The dos and don’ts of microlearning with Craig McFadyen, Co-founder and Director of LearningPlanet

Julia: Welcome to L&D in 20, your go-to resource for all things workplace learning, brought to you by Go1. I'm your host, Julia Nieradka, Manager of Customer Success here at Go1. Today on the show, I'm very excited to be joined by Craig McFadyen, Co-founder and Director at Learning Planet, a company that helps improve your productivity and confidence in bite-sized micro-learning videos.

Craig is an industry expert with more than 35 years working in and around the training industry with multiple startup training companies. Learning Planet has been one of our longest standing content partners with Go1 and one of our top content providers.

Craig, welcome to the show. In today's deep dive segment, we're going to discuss the dos and don'ts of micro learning.

So Craig, first question for you right off the bat. Briefly, and just to level set for our listeners, what is the background to micro learning?

Craig: Hi Jules. Yeah, I think, um, I'll just start by saying it's fantastic to be on here and as you said, we've got seven years plus partnership, so really, really good pleasure to be here.

I think, for us the last 13 years of micro learning development, part of that deep dive was learning the history of the background, where it came from, and believe it or not, everybody's saying micro learning these days, like it's a new thing. It was developed in the sixties at a learning and education conference in Europe and just had nowhere to go. It was a perfect solution that had no problem.

But before that, we had, of course the ebbing house forgetting curve of 1885. And this is where he proved through, um, test and repeat, that if we have short and informative bursts of information on repeated stages of time, then it helps with the retention of that knowledge versus the once and done long form or classroom training that we were used to.

So really, if you, if you think about it. The micro learning factor has been around since the 1800s, but now it's just everybody's talking about it because it's the perfect time for micro learning to fit into the problems in the market, which is time and budget, so it fits all of those learning needs.

Julia: I love that idea of it being a solution, waiting for the right problem. I think that's a really interesting way to frame it. Do you think that the evolution of micro learning has caught up with the complexity of how people learn today?

Craig: Oh, definitely. I mean, if we look at the, the convergence of all of the factors in the learning market that's happened. If you think about, um, since ‘28 to 2012, the global financial crisis has caused the shortage of staff time. We've got people running three of them jobs. They don't have the time they had anymore. Budgets were restricted and taken off and not given back. We put all of these factors together and now we've got this thing called micro learning, which is just in time.

And if you put that together with the fact that we've literally got the first generation in history that have come through, completely connected. I mean, my son, 22 years old, can't believe a world where there is no internet. What you used to have life with, no internet or computers. To him, that just doesn't even make sense.

So when we lay all of these factors together and we've got the internet, shortage of time, shortage of budget, fully connected, and then the success of YouTube and video that's come through on all of that, all of these factors come together and is just the perfect convergence. And that really, in my belief, is why micro learning has exploded the way it has and finally found its home in the market.

Julia: Absolutely. I think we both together saw that happen during the, with the adoption of microlearning, during the pandemic and during that whole period, as you've said. So I think especially with the shift, um, to hybrid and remote working, it's even helped accelerate it at a, at a even greater pace.

So that's been really interesting to watch and that really leads perfectly into the next question I had for you, Craig, which was, how do you Craig, define micro learning? We want to hear it from the micro learning king himself.

Craig: Well, thank you. I think, uh, it, it, it's very, um, misunderstood in the marketplace by a lot of people.

And I think just in my experience, with the background of having long form classroom training and consulting, and then the last 13 years in micro learning. For me, the best way to design and define micro learning is short, standalone burst of information that adjust in time and makes sense on their own.

For example, it would be like, for example, if I said to you, here's a chapter, here's a random chapter out of a book, with no context, I want you to read it and, and make sense of it. You, you'd be like that. That just doesn't make sense. So that's what people do when they turn micro-learning, is they take the long form training content and then they just cover it up into shorter pieces and then just hand it out.

