Body building for mosquitoes – Microlearning and focus

Gnat (pronounced "nat"): A family of insects that bite and annoy humans, including flies and mosquitoes.

Every industry has jargon. And every industry has fashions.

In the clothing industry, fashions come and go quickly. Some are silly, like sagging - wearing jeans that are so big that they sag to show your underpants. I once walked behind a teenage boy dressed like that. I kept thinking how uncomfortable it must be to walk with the crotch of your jeans between your knees.

Fashion with a corporate face

To talk of fashions in the corporate world sounds trivial and unimportant. So we use words with greater gravitas, like “trends”. (And “best practice”, but that’s a topic for another day).

Like any industry, Learning and Development (L&D) has trends and fashions. One of the favoured trends in L&D at the moment is “microlearning”.

You can learn in 10 minutes …

Microlearning is the idea of learning in small doses. Each unit is a small piece of training content that the learner can consume in a few minutes, at any time and with little effort.

I’ve seen a number of LinkedIn posts recently that promote micro-learning as the best way to deliver content. And I had to challenge this.

Or can you?

The problem with microlearning is not that it is wrong. The problem is that it is not always right.

Microlearning doesn’t work when you need a holistic view of the subject. Or when you need to be able to connect all the parts into a bigger picture.

I used the example of learning to drive. To get your learner’s licence in South Africa, you need to learn the rules of the road. That is great for microlearning. Imagine electronic flash cards for each road sign. You can learn about stop signs while you wait for the kettle to boil.

But to get your driver’s licence, you must learn to drive. That includes steering, changing gears, speeding up, slowing down, changing lanes, and parking. Plus using indicators and checking your mirrors at the same time. You can’t learn that in 10 minutes here and there.

Another example is medicine. Doctors can use micro-learning to memorize medical terms. But nobody would recommend it as the right way to study pathology.

What about programming?

I believe microlearning is wrong for learning to program, or learning a new language or framework. You need to connect lots of components into a bigger picture, and understand the underlying principles.

It certainly doesn’t work for me. When I want to learn a new technology, I need to invest solid chunks of time. To pick up where I left off in my previous learning session takes more time than a microlearning unit.

Maybe I’m biased. So Charles and I spent a few minutes brain-storming ideas for JavaScript microlearning. A TikTok video on the substring function? But what’s the point? You will already need to know JavaScript syntax, and data types, and understand the concept of string manipulation.

And if you already know that, then you don’t want a TikTok video. Because you expect JavaScript to have such a function. So you just check the docs for the exact syntax.

Turn your mosquito into a body builder

You’ve heard the expression: “the attention span of a gnat” (i.e. very short). You may also have heard claims that our average attention span is getting shorter, or that it is only 8 seconds.

That’s not true. Psychologists who study this say there is no such thing as an average attention span. Our attention span depends on the demands of the task.

The real problem is that our brains respond to distractions. And we have so many distractions. Email, social media, WhatsApp messages, even the washing machine cycle.

I’ve learned that I don’t need to be distracted. What I need is discipline. When I struggle to focus, I set my alarm for 45 minutes as a commitment to the task in front of me. And the more I do that, the easier it gets to focus for longer periods. It’s like body building for my brain. (I’ve forced this technique on my sister, and it worked.)

You have a choice. You can choose to let in every distraction, and be like the mosquito. Or you can train your brain to focus.

I do wonder if microlearning helps us to focus, or if it has the opposite effect. Will it condition us to believe we can learn anything in 10 minutes?

I’d love to hear your comments. Is microlearning the “in thing” at your company? How do you maintain focus? Share your thoughts.