Title: Why produce micro content?
Course: Producing Micro Content in a Team (Digivisio 2030) > Section: What is Micro Content?

In a world where lifelong learning is promoted, and people are expected to develop their skills, knowledge, and competence, often alongside a busy work life, the ability to engage with learning material quickly and efficiently is essential to maintain the pace of change that we are told and feel exists in the modern workplace.

Micro content holds significant promise for revolutionising education and making it more accessible to everyone as a way to present information. It is well-suited to the fast-paced demands of modern working life as the bite-sized content is easy to consume and remember.

Accessibility

Micro learning breaks down concepts and information into focused pieces of micro content which can be uploaded easily onto different digital platforms. For many, this is a more convenient form of learning as it can be accessed anytime, anywhere, on various devices. Micro content can be consumed in just a ‘spare few minutes’. In this way, it is adaptable to individual schedules and preferences. It caters nicely to ‘Just-in-Time Learning’, allowing people to access relevant information to solve immediate problems and address specific needs in their personal or professional lives.

Personalisation

Micro learning provides the opportunity to build variability into the learning path. With different combinations of micro content, you can provide personalised learning paths for your learners, allowing them the possibility to build on their prior knowledge (if they have any) or explore things that interest them at their own pace.

Engagement

Micro content is centred on engagement. It promotes the utilisation of multimedia formats like videos, infographics, quizzes and interactive simulations to make learning more engaging and interactive.

Effectiveness

One of the core benefits of micro content is supporting effective knowledge retention. Consuming and recalling information at progressively spaced intervals helps counteract the forgetting curve and reinforce memory retention! As micro content is, well, micro, it makes memorisation easier. Small chunks allow learners to find information targeted to what they need to know now without overloading them with unnecessary information.

Creating micro content can also be more cost-effective than producing traditional lengthy courses or materials, requiring less development time and resources. It is also highly scalable. You can learn more about the different production possibilities in Part 3 of this material.

Read more

Díaz Redondo, Rebeca P., et al. "Integrating micro-learning content in traditional e-learning platforms." Multimedia Tools and Applications 80.2 (2021): 3121-3151.

Samala, Agariadne Dwinggo, et al. "Microlearning: Transforming Education with Bite-Sized Learning on the Go--Insights and Applications." International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies 17.21 (2023).