So there we go. We've done micro-learning and that without a start, middle and an end. And the whole context within itself, it doesn't make sense. That's not micro learning, that's just, cutting up long form content, and of course it can be video, it can be document, infographics, slide deck can be, it doesn't just have to be e-learning or video.

It can be any format that standalone start to end and make sense on its own in that burst.

Julia: Yeah. It would almost be like if you were a movie director and you shot a movie and then decided to turn it into a TV show and cut it up into episodes, it might not really, resonate, it might not make sense. So I really like that, Craig.

And you have mentioned to me previously, immediate application and how important that is to the feedback loop, where learners get to use what they've learned. Is that the secret sauce in your opinion?

Craig: It's the application, the immediate application, but also the immediate results that I think makes that so successful as I can watch one of our one minute videos on my phone before I'm about to go into a coaching session, just to remind myself, walk straight into that meeting, sit down, apply those skills, and see the immediate results and feedback. That's what makes that work and makes people come back time and time again. And we just see that success in the statistics of, you know, 84% of most 10-minute videos are completed, the retention levels go through the roof. The feedback, 74% of staff interviewed say they would undertake more training if it was micro learning because they just want something there and then at their fingertips, at their desktop or on their phone, as opposed to, I've got a plan for a whole day or two or three days away.

So that's why I think it's successful.

Julia: That's awesome, Craig. And I guess that leads into our next question, which is about what the do's and don'ts are of micro learning. And in your opinion, what makes micro learning successful and what are the common mistakes that can lead to failure?

Craig: Some of the most common ones are what we've already covered, which is, I'm just going to take long form, cut it up, throw it at people and say, there we go.

I think making sure that the delivery fits the audience. And that they are getting the learning in their learning style that they want. We know there isn't one size fits all, so putting everybody in a classroom or just giving everybody a video or, uh, infographic to read may or may not work. So there's all of that background to it as well.

But I think it's also just the availability and the fact that if we, if we make libraries available to people, they're more likely to use it. So the, the shift that I've seen, and I'm gonna show my age now, I've seen the development of laser disc, I've seen the development of computer-based training. I've seen the launch of e-learning, I've seen the growth of e-learning, and now we're into micro learning and video.

For me, the, the thing is, it's the availability. We can make this available to people and give them this option, and because it's micro learning, they need less time. They're gonna be more likely to use it. And so what I've seen is I've seen explosion of the off the shelf libraries, which is again, our partnership, why it's been so successful.

I think I've seen through the rollout of the rapid deployment LMS platforms, everybody became an e-learning expert overnight. Um, and if you can make fancy looking, sexy looking, graphic e-learning, then you're an e-learning designer, not a trainer. And so, I think we, we are seeing a shift in the market now where organizations are realizing in-house development has its place.

And that's more on the complex in house product specific or process specific, not generic, um, microlearning topics like we produce. Because I've seen that on average it takes two and a half to three years for an organization to get round to creating soft skills. Why keep your staff waiting that long when you can take a library off Go1, be training immediately tomorrow and free your development teams up to then focus on specific in-house development that they're going get more bang for their, so we do a lot of top and tailing as well with your content.

Julia: Craig? If an organization already has some resources developed, but they'd like to add one or two extra pieces of content, micro learning works really well to add to the start or the end or the middle of a learning module to beef it up a little bit.

Craig: There's so many applications. We've got people using it for pre-induction, so you hire a staff member, they can't start for three or four weeks 'cause they've gotta give notice.

You can fire some videos out for them to watch before they turn up. They, they turn up excited because you've already given them training and haven't even started their job yet. They walk into an induction program and you are using the content, frees up the training to then focus more one-on-one for people.

Um, team meetings. Great way to start a Monday morning. Great. Here's a focus this week. Play a one minute video. And again, you know, we've had people say, don't be silly, you can't learn anything in one minute. Well, because of the training skills that we build in, we can teach you one technique or one topic in one minute, and so you can use that on a Monday morning as an icebreaker to say, how are we going to use these skills this week? Or, this is an issue we may be facing this week. Here's some ideas to overcome it.

