How to Increase Employee Engagement Using Microlearning

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Roku 3, the premier streaming device on the market
Runner up gets this tiny tabasco sauce, in line with our micro theme
And the 2nd runner up gets rights to the Knicks draft pick

Hi everyone, my name is Alex Khurgin, I’m the Director of Learning @ Grovo. You can visit us at the expo at booth 1341. My background is in philosophy and educational testing. Please follow me on twitter under the handle @LearninKhurgin, from which I will tweet a brilliant nugget about learning after I spend a couple hours ruminating on it after this session. Want that first learning tweet to be perfect.

At Grovo I help implement what we call a learner-first training method into our online training platform. Our mission at Grovo is to deliver the best performance results in the shortest time,

One of our goals has been to design a learning platform that teaches everything the modern company needs from salesforce to slack to pm to design thinking and everything in between, and a big part of doing that is microlearning.

So in the spirit of microlearning, I’d like you folks to turn to the person next to you (or one volunteer from each table) to take the next 30 seconds to teach them something, or train them to do something

Who learned something they think will stick with them for a really long time?
by virtue of the fact that I’ve asked you to do something a bit unusual, your affective context has been stimulated, you’re paying attention, you’re engaged
on the trainer side, you’re forced to condense information down; a lot of you handled it adequately
we just exchanged 50 nuggets of information; some pretty good and varied learning happening at once

So, some of you folks have just had your first experience of microlearning, at least in terms of being aware that you’re engaging in microlearning. I’d like to tell you a story about my first experience with microlearning.

when we first started at Grovo in 2010, we were creating videos that taught people digital and soft skills, and these were often between 3 and 5 minutes long. Then one day in early 2012, Facebook changed their privacy settings and I remember people were really freaking out; the change they implemented made it possible for the public to see all of your past posts throughout your entire time on Facebook unless you expressly opted out
,;; I’d overheard someone on our content team explaining the change to a colleague, and it took about 30 seconds. So I thought, let’s make a 30 second video. Made it that day, and threw it up on youtube to get some quick data

After a couple of days, we saw the view count was at 15,000 -- one of our most popular videos to date; no marketing. People found it organically. Here’s what it was:

Read the YouTube comments. We all know that YouTube commenters are the best beta testers for learning initiatives

People both liked the video, and when we checked the analytics, people were sticking around. If you check the analytics on any video, you’ll see a dropoff rate; likewise with learning content; now if it’s mandatory, the dropoff might not be in the actual completion in the video, but in the attention that is being paid. People will simply zone out.

When we took a closer look, we saw a perfect correlation between the length of a lesson and whether learners would stick around until the end. There it was.

found better engagement with learning content and completion rates, and the actual retention of information as measured by assessments was higher; we found the sweet spot was 30-90 seconds long, and that’s what our library of content is now

Incidentally, I want to show you something

top search results
disheartening; my heart sank
am I willing to watch a video that will take me 20 times longer to get through than the task it’s describing; imagine asking a colleague how to embed a youtube video into powerpoint and them proceeding to talk for 5 minutes straight

Appointment viewing

People use Google in a performance context, but then don’t get performance support. Google is fast at somethings, for quick info, but for teaching you something, it can be pretty slow. Taking time to sift through materials.

So that’s we’re going to focus on today in this presentation. We’ll talk about the huge cultural shift that makes microlearning necessary, then some of the key benefits of microlearning, and finally how to create it for your own organization.

Microlearning is a relatively new discipline; I’ve seen references that it’s only been around as a term since around 2002, and as a general field of study since maybe the 70s. But microlearning has probably always existed, you know it’s something that goes on continuously in our lives. It’s just that it hasn’t been formalized until now.

Now the reason we focus on microlearning is...
Everyone should be doing micro learning. It’s not an approach; it’s a requirement for a learning program. If you’re trying to teach or train any size group of people, with disparate motivations, and aptitudes, and preferences, etc. a microlearning approach should be your baseline on which to build other learning strategies, techniques, etc. This perspective is an acknowledgement of the limitations of human attention, engagement, motivation, things like that. Our goal is for everyone to shift to a microlearning baseline. Not looking to monopolize it.

Learning through short, digestible, well-planned units is not about squeezing an entire 8-hour classroom experience into a minute. It’s about finding application points – what do people really need to know to do their jobs – and approaching these needs, one at a time.

This is the way people should be learning. It’s the most systematic. And if you want to encourage or facilitate deep attention, then you make it easy to go seamlessly from one micro unit to the next.

Include overview slide; Just want to give you a little overview to frame the conversation
the mission of microlearning: to reduce cost, etc.
harness the power of intelligently organized short bits of content to “small, standalone, useful and accessible content.”
we have limitations as human beings; and microlearning is the first step to serving everyone in your organization because it systematically eliminates disadvantages that certain learners have; barriers to performance; these might be a lack of focus, a lack of time, a lack of accessibility, a lack of understanding, even a lack of willingness by the highest performers to sit through training on topics they feel they have already mastered; with micro learning you have more flexibility in building advanced and personalized development plans for high performers, because you’re allowing them to test out of or choose not to view the content they feel most comfortable with; can’t really do that with 30 minute sessions that have a mix of some introductory content some advanced content

A lot of materials on this topic at the booth. Also doing a webinar on Thursday at 1 PM EST with Training Magazine called Teach Your Learners to Fish: How Holistic Learning Makes Performance Gains Stick. This is kind of the next level of microlearning.

Microlearning helps us face head on two of the biggest challenges a lot of organizations are experiencing

These are that;
Let’s dive more deeply into each challenge; to give you more context about the landscape we’re working in; you’re all a part of it, but here’s a zoomed out view of the challenges we’re facing in 2015
I want to show you two clips, one from 1967, the other more recent
a youtube clip for me now is appointment viewing

Let’s start with the cultural change

Starting out with a quick demonstration, I’d like to show you a side by side clip
One from The Good the Bad and the Ugly

So, here’s the thing about this clip and the reason I showed it. In total, this scene lasts 5 minutes.

In the 1960’s movie industry, it was common knowledge that an audience required something like 20 seconds to recognize and digest an image; later that figure dropped to more like 2 or 3 seconds according to a study from Cornell.

The shootout scenes of today are a lot shorter in total, and the individual shots are a lot shorter as well.

You can chalk this up to the individual preference of some filmmakers, certainly there are still many around today who favor long establishing shots. But increasingly these artists are becoming relics as the culture changes.

Let’s talk about attention--because the way we pay attention has changed. And several studies have attempted to capture this shift.

For example, whereas in 1998, the average attention span was clocked at 12 minutes, we were down to 5 minutes in 2008, and we’re no doubt even lower today.

Yet another study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, measuring something slightly different -- the short-term visual memory of humans (specifically children) -- which was down to 8 seconds by 2013.

When the media reports on this, they love citing the classic statistic that the average attention span of goldfish is a whole second higher, about 9 seconds.

Now, clearly, if you sat down to pay attention to something, you could probably do it, and for a whole lot longer than a few seconds. The issue this is capturing is more about distractibility, and how easy and likely it is that our attention gets diverted from one thing to another.

And that’s happening more and more as the culture moves forward.

◦Highly distractible/lower attention spans because products are getting really good at grabbing your attention, with headlines that are response tested until you find the one that will get the most clicks UPWORTHY and other media orgs, to notifications that come in just when you're most tempted to look

Pay attention; apt metaphor

Training is broken because training can’t keep up with 21st century realities.

Left side

Today, the average enterprise has to train people on 508 cloud applications. These are overly burdensome platforms that require a lot of administration, even if the platforms are easy to use, when you start collecting them, do become burdensome. Not to mention the training platforms themselves are out of date from UX perspect.

(In-house content creation teams are under-resourced.)

Fragmented content – inconsistent look and feel, quality, accuracy, usefulness, etc.

Part of what makes content so fragmented is how quickly technology evolves. Very hard to create content that can keep up with digital product cycles. Odds are that this week some core tool your company . Has your content changed to support it? Probably not, because it’s very hard to do without a dedicated partner.

At the same time, learners have it rough too.
Skills half-life; marketers; deloitte; skills will be obsolete; no longer will be competent
At the same time, things that don’t have the right look and feel
I can’t watch a youtube video right now without making an appointment, if you sent me a comedy video, if I can’t create time for a 5 minute video, hard to expect me to sit through
Little support for retention and application

What do we do? Up to us

====

(Anything that makes technology more challenging for the administrator is on the left side of this column. Any problem that learners bring to the table are on the right.)

