Welcome to my first official blog post for the Provincial Instructor Diploma Program (PIDP). For the next 7-8 weeks, I will be blogging for the course Foundationx of Adult Education!
Today’s questions are: What are some of the trends in your field of expertise? What is changing? What is new? What implications will these trends have for the way you will instruct over the coming years? What will you need to do to prepare for such trends?
Well, my field is eLearning, and in eLearning there is no end of new trends, cropping up pretty much on a daily basis. Some of the more recent eLearning-related trends (Connor; Penfold) include:
- Gamification
- Flipped classroom
- Mobile learning
- Mobile apps for learning
- Virtual reality
- Content curation
The one I would like to talk about in this post is one of the “hot trends” of 2017 (so they say): microlearning. And to do so, I am going to comment briefly on the following article by , eLearning in bursts: Microlearning with social media.
According to Trowbridge, et al, “[m]icrolearning refers to any pedagogy that encourages learning in short segments“. In addition, it has “three aims: to reduce the quantity of information by organizing it into bite-size pieces, to restructure the overall process of learning and the environment in which students learn, and to motivate students to personalize their learning routines.” And while the authors do discuss the pros and cons of microlearning in general, what I found most interesting in this article was the discussion around how social media integration can enhance the use of microlearning objects for teaching and learning.
When I first read about microlearning (which has actually been around for awhile, if you look at entities like the Khan Academy and Lynda.com), I wondered how this trend reflects the current state of short attention spans, the inability to read more than 140 characters at a time, the integration of life-long learning into crammed days, etc. Trowbridge, et. al. don’t discuss these issues at length in their article, beyond to say:
Based on the cognitive load theory, the working memory can become overloaded with information and halt or slow down the process of moving information into long-term memory. By chunking information and providing frequent microlearning opportunities, learning has the potential to decrease the cognitive load and increase long-term memory of the concept or topic.
They do, however, emphasize the importance of embedding microlearning objects into a clear pedagogical context and connecting them to learning outcomes to make them effective. According to the authors, a social media environment can both provide context and the connection to learning outcomes, and provide opportunities for learners to engage with other learners (and perhaps experts in the field) around the microlearning objects contained in the environment. I did find this a bit ironic, considering that social media is also often cited (at least by me) as a symptom/cause of shorter attention spans, but I appreciated that social media environments do encourage engagement – so why not use them to engage around learning?
Finally, this article provides good basic information on what to consider when creating microlearning objects (along with a cool infographic you can download), as well as examples of microlearning in various social learning environments at Northeastern University. Theory and the practical all in one read – my kind of article!
We already embrace microlearning in my workplace, working with faculty to create learning environments containing content in a variety of mediums (text, images, audio, video) that are chunked into easily digestible pieces. While I am not sold on the use of social media environments to support microlearning at our institution (although we do support a password protected learning management system) due to privacy concerns, we keep minds open when discussing various options and scenarios with faculty. I will be keeping this article, and the examples it discusses, nearby when this next comes up for us!
References
Connor, E. (2016, July 8) 8 sensational learning trends that are revolutionizing the learning game. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/8-sensational-elearning-trends
Penfold, S. (2016, December 13) Top 10 eLearning trends to watch in 2017. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/top-10-elearning-trends-to-watch-in-2017
eLearning in bursts: Microlearning with social media. Retrived from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/4/learning-in-bursts-microlearning-with-social-media
This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.Icons by the Noun Project.
Emily Schudel, Instructional Designer 