Micro-Learning: Relevance for the Public Sector

With the complexities of governance increasing by the day, the public sector has felt an urgent need to adopt a more modern and innovative outlook, especially in its training and development requirements. A large number of employees, the complex nature of the governance along with lack of sufficient funds make it critical for public sector organisations to implement efficient solutions to streamline the task of effective training and development of their employees. In recent years, microlearning has proved to be a promising solution.

While there is no official definition of microlearning, all microlearning-based training has one common characteristic, namely, brevity. It is a method of delivering educational or training content in small, bite-sized pieces that can be easily consumed and retained by learners. While microlearning can take many forms, from videos to immediate feedback to formal feedback at the end of the day, short, targeted online demonstrations or tutorials are the most common. The average length of micro-learning pieces is between 4-5 minutes and represents a movement away from deep attention learning to hyper-learning.

Microlearning is based on the concept of the “forgetting curve” developed by the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. It demonstrated that when people take in large amounts of information, retention of what was learned tends to degrade over time. Big data has also played an important role in the development of microlearning. In the age of big data, human’s attention span is decreasing. The vast amount of available information creates a deficit of attention. It is thus necessary to allocate that attention efficiently. This makes microlearning important since it emphasises short learning duration.

What Are the Benefits of Microlearning?

Some of the benefits that comes with the adoption of microlearning training methods include:

• Spaced Repetition

The most important benefit of microlearning is that it helps counteract the “forgetting curve”. Since Microlearning modules are very short, they are easy to consume again and again over time thus solidifying the knowledge in one’s memory. This allows public sector employees to acquire new knowledge and skills quickly and at their own convenience, without having to take long breaks from their work.

• Large number of applications

Microlearning modules can be used for teaching single topics, for quick reference, or as part of a series of other microlearning programs. The training method can also be used to teach a range of topics, which makes it useful in the public sector where there is often a high turnover rate.

• Effective Outcomes

Microlearning helps learners understand more of any given subject, especially if it’s complicated. This is so because it breaks information down into bite-sized pieces that center around one big idea, allowing the learner to focus without distraction, and put their newfound knowledge into practice immediately.

• Learner-centred

All individuals have different capacities and preferences for learning. Microlearning gives the flexibility to design training sessions that help maximise the learning experience for each individual. Furthermore, these sessions can be delivered in many different forms, such as videos, interactive quizzes, and mobile applications. This makes it a convenient option for a wide range of learners, including those with different learning styles. Employees in the public sector may be spread across a number of different locations. The digital nature of microlearning makes training employees easy, as they can access the training courses as per their convenient time and from any location they may be at.

• Time-efficient

Micro-learning content can be consumed in short pieces, making it easy for busy government employees to fit training into their schedules. Also, since microlearning is self-paced, learners have the flexibility to progress through the content at their own convenience. It cuts down on the time needed to establish new policies and reinforce existing ones in public sector organisations.

• Cost-effective

A microlearning course is much cheaper to produce as compared to traditional long-form training. It can be delivered digitally, which reduces the cost of training materials and makes it easy to access and complete. Furthermore, microlearning is easily scalable and can be used to train large numbers of employees at once, making it a cost-effective solution for government agencies with many employees. In the era of budget cuts in the public sector, microlearning can prove to be a viable cost-effective option for professional learning and development.

Microlearning has been revolutionising employee training and development in the corporate world, but is it applicable to the public sector?

With increasing budget cuts, government agencies must maximise their returns on every pound they spend. Long-form training can be expensive as well as time-consuming. Microlearning, on the other hand, can be consumed virtually anywhere, is delivered quickly, and the results are impressive. This means less time, money, and resources spent on retraining employees in an organisation.

While learning and development functions in the government sector may seem challenging, a streamlined microlearning training process has the potential to provide valuable information to the government employees keeping them in tune with the changing needs of the public sector.

However, microlearning may not be the end all be all of learning and development, as it is sometimes portrayed. This is so because, firstly, it cannot create experts which public sector employees are often required to be. Due to the shortness of its content, microlearning does not have the capacity to delve deep into a particular subject matter.

Also, while basic concepts can be understood with microlearning, complex topics requiring advanced skills, require long-form learning. While it is not impossible it generally requires a lot more effort, defeating the entire purpose of microlearning. Thus, there is room for both forms of training in most public sector organisations. Some subject matter will be suitable for microlearning formats, particularly skills-based training, while for other topics traditional training might be more suitable. However, microlearning is an emerging model of training that can enable public sector employees gain new knowledge or skills just in time to meet their immediate needs in this fast-changing world.