Other challenges to trainers and learners alike in the 21st century:
Media consumption
The (changing) way people access information
On-demand
Flashy, high production value needed for attention
Devices everywhere, BYOD

Leading to 2 hours of lost productivity every day, and a $1.3 trillion economic loss every year.3 (We had these stats in the deck originally fyi)

So before we get too far into setting up the challenges, I’d like to know how much you think ineffective training is costing us
Ok, well let’s do the math

So what we have is we’re pouring billions into L&D

So on a scaled
Effective training would be able to address skills gaps continuously and across the organization

10 mill to skills gaps – digital skills gap, what that is
(have a webinar around this...
Explain the skills gap quickly
Due to people who are currently using digital technology to work, computer or smart device
So just from the lack of skills..
At the same time, we have a huge problem with disengaged employees, which you can attribute in part to this skills gap.

And you can tell the story that someone starts at your organization, they don’t have sufficient support to close their skills gaps, they start to feel that, and they get disengaged, and then those people who get disengaged, they leave – because they no longer believe in what they’re doing or in the company, then turnover – they leave or they get forced out
2 mill to disenganged
1.5 mil to employees leaving

And this is a vicious cycle

Losing money at every stage

Now this problem only gets worse

Businesses have found that their organization’s collective digital skills gaps are bleeding money. Businesses lose $10 million per employee per year in lost productivity because employees have inadequate skills to work productively and efficiently in today’s digitally-demanding environments, Employees, who find their skills are lacking, often become frustrated and disengaged at work, costing employers another $2 million per employee. That frequently leads to employee turnover, which costs businesses another $1.5 million to replace employees. Moreover, because workers’ skills have a half life of as few as 2.5 years, this vicious cycle continues. Even new employees suffer a digital skills gap, become disengaged and either leave or must be replaced.

And you’re losing money at every stage!

As for engagement and retention, the other two concerns, I’d like to tell a little story. Now this might not be airtight, but there’s good correlation here. $10 million due to digital skills gap (there are others), another $2 million to disengagement, then another $1.5 million to turnover. Losing money at every step.
So opportunity now for L&D to be seen as more strategic, more imperative to business success.
Saying you’re too busy to train is like saying you’re too hungry to eat; it’s the thing that won’t make you hungry, the thing that won’t make you busy

This problem only worsens as millennial workers increasingly join the modern workforce.

Right now, you’re losing money at each stage of the life cycle once somebody is AT your organization. But soon, you’re going to be losing it even BEFORE that. They’re never going to joining your company to begin with, and it’s going to cost you more and more to recruit people. Organizations are going to have to give higher salaries to people in order to attract them after the sacrifice of not having a good learning program.

It’s kind of like a built-in negative perk that you have to compensate for.

This year millennials will become the single largest contingent in the US workforce. According to Deloitte, by 2020, millennials will represent almost one-half of the US workforce, and by 2030 they will be ¾ of the US workforce. Pand we see from plenty of sources that millennials really care about state-of-the-art technology is important in deciding if they wanted to take a job. And they have very specific desires and work attitudes, including wanting to bring their own devices to work, and be able to learn anywhere, anytime.
So opportunity now, if you look at it all in total, with our issues around skills gaps, engagement, turnover, for L&D to be seen as more strategic, more imperative to business success.

I saw recently Ben Horowitz...
“Millennials want to work for organizations that foster innovative thinking, and will develop their skills as leaders ….” - Deloitte.

This is happening because training is broken. We live in a world where 90% of skills gained through training are lost in one year…

Only about 15%, Brinkherhoff

We all know that training is broken. 90% of new skills are lost within a year, only 15% is successfully applied, and 9/10 workers feel uncomfortable with the technology they use every day.

