How to create a Microlearning Course - Only 5 simple steps

Microlearning is like a jetpack.

It’s small. Easy to carry, but has massive strength to propel someone to the great heights of learning.

Ask a corporate trainer or an elearning instructor, and you’ll know that calling microlearning a jetpack is actually an understatement. It’s a rocket ship.

Because with microlearning organizations can cut down their development cost by 50% and increase the speed of development by 300%^[1]

With such transformative energy, microlearning has immense power to drive an organization’s growth goals.

It is a key for organizations that are determined to unlock the truest potential of their employees by educating them without making it boring.

Microlearning is a lot simpler to understand if you compare it with regular things. The things that you normally do in a day-to-day life.

Like a pizza.

Do you know that cutting a pizza into triangular pieces is the most efficient way of consuming it?

Because it ensures that all the pieces are of the same size and the toppings are evenly distributed. Moreover, it’s way easier to hold a triangular piece than any other shape.

Microlearning is about cutting down your learning program into small, digestible content pieces. So that it’s convenient for the learners, and efficient because every piece has a substantial amount of information for the learner to take away.

For example, a 2-hour-long video on harassment at the workplace can be broken down into 12 videos of 10 mins each. Each of these videos can cover separate areas of harassment with a quiz at the end to review their learnings.

Harassment is a crucial workplace norm that every employee should know. Breaking it into shorter videos with interactive elements & quizzes improves the chances of everyone paying attention, and remembering the content.

Before we make headway to the core of this blog, here’s something that you should know.

Microlearning doesn’t have to be a video necessarily. It is just an example.

A microlearning course can be a Twitter thread, Instagram Reels, TikTok videos or even infographics. Whatever works for you and your audience is what matters the most.

Creating a microlearning course is easy if you follow a structure. Find out how you can create that structure by following this simple 5-step formula -

1. Define the objective & outcome

Without an objective for your microlearning course, you run into the risk of losing consistency.

As microlearning thrives on the idea of breaking big things into smaller, digestible chunks, it’s easy to wander around unless you have a clear objective and takeaway in your mind.

To settle on the objective, think about what you want the learners to take away from the course. It’s alright if you have multiple ideas in your mind. Write them down, and then eliminate the ones that are too basic.

If you find ideas that are similar, you can merge them together to come up with a single topic that has more in-depth content.

For example, if one of your objectives sounds like, “To make the learners comfortable with social media analytics” and the other one is, “To help the learners run social media campaigns.”

In such a case you can merge the above two objectives into one - “To make the learners confident about running and analyzing social media campaigns end-to-end.”

This way you can keep the content comprehensive, and also provide greater value to the learners.

The outcome of a microlearning course is about the effect the training is going to have on the employees. Like your objective, keep your outcome simple and singular. This will again keep the content streamlined, and your team will have a clear focus on what you’re targeting.

Going by the same example, your outcome can be like - Every learner will feel confident about writing, replying, and tracking the social media posts performance after completing this course.

2. Know the learners

Your learners are like the target audience for launching a new product in the market.

Unless you know them very well, your course will have a poor reception among the learners. Besides, it will not take much time to realize that the course was made without keeping their needs in mind.

This can have a snowballing effect - A single course can discourage employees from participating in future courses and training sessions.

From a trainer’s point of view, knowing your learner also comes with advantages. The biggest one is that it gives you a chance to re-think your objectives & outcomes. And, correct it if the learners do not seem to be the right fit for the course.

To know about the learners, you can use these points -

- Demography: Gender, age, income, location

- Job role: What do they do in their daily work? What are their KPIs and responsibilities?

- Expectations: What are they expecting to learn from this course? What do they expect as an outcome of the course?

- Technology: How tech-savvy are the learners? Do they have familiarity with the technology that you’re planning to include in this course?

3. Brainstorm ideas

This is the right time to brainstorm topic ideas. Because you know the objective, outcome and who the learner is.

The topic of your microlearning course should be simple, so avoid jargon or any other word that can confuse the learner.

To arrive at your course topic, take a similar approach you took while deciding the objective of the course. Jot down everything that comes to mind, and then filter out the ones that are not relevant.

Let’s take a real-world example to get this through. Taking some inspiration from our last example.

You’re creating a microlearning course on social media marketing for marketers. You know that they joined the team only 6 months ago. You also know that everyone has a basic idea of social media marketing.

Objective	To make the learners confident about running and analyzing social media campaigns end-to-end
Outcome	Every learner will feel confident about writing, replying, and tracking the social media posts performance after completing this course
Learner	All of them have been working from 6 months at least, and have fair knowledge on social media marketing
Topic ideas	1) Advance Social media marketing - How to write, reply & track post performance 2) A micro course on advanced social media marketing 3) How to get the maximum returns from your social media campaigns? 4) Acing social media marketing - An advanced course 5) Finding and engaging with the right audience on social media

Coming up with new topics opens the door to experiment with different tones and words that your learners might find the most interesting.

Once you have a topic, break it down into small chunks. Analyze if each chunk has enough material to keep learning interesting. If the more meaty stuff is towards the end of the course, the learners might lose interest at the introduction itself.

Your best strategy here would be to do a deep research on the topic and keep the learning content interesting.

Which brings us to the next point of creating a microlearning course.

4. Keep the material interesting

One of the biggest boons of microlearning is that you don’t have to stick to a single medium to create a course.

It can be a mix of slides, videos, presentations, screen recordings, as long as it’s useful and keeps the learners engaged.

You can also take advantage of the knowledge and experience of senior employees by including their tweets or LinkedIn posts on the topic. This will be excellent for giving more confidence to the learners, as they will realize they’re learning from experienced folks.

Another common and popular tactic is including a “test yourself” or “check your knowledge” type quiz at the end of each section of the course. With every right answer, the learners will get a brownie point which they can redeem at the end of the course for a surprise gift.

5. Use a friendly tone

Microlearning is poles apart from classroom learning in school.

On that note, if the tone of your microlearning course is like school teachers, you risk losing out their attention.

Using a more active voice and friendly tone will improve the attention span of the learners. It will also make them feel inclusive about the learning.

If the course has complicated concepts or ideas, then use examples. Approach it using a simple language. The other area where you have to be watchful about your tone is when you include quiz or questions within the course.

You can slip here and take an authoritative tone. Beware. Keep it conversational without overdoing it.

Here’s an example of formal, conversational and too conversational tone -

Formal: Now select the right options for the questions

Conversational: Great job so far! How about testing your memory with some simple questions?

Too conversational: Awesome work! It’s time to take this awesomeness to the next level by answering a few questions. Let’s roll.

Conversational tone keeps the flow balanced. It might make the content a bit lengthy, but as long as it helps, it’s worth it.

Microlearning is an impactful form of training in the workplace.

Over the years, it will gain more popularity, and become the go-to tool for creating courses. This is the perfect time for corporate L & D trainers to set the pillars for microlearning at their workplace. Following the above 5-step formula is a simple and effective way of getting started.

As you get more grasp on the process, you can make iterations or try out experiments to take your microlearning course creation course to the next level.

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