We've got team leaders and trainers who have said to us, using an immediate library, save them up to four hours a week, and then having to do one-on-one coaching. Go away, find the information, come back. Put it together. Now they can just say, great, here's some topics for you to go and watch, meet with me again next week. See how you get on.

So there's some really, really good, broad applications that it can be used for.

Julia: So, Craig, could you provide examples, stories, or case studies that illustrate this for the listeners?

Craig: I think it's just, and again, you've got to be careful with statistics where you get them from, because everybody's statistics will compete with themselves, but I think it is just some of the things that we've talked about, about just the speed of development, half the cost, speed up development by 300%.

Um, rather than creating the long forming house content, now you can put together snapshot bite sizes. We liken our, our library to a box of Lego where you can take the pieces and build whatever you want in whatever format, whatever length that suits you.

And I think this is the thing is rather than the one size fits all solution that we used to, here's a course, put everybody through it. 80% may or may not get something out of it. We can now write down the granular level, create training and training pathways that absolutely suit our staff and business needs day in, day out.

Julia: Have you ever seen any particularly surprising or unconventional uses of micro learning over the years that's worked particularly well?

Craig: Yeah. I think that some of the biggest things I think are. Um, being able to give staff, like some of the organizations we know, have said to staff, just have it open in the background and it's there.

So, especially, for example, in contact centers or call centers where you may have certain situations to deal with, they can have this information right there at their fingertips. Put somebody on hold for 30 seconds or a minute, grab that information or that technique that they need, and then come straight back to the customer and apply it.

It's that level of interaction and immediacy at the fingertips as opposed to, we know you're having trouble with difficult customers, we've got a course coming in three months on that. If you just hold fire, you'll be okay. So there's those, there's in-house competitions, um, where people, you know, will use the training and the amount of library covered or the amount of topics covered.

To have a leaderboard and lead to points or giveaways or cinema tickets or whatever the company wants to do. So then you're only limited by your own creativity really, in terms of how you use it. But I think the thing is, it will, it will help the staff retention staff who are trained and support supported will stay with an organization longer.

No doubt about that. So, yeah.

Julia: I love that. I love the example about the call centre. I've been dying to ask you this question, Craig, what are some of the common misconceptions or misunderstandings about microlearning?

Craig: I think some of the, the biggest things we, we've kind of covered already, and that's, I can just take my existing content, cut it up, throw it out, and call it micro learning.

Nobody externally can do a good a job as our internal development team. That's another one. I think believing shorter won't work. I, the amount of arguments I've had with HR who say to me, you can't, one minute video can't possibly work. You can't teach me anything in that. And I'll play them the video and then we'll have a chat afterwards and they'll say, okay, I get it.

And, and to prove that point, we've actually got a video called What is Micro Learning that is one minute long. So you get to the end of that video and it says, so you now understand what microlearning is, and by the way, we've just done this in a minute, so you now understand the concept and just had it apply in one minute.

So it's just things like that. It's understanding and I think it's changing that mindset, especially old school mindset of longer, it better cramming people in a classroom or giving them thousands of slides to look through. It's better and they will get it. They won't. The learning styles change. The generational need has changed and we need to be moving with the market.

Julia: That's brilliant. A one minute video on micro learning, about micro learning, just to kind of close that whole point off. I hope whoever thought of that got a raise. That's fantastic.

Craig: Yeah, it's just part of our six inch humour inhouse.

Julia: Sure. Oh my goodness. So if there's someone out there, Craig, that is maybe working with some legacy content and listening to this discussion today, what would your advice be for them on converting that into what we would call a true micro learning?