Next slides

So frankly training has not kept up

Evidence suggests: MICROLEARNING is better for LEARNERS because it solves the problem of dwindling attention spans + rapidly changing technology

Microlearning is better for ENGAGEMENT
- There’s already a trend toward MICROMEDIA (Twitter, Vine, Tumblr, etc) and microlearning is a natural extension
- It’s tailored around participants’ schedules -- doesn’t require travel or interruption of normal work activities, so it’s great for on the go learning (waiting for a bus or sitting in traffic even)
- Microlearning combats learner boredom and disengagement because it offers quick viewing and comprehension: bite size sessions trim out the fat, leaving ONLY the key facts and relevant information

It’s better for LEARNING & RETENTION
Bite-size methodology we say it makes learning “sticky,”
You know the limitations of short-term memory are significant -- and it’s really easy to overload a learner. Studies have shown that the amount of information held in STM can be expanded by chunking content, (combining small units into larger, more meaningful ones) and we’ll talk about how later on. But - -
Microlearning is the very BEST way to minimize the learner’s cognitive load and burden on working memory.
And as we mentioned, there’s this big retention problem with training, yet microlearning yields an average of 4-5 learned items taken from a series

Microlearning being effective in aggregate; people ask what can you learn in 60 seconds?; it's not about each 60 second video, it's about all of them together, gradually building up knowledge, lessening cognitive load; you get to macrolearning.

Glenn Freye talking about how Jackson Browne wrote songs (Dr. my eyes)

And, evidence shows MICROLEARNING is also better for TRAINERS because it solves the problem of the high cost of production, slow reaction time, and the overall poor return on investment common with traditional training methods.

MIcrolearning is EASIER, FASTER & CHEAPER to produce
Ray Jimenez talks a lot about this and has demonstrated that trainers can actually cut development costs by 50%, while increasing the speed of development by 300%. How can this be? Microlearning:
for one, Slashes production costs because it’s MODULAR (everything is chunked), meaning it can easily be assembled and managed in a CMS (easier to swap things out for revisions, updates, etc)
It’s FASTER to design, execute, render, upload, etc
And it gives you liberty to experiment with and create HIGH PRODUCTION VALUE (without worrying that you have to do the whole thing over). We’ll going to go into more detail about production value in a moment. In the meantime…

-- we have a parallel trend of increasingly good production value in media. With the ubiquity of HD, streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.),"best-ever" shows (Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, The Wire, etc.), high-subscription YouTube Channels (e.g. Epic Rap Battles, Machinima, etc.) and so on, people expect content to LOOK GOOD and be entertaining (because it's too easy to switch to something else). Not to mention amateurs armed with DSLR cameras are now producing high quality, professional-looking content from their own living rooms. The bar is set high -- and people can’t look past crap / poor production value anymore. People expect HIGH production value -- yes, even from training. Microlearning solves for that because it

IT’S “JUST IN TIME”
Meaning it comes at the time of need, at the point when a trainee actually needs the information
Or, when they’re going to be the most receptive
Microlearning is better for learner performance and application because it's short enough to be delivered at the point of need. It’s not just a part of the training program, it can be used as a performance aid.

Now the reason it works really well as part of a just-in-time initiative or as a performance aid is that microlearning is short enough that it doesn’t take you out of the performance context for too long
Also it needs to be short because that's the only way it's going to get implemented into performance. If you need immediate on the job training, you can't interrupt the job for long

Microlearning is TRACKABLE & ASSESSABLE
You know it’s really important that your tools include appropriate assessments to evaluate whether the learning process has been successful or not. Microlearning lends itself to this perfectly.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) can track participation, engagement, and feedback so you can create data-driven learning.
Training in short bursts allows you to pilot short lessons, gather feedback, iterate, and plan the next training slice.
Easily tracked and measurable in terms of results, because everything is so granular

Now that we know why it’s important, let’s take a look at how we can create it for our own organizations

On Grovo, lessons divided into learning tracks

it’s good for people to be exposed to all of these different titles; to see the scope of what they’re learning

Here’s an example from HBO Go of different intellectual perspectives being used to give a holistic view of Game of Thrones. You see there’s a video extra about the making of the dothraki language, one that explains the different houses, there’s also a map, and so forth. And these extras change depending on what episode you’re viewing. As you watch these videos, you get a much better sense of the show as a whole; you get a more intimate, almost immersive understanding of it

All of this content is well organized, almost immediately updated, and loaded quickly.

We’ll be talking a lot about how Grovo achieves these aims as we move through this presentation, but I’d like to call out a real world example of how this sort of thing is already being done in the media.

