Speaker 1: In a world where people are checking their smartphones nine times every hour, it's no surprise that there's a new trend in learning and that's microlearning, so shorter digital bites of learning. In this video, we're going to discuss what it is, what are the benefits, what are some areas where it just doesn't work well, and some tips for how you can use it in your own study. I'm Janice and you're watching Sharp Cookie. On this channel, I cover all topics related to learning, studying, and test taking. If this is something that you're interested in, please subscribe. I post new videos every week. All right, let's get started on microlearning. Microlearning deals with relatively small learning units and short-term learning activities, so it's like little bite-sized learning. A little snippet here, a little snippet there. I'm going to get into a lot of examples of this because I'm sure that you've already done some type of microlearning. It refers to learning that takes anywhere from a few seconds to about 15 minutes in time. Many of us have done long, in-depth courses online of some type or another. Microlearning would be the opposite of this. It's not super in-depth. You're not sitting and listening to hour-long modules. It's very, very short little snippets. My favorite example of microlearning is the popular website and app Khan Academy. Almost all my students have used Khan Academy. I've used Khan Academy when I want to brush up on certain areas of math that I haven't done in a while. Here's why I love it. All the videos are about 10 minutes or less in time. My resistance is lowered because I'm like, okay, well I only have to do 10 minutes. And you know what happens? Sometimes I get hooked in and then all of a sudden I've been doing Khan Academy for an hour. Another super great example of microlearning, many of us have used this, is Duolingo for learning languages. Languages are an amazing thing to learn with microlearning because they're not very in-depth a lot of times. You just need a lot of memorization and repetition and memorization and repetition over and over and over and over. You don't need to get a deep understanding, especially not for a long time. For a long time, all you're doing is a lot of memorizing of words. So Duolingo is a great example of microlearning and how you can actually learn a language through these little microbytes on an app. Learning on social media, that's also microlearning. So going on Reddit, reading a couple answers to a question, watching a YouTube video like you're doing right now, looking at some sort of infographic on Instagram or Pinterest. Other examples are when we get emails where we read a few paragraphs and learn something. Maybe we use something like Quizlet where for a few minutes we run through some flashcards. Perhaps we're doing an online quiz, we answer some questions, learn a few things from the quiz. Micro games are also part of this. All of these are just general examples of how we use microlearning all the time. Now that I went through my examples, I want to know have you tried microlearning? And I'm guessing the answer is yes. So let me know in the comments which of these types of microlearning have you used and which do you find most beneficial? So for me personally, I find Khan Academy awesome. I find Quizlet amazing. These are resources that I've recommended to my students a lot and I know they work. So I'm curious to know which resources have helped you. Now in the second half of this video, I'm going to cover the benefits of microlearning and a little bit of the science behind why it works. And then we're going to cover of course the drawbacks because really as cool as it would be to be able to learn everything through microlearning, it's just not possible. There's a lot of areas of learning where just learning in little snippets, five minutes here or there, is not going to work. So we're going to cover when to use it and when not to use it. Okay, so first the benefits and why it works. One of the top benefits is just that you can do it anywhere. A lot of these microlearning things are on apps or on websites you can access on your smartphone. So you can learn wherever you are, whenever you are. Maybe you're waiting in line at the supermarket and you do two minutes of quizzes or two minutes of flashcards. It's really, really easy and accessible from everywhere. So that's a huge, huge benefit. Okay, nobody's going to do an hour-long course while they're waiting in line or if they have like a few minutes between classes. This is where microlearning really shines. Bite-sized courses tend to be a lot more focused because the whole goal is to give people little bite-sized pieces of information. There isn't a lot of extra stuff and a lot of extra clutter. So the research has shown that this increases retention, meaning our memory of what we learn the next day and the day after. We actually remember more because we're not cluttered with 20 other facts that we actually don't need. The learning is very, very focused on just the things that we need to hear. Now here's a cool bit that matches with the science. So I've talked a lot in my videos about working memory and short-term memory. So when we're learning, there's only so much new stuff we can take in and then our brain runs out and we need to take a break and then repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. So typically we can take in about seven chunks of new information at a time which is perfect for microlearning. It's like you take in a couple little bits and then you take a break and then you review it later the next day. So microlearning and actually how our brain learns and remembers go really well together. So anytime you're doing a lot of just straight memorization, microlearning is excellent. And the last benefit of microlearning is the research has shown that learners actually are more engaged in comparison to more of the traditional long-form learning methods. So because they're just short and people can do them anywhere when they want, at their leisure, when they feel like it, learners just tend to be more engaged and tuned in and they're not zoning out as much again because it's so short. So it's easy to stay focused for just 10 minutes. Now for as great as microlearning is and all its benefits, it's not designed to be used for every single learning situation. And as you're watching this video, you're probably picking up on oh I don't think it would work for me for this class. And here's the thing, it doesn't. When you're doing something in depth where it's very complex and you have to get very deep, microlearning is not going to work because you need an extended period of time to really focus and go deeper. I'll give you an example. When we were talking about a foreign language, microlearning is great for learning some vocab words to help you with conversational French or learning all the parts of the body in French. Perfect. But if I want to go in depth and study like French literature for example, doing it in little three minute bites or on flash cards is not going to work. I'm not going to get that really deep in-depth understanding that I want. So if a topic is very complex, it's not particularly helpful to put it in a microlearning format. There's also many areas of learning where there aren't black and white answers, where our analytical skills are really put to the test and our logic and our thinking things through and there's not necessarily a right or a wrong answer. In this case, again, microlearning probably isn't the best vehicle. Why? Because it requires more in-depth thinking than what you could do with a quick, you know, what is the French word for pottery. I mean that works for microlearning, but if I want to go more in-depth and analyze something and especially that gray area where there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer, like I said, you want to go more into these long-form either classroom or long-form content ways of giving that information. All right, that's all I have for today. Those are all the things about microlearning. If you enjoyed this video and you want me to make more videos on this topic, please give it a thumbs up. It really helps the algorithm, helps other people find my videos, and just shows your general appreciation for the channel and the research I put into the topics. If you're interested in any virtual tutoring, you can email me at hellosharpcookie at gmail.com. Thank you so much. I have tons of other videos, so please subscribe and check out some of those. All right, thank you so much. I'm Janice. Bye.