Craig: I think the first point is how do I make that completely standalone in its own context? So can you take a piece of that content, sit down, go through it, whether it's reading, watching, listening, whatever it is. But can I see that one segment on its own, out of context, and does it make sense, and can I apply?

If you can test that with some friends, cut up some content, and then put it in front of colleagues or, or people and brutally ask them for the feedback. If there's any confusion or I didn't understand it doesn't make sense or it doesn't close the loop, then there's your answer right there.

Julia: That's perfect.

And where should L&D leaders encourage their teams to access micro learning and why?

Craig: One of the biggest arguments we actually have is people say, well, why should I use your stuff when I've got YouTube? Great question and we've made a video on that as well. And the reason being is you have no control over YouTube.

You have no control over the quality of the content. You don’t know if it's right or not. You have no control over the ads, you have no control what pops up next in that person's feed. So there's, I think we listed seven different issues in that, in that video alone, as to why you used curated, professional library content over just searching Google or YouTube. Because you can open yourself up to a lot of issues.

Julia: Now let's get into our next segment, AI at Work, where we dive into how you're using AI at work to work smarter, not harder, and how you're helping your teams to do the same.

So Craig, everyone is worried about being replaced with AI. What is your advice for L&D leaders who are trying to safeguard their future career and help their employees do the same, and what will differentiate talent from AI and stop them from being replaced?

Craig: I truly believe the difference between AI and what we are doing is going to be the human factor. It's that, that touch point that we have when we're dealing with a human being. It's the empathy, it's the level of service, it's the input, it's the care factor that genuinely comes across. Give you an example. I was training contact centre staff 25 years ago in customer service, and I was saying to the back then, unless you are adding value at every transaction, one day you are going to be replaced with a piece of software that can just do what you are transactionally doing today. And people laughed at me and said, oh, that will never happen. Fast forward 25 years, everyone's worried about the job, so, if it's, if you are purely being a robot and doing transactional jobs, then yes, you will be replaced.

But if you are adding value, if you are empathetic, if you are helping in sales and service and adding value at every touch point that you can, then no, I think you're safe. And I think you all stand out hidden shoulders.

Julia: Moving to our Future Ready segment where we talk about the future of work and how L&D  leaders can prepare themselves and their teams. Tell us about what your take is on the future of work, Craig, and what should L&D leaders be preparing for? What is the trend that you're noticing?

Craig: I get to speak to learning experts globally, um, countries all around the world. Day in, day out, month in, month out. And so what that allows us to do is have a helicopter view of what's going on in the industry and globally. And for me, and I think we touched on it earlier, one of the biggest changes that we're seeing, or one of the shifts that we're seeing is this 180 degree turn in the market of coming back to off the shelf content.

When the, when the platforms came out, everybody got it in house. Everybody became an e-learning expert and turned the people like all of us, and said, we don't need you anymore. Thanks. We've got this. And we just smiled and said, sure, off we go. Here we are five, 10 years later. They're now realizing that they've got development teams, but it's taking too long.

It's costing too much, and they're not getting enough bang for their back. And so over the last, at least seven or eight years, we are seeing more and more organizations looking for off the shelf content providers. We are looking for faster results, cheaper budgets, that again, we can then take that pressure off our in-house development teams and have them focus on in-house specific, shorter, more detailed projects as opposed to the generic day-to-day stuff that.

You know it's produced out there already. Why reinvent the wheel? Come to people like go one, get that off the shelf content, be training tomorrow. Take the pressure off your internal teams and they'll thank you for it.

Julia: Thank you, Craig. Well, it's been so much fun having you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for joining us.

Craig: Thank you. It's been great to be here.

Julia: Thanks for tuning into the show. I'm your host, Julia Nieradka, and that wraps up another episode of L&D in 20. To continue the conversation, send me a message on LinkedIn through the link in the show notes. Your comments will help to inform future episodes, and who knows, maybe we'll even feature some of your questions on the next episode.

We'll catch you on the next one. Until then, keep learning.