More and more companies are opting for social learning and microlearning in order to improve the learning experience for their employees. But do these learning methods make it possible to learn better?
Businesses must now evolve rapidly, renew themselves and adapt to their competitive environment or risk stagnating. This means having an agile organization and employees who progress throughout their careers.
To remain competitive, these businesses are increasingly turning to social learning (or Social learning) and the microlearning in order to provide exciting and relevant learning experiences. These forward-thinking organizations want to stimulate collaborative learning and its application in the workflow in order to improve organizational performance and the effectiveness of training and development activities.
Social learning for better learning
Each company has a large amount of informal knowledge, so the objective is to formalize it and reward those who work at it. This formalization stimulates the commitment of employees and thus encourages greater sharing of knowledge which, when centralized, will form an important repository available to employees, old and new. In particular, this will make it possible to capitalize on the knowledge and skills acquired for people already in office, but also to facilitate the integration of newcomers.
Effective and engaging learning experiences contribute greatly to the success of an organization's learning strategy and in particular allow employees to learn better.
Here are some figures on the effectiveness of a strategy of Social learning.
- Social learning approaches have a return on investment ratio of 75:1 compared to formal online training;
- 82% of businesses using social learning tools want to increase their use in the future;
- Following the introduction of social learning, the course completion rate increased to 85% on HBX, an online education initiative of the Harvard Business School;
- Semiconductor manufacturer AMD says its switch to social learning has saved more than $250,000 per year in online training production costs.
Social learning can double the impact of learning in a number of ways, including on the integration of new employees. Indeed, we know that it can take up to two years before an employee is fully productive, while others may need 6 months to feel comfortable in their new position.
Using microlearning to improve learning and increase retention
Microlearning responds in particular to a problem of limited learners' attention. