Training is an essential part of the journey of every employee. When you get hired by a company, your first month is full of training sessions and presentations. They aim to introduce you to the company culture and policy but also teach you how to use different tools or meet your colleagues. Thanks to the global pandemic that has taken a toll on the development and evolution of many companies, most people are now working remotely.

6 microlearning rules every online training developer must follow

This means that training sessions are not offline, as they used to be, but online. Even though it might seem easier to organize online training sessions, as you do not need to book a room and ensure you have the necessary logistics, online training sessions also pose some challenges.

Catching the participants’ attention might be more complicated than offline sessions, and microlearning rules need to be followed.

Helping employees learn all the subtleties of a company’s processes and tools is difficult, and every trainer must follow a few rules. These rules might change in the case of online training, and as a developer of these, you need to be aware of some microlearning rules that will help you design and develop some of the best and most catchy online training sessions.

1. Always consider the participants’ background

Developing and designing training sessions for employees might seem easy for those who do it. You have the final outcome and goals in mind, so you design the entire learning experience according to that.

Well, even though you need to be aware of the training goals not to lose track of the objectives, you also need to know the participants. Training sessions that are built on microlearning principles aim to help employees revisit some of the learned information and retain more of it.

However, some participants might be new employees, so they need to undergo a lot of other training sessions before participating in the one you design. It is important to know the background of the participants and design and develop the training session according to it.

So, conducting surveys before starting to work on the development of the training is useful and highly recommended. It is important to be aware of the flaws and limitations of the human mind, as memorizing a lot of new information from the very first time is not the key to success.

Instead, revising the memorized information will increase its retention rate. And the participants’ background is very important, as some training sessions might be for advanced users rather than for new employees.

2. Using templates

One of the goals of online training sessions is to offer participants the knowledge they need to learn and have access to. Some training sessions could be more challenging than others, only because the information they need to retain is new and complicated. Well, one of the microlearning rules every online training developer must follow is the use of templates.

Seeing huge chunks of text in an online presentation will make the training appear boring and dull. Who wants to take part in a training session where you only see the text? So, it is important to add graphics, photos, and videos to make learning easier.

At the same time, it is important to make sure not to make your training too visual. Some information can be lost if you only aim to send it through videos or infographics. Therefore, it is important to use templates. This will help you, as a training developer, to follow an organized and logical structure, but also boost the learning process of the participants.

3. Practical applications

Another rule of microlearning is to develop different learning activities to introduce in your training. Sharing a lot of information can overload the participants. At the same time, this is not recommended as they will only retain bits of it.

And if you want your training session to fulfil its objectives and goals, you need to be careful how you develop and design it. Including practical applications where participants can use the information and knowledge they have achieved in a practical setting is important.

Maybe you can introduce a short game, case study, or other activity that encourages them to use their acquired information.

4. Constant reviews of information

Even though we would like to think that the human mind can retain and memorize lots of new pieces of information, it also has some flaws. Indeed, when participants first learn something, they retain all information.

But as time passes and they do not revisit that information, they slowly start to forget it. It is therefore important to include in your training session a review of past information they have learned.

Or, you can include some short follow-up sessions with games or videos where participants can revisit the training content. Perpetually doing this allows them to retain more information, which is exactly what you want to obtain.

5. Reuse old content

Another rule of microlearning is not to dismiss old training sessions. For sure, there is content that is still valid and actual to the new pieces of training you develop right now. This is also an effective way to reduce costs because you only repurpose old information.

You do not necessarily have to design a whole new training, but give the old one a modern approach. For example, you can add some cool transitions, videos, or graphics that better explain the information.

6. Focus on complete sub-units or tasks

One thing many developers lose from sight when they work on new training for employees is how the information is shared. If it is fragmented too much, people will not learn as efficiently as you would want. It is therefore important to focus on complete sub-units and tasks.

Fragmenting the share of information will leave people with many answers, and they will not be able to make use of the information you have already shared.

Conclusion

When designing training, you want to create the best learning experience for the people that will go through that training. And to make it as efficient as possible, you need to consider these six microlearning rules.

They will help you design the best learning experience that emphasizes the retention of the information too. Because people typically lose about 80% of the learned information in one month, designing every online training is important.