand that is the future of business—data.

Data-driven business decisions are not new, but they are becoming more powerful because of technological advancements that can synthesize and share “stories” about data in mere minutes. The availability and easy visualization of data allows businesses to make turnkey decisions for the gain of the organization. Data is leading to the transformation of performance as well.

Consider performance-driven management (PDM): PDM is a process for efficiently optimizing work performance on multiple levels of the organization (e.g., organization, department, employee, etc.) to meet its business goals. PDM needs evidence that it is being effective, which requires data. This is a major shift for HR, which provides organizational oversight to this initiative.

Additionally, in many organizations, HR manages the L&D function or works closely with it. So if HR needs to manage by performance data inputs, then the L&D department needs the ability to track and share performance-driven data with HR.

Case in point, a 2019 Gartner survey indicated that less than one-fifth of HR leaders found performance management effective for meeting its main purpose. This is due in part to performance management initiatives that focused on reducing effort and involvement of managers and employees alike, which in turn reduced work performance.

Gartner also shared evidence of boosting performance management through associating business and employee needs to it. Jeanine Prime, vice president in the Gartner HR practice, drove home the necessity for strategic alignment: “Organizations that maximize utility by closely aligning performance management with employee and business needs realized a 24% boost in workforce performance and had a 7% higher proportion of high performers in their workforces.”

Learning leaders need the right data

Very few learning leaders can provide quantifiable and qualitative evidence of the L&D department’s contributions to those performance gains; the vast majority cannot.

The reality for most L&D teams is that they have only basic data, such as completion and success rates from an LMS. Without the right data, demonstrating training’s impact on business goals or departmental KPIs (key performance indicators) is impossible.

So how can learning leaders move the process forward within their departments, with the goal of creating performance-focused training to meet performance-focused goals?

The process of getting to performance

The ideal process for learning leaders to be able to demonstrate the impact of their departments’ work on organizational goals starts with collaboration. Collaborating with organizational stakeholders, such as HR, in relation to organization-based or department/team-based goals or KPIs is essential.

To establish performance-based training plans, L&D leaders need time to review organizational goals and associated departmental KPIs and assess where training could contribute to increasing the likelihood of achieving these goals and improving KPIs.

When training needs are identified, the L&D lead can draft performance measures and goals with the stakeholders for evaluation of performance post-training. These will provide the data needed to show and share the impact of training on performance.

From there, the process continues, as many instructional design efforts do—from mapping training topics to designing the learning products and the subsequent development and launch of the curriculum within the larger organizational initiative. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1

This workflow assumes certain supporting activities, such as evaluating current data and trends. Additionally, performing a needs analysis would be associated to “Assess the Need for Training and the Types of Training.” Granted, some of this process becomes blurred or compressed when executed, but there is value in defining each step here for the benefit of learning leaders who may compare this to their current processes.

We’re not talking about training (yet)!

Note that we haven’t even begun to mention microlearning campaigns or products. That’s because we are not starting by assuming a need for microlearning—or any training.

What we are doing is making systematic determinations and decisions so that we can know whether training is needed to contribute to meeting the organizational goals. Only then would the L&D department develop a training plan—one that includes performance measures associated to the curriculum with identified activities to develop performance.

What else do we need to understand to ensure everything continues to align prior to selecting learning products?

Repositioning goals and initiatives

As a learning leader, you need to make sure that how your department will play a role in performance-driven goals of the organization is equally understood by stakeholders. This means that there may be a need to redefine common words used by stakeholders with the L&D department.

For example, the VP of sales requests a revamp of the onboarding training. The VP of sales believes that, once this initiative is complete, the goal is met; their measure of success is completing the revamp of the training. However, the learning leader is then actually held accountable for whether the new onboarding training aids in increasing retention.

This thinking on part of the VP of sales keeps the goal and the initiative isolated to the L&D department. The efforts of L&D are not aligned to what HR, marketing, sales, etc. are doing toward new hire retention for the salesforce.

A key difference in performance-driven training is that the goals being addressed are those of the organization—not of a single department. The initiative, in this case a training redesign, is usually organization- or department-driven through KPIs.