ESPN.com does version of what we’ll call “digital” immersion –during the World Cup for example, or most recently the SuperBowl: for every game or team you watch online, you can find content related to every perspective of the game you might be interested in: individual game highlights, commentary, interviews, fan reactions, etc.

Headline: make it short

Vine videos (people ask how short is too short)

Microlearning can be SHORT. No, really short. Because if you need immediate, on-the-job training, you can't interrupt the job for long. And if the training runs too long, the learner can’t stay focused. How short are we talking? Potentially, only a few seconds: SHOW SAMPLE VIDS
Did you learn something there? I did. And we learned it in (14, 6, 9 TKTK etc) seconds. THIS is microlearning.

No one’s gonna win the nobel prize for this

⁃ micro learning could be a single image; implicit learning objectives built in; avoid having your car look like that; this is the objective; pay to park; pretty good, a little tutorial built in with the hand holding the coin and the down arrow, pay to park gives you an idea of the objective
next time you’re asked to do an instructional design project, just submit one perfect sign; see what the stakeholders think; ok we’re not yet at that point; still going to be producing content in traditional formats, just a lot shorter

Are there any questions about micro learning in practice; anybody iffy on this

In addition to being a better way to learn and a more efficient way for trainers to train, microlearning also holds enormous promise for the role that L&D has in an organization. This is one of the things we’re most excited about.

If you adopt a microlearning philosophy as the basis of your training program, here’s how you can use it to make that learning program not just something that works and produces results, but something that parlays those results into a decisive role in setting strategy.

Right now L&D not always seen as business partners
e.g. huge budgets but first thing to get cut when time is tough
Why? Ben Horowitz: saying you’re too busy to train is like saying you’re too hungry to eat
and yet, beholden to ROI. Not trusted as imperative

To break through, L&D must seek alignment - align learning strategy with business strategy
refresh learning program to match quarterly goals and priorities for org, etc. microlearning finally makes this possible

So here’s what’s possible when microlearning forms the backbone of your learning program.

Align and Refresh
First, as we’ve covered, it’s quick, easy, and cheap to create your training content as new needs arise. What this means is that with microlearning, you can refresh your training program as often as you do your business strategy. You can refresh training to reflect what’s going on in the business.

- Say that every quarter, someone has a new tool they’re relying on.
- Or a new goal that they need support for.
- Or a new level in their department that they’re trying to get to.
You can create training for it. You can support all learning needs as things change.

Make small, targeted improvements
When your training is aligned with what’s going on in the business, you can judge how well it’s working based on smaller business outcomes than you could before.

Here is where you test and invest

It’s like pixel size in an image: when there are more, smaller units, the image is in greater focus and you can judge it on finer details than when there are fewer bigger ones. Microlearning allows you to focus your learning program more finely.

The kind of testing you’ll do with your learning program will be small-scale and programmatic. You’re gathering continuous feedback.
- Testing new technologies
- New approaches for different types of learners
- Different types of realistic practice
Each of these can be personalized due to the granularity of microlearning. Can be made exact because you’re gathering continuous feedback.

All learning needs
onboard, train, develop, support, comply
microlearning because 5 uses cases are happening continuously and in concert, and no one thing can take up much time to either create or administer or to consume or learn

Finally, microlearning enables you to fulfill all of your learning use cases simultaneously because nothing takes too much time to create, deliver, consume, or measure. Onboarding, training, development, support, compliance.

What do these abilities add up to?

At the same time, you’re

You’ll know your program is a utility when you can meet all 5 moments of learning need (reference Thalheimer’s amendment) – (no google results?? – Lenny)
When people are learning how to do something for the first time (New);
When people are expanding the breadth and depth of what they have learned (More)
When they need to act upon what they have learned, which includes planning what they will do, remembering what they may have forgotten, or adapting their performance to a unique situation (Apply)
When problems arise, or things break or don’t work the way they were intended (Solve)
When people need to learn a new way of doing something, which requires them to change skills that are deeply ingrained in their performance practices (Change)

What happens is that learning becomes a part of everything that happens in the business.

First of all, the learning program is aligned very closely with business strategy and business outcomes. When that’s the case, everyone buys into it. Everyone can feel it working on a daily basis, as part of the experience of fulfilling your company’s business goals. No one questions the legitimacy of the exercise and learners don’t roll their eyes at training. It’s a part of the business’s daily M.O.

It also aligns learners to the company, because the culture is communicated better through a more involved training program. Take onboarding, for example. A great onboarding experience makes new hires feel a part of the organization. They feel like they can empathize more and have more visibility into the way things are done.

Judging more holistically
When everyone buys into the legitimacy of the program, and when results are viewed on a focused (and experiential) level, you no longer have to prove the ROI of the learning program. There are too many variables in such a multifaceted program to test that easily. Instead, you’ll answer whether your learning program is working the way you can tell if an employee is working.
- Are they hitting goals
- Are they contributing to the strategy they were expected to contribute to?
- If not, how can we get them up to speed?

You can feel it working

Learning as utility
when aligned, L&D becomes lifeblood of org, part of everything
ecosystem/utility
you can feel it working, so no longer have to obsess about ROI

In sum, learning will be a utility, and L&D will be the manager of this utility. Think about how people need water: they need it on-demand, in different applications. You don’t judge plumbing based on whether it’s providing you x amount of value, you judge it on how frictionlessly it’s delivering this necessary service.

Your learning program will be seen the same way. With a program based in microlearning, L&D will be the keepers of a utility that’s essential to business function.

Format
Microlearning is consumable via devices such as mobile phones, tablet, or laptop computer. Effective formats include: emails, online posts, short multimedia videos, short chat sessions, games, quizzes, business simulations and case studies, podcasts, blog posts, articles, and slideshows. IT’S PERFECT FOR MOBILE (ie fyi, “M” Learning HAS to be Micro): the screen is small so the load needs to be light, therefore mobile is the lowest common denominator (so always just produce for mobile and you’re better off).

Granular
Microlearning uses SMALL and GRANULAR units
You want to aim for small and granular units. So what does this mean:
“Size Doesn’t Matter if it’s meaningful”: so something really short, as long as its intelligible works
Each units self-explanatory, self-contained, and autonomous; making sense to the trainee…yet still acting as one part of a larger whole
It needs to be purposeful and objective-oriented: based on a detected or experienced need, has to fit into a learning objective that the learner cares about

Let’s talk through an EXAMPLE: if the overall objective is “The trainee shall be able to create a website using HTML” this obviously requires a wide variety of behavior. The trainee has to know how to format text elements, how to insert pictures into web pages, how to establish links between the pages and so on. A granular unit would cover how to create an HTML tag for bold text information -- a much smaller learning objective that contributes to the whole.

Holistic
Giving learners a 360 degree view of a topic. So this is something that we’ve done entire presentations on but the basic idea is that for any performance or outcome you’re looking for, a lot more goes into it than training usually addresses. Take for instance the presentation I’m giving now – there are many contexts in which I’m operating right now
there’s an intellectual context – what I know about what I’m saying, the actual content of the presentation
there’s a physical context – I’m speaking using a headset, on a laptop; honestly there’s a learning curve with this headset, also hand motions and speaking in a certain tone of voice is also physical
there’s a social context – I’m speaking with you great folks and I want to try to tap into what you care about, and the challenges you’re facing, and so forth
there’s even something you might call a mission context – I want to get this overarching idea of 21st century learning across; that’s my mission; for people to see how big of a problem we’re facing, and to start adapting how we do things so that learning works in each of your organizations and L&D gets a seat at the table

Practice
Scenarios (Grovo)
Simulation
Projects
Experiential learning

SUMMARY:
Microlearning has consistently achieved higher rates of improvement in performance, value, and return on investment over traditional methods of training, and on top of that, the bite-size approach is significantly faster, easier, and cheaper to produce. The benefits to both the LEARNER and TRAINER are numerous, including offering science-backed methods to shrink the digital skills gap in today’s workplace. And finally, to cater to the needs of future workers, training needs to be:
Micro / compact
Highly engaging
of a high production value
Rapidly Produced
Address the needs of all future learners (Millennials, those with a Skills Gap, different cultures, etc)
All of which can be accomplished with Microlearning.

Thank you everyone for coming.

If you’d like to chat about anything we went over today, very happy to do that. You can find this and other related resources, including a white paper, at our website.

Thanks again!

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