Here’s how that might work: If an organization had a goal of increasing retention of new hires for its salesforce, then the sales department might have a KPI related to seeing each salesperson’s confidence in and speed at which they adopt their new job role increase on a Likert scale.

The organization would more than likely create a holistic initiative to meet that goal, a plan that would include the sales department among other departments. This initiative could include altering the onboarding process, creating an incentive program, and enhancing or shifting the training approach in conjunction with the onboarding process.

In this example, the initiative involves various departments, such as HR, L&D, marketing, and sales leadership.

Think of it this way, in the infographic case study, the goal was to reduce costly mistakes that were impacting revenue—not train medical staff. Part of the initiative was to reinforce and remediate on topics that created the most billing mistakes and loss of revenue, which was done through training. The initiative also included fixing software errors and modifying standard operating procedures for checking in patients. Multiple actions—and multiple departments—were involved in working toward the same goal.

Curriculum, campaign, or product

This is more about understanding the definitions of microlearning “campaigns” and “products” in the context of curriculum for learning leadership, especially in an effort to ensure that their team members have equal comprehension.

The concept of curriculum has not changed: It still means a group of learning materials related to a specialized topic. Our instance is new-hire onboarding for salespeople. A curriculum can be created using a single type of learning product, such as eLearning, or it can be made up of multiple learning materials. For example, eLearning, podcasts, infographics, videos, and webinars. Any of these materials can be microlearning products as well.

When it comes to microlearning campaigns and products, the campaign should be seen as the item(s) associated to the curriculum. As I wrote in another article, “Microlearning is not typically a single product, but a series of interrelated products called a campaign.” Let me elaborate more on that statement.

Analysis of a campaign

A campaign establishes a goal; products within the campaign have outcomes. A campaign is formed based on a departmental KPI or organizational goal.

Sticking with our sales example, the L&D department would work with HR or sales leads (or both) to identify measures from the curriculum that can indicate confidence and capability as related to retention.

If microlearning is determined to be a method for building new sales hires’ confidence and capability, the proposed microlearning campaign will need to define a goal, and each product within the campaign will have an outcome that helps to address that goal. The type of product, such as eLearning or blog, is determined by creating an outcome.

For example, part of increasing retention is building the confidence of the new hire to both know how to perform the tasks of a salesperson and to demonstrate competency in performing those tasks (goal). Based on data and other analytical tactics, specific skills, attitudes, and behaviors would be identified as contributing to lack of confidence and inability to demonstrate capable performance. Things like active listening, handling conflict, managing objections, and negotiating are all skills. However, those skills are shaped by learned behaviors and individual attitudes and beliefs (outcomes).

Now, if you think that having one microlearning product per topic listed above is going to help meet the goal, you are missing the purpose and potential of microlearning toward driving performance. Remember: Microlearning is about developing skills, behaviors, and attitudes over time and with repetition and varying methods of engagement with the content. So you can, and often will, have multiple products with the same outcome.

Figure 2 shows an example of alignment: Campaigns and products fit into a larger curriculum related to performance goals. These goals were defined in relationship to a departmental KPI; that KPI, in turn, is aligned to an organizational goal.

• Can a campaign also be the entire curriculum? Yes, it’s possible.
• Can putting together several campaigns count as the curriculum? Again, it’s an option.
• Can a single product be a campaign? In rare cases, yes, but this is not the norm for the type of goals we have been discussing.

Frankly, most performance-based goals that would use microlearning would need several campaigns whether as the curriculum or part of a broader curriculum.

Figure 2

Infographics as Job Aids: Design for Showing, Not Knowing provides an example of a microlearning campaign and its related products.

Where do we go next?

In this article, I have established a systematic take on goal development and alignment to the L&D arm of an organization for performance-driven training. We then refocused the definitions of “goal” and “initiative” to ensure that learning leaders can clarify usage of these terms when talking about performance-based needs with stakeholders. Lastly, we addressed the use of microlearning campaigns and products within training curriculums.

In my next article, we’ll discuss the process of mapping a microlearning campaign—its products, evaluative measures, and implementation plan—with an explanation of how it all aligns to an organizational KPI.

The post Behind The Scenes: The Making of Microlearning Campaigns appeared first on Learning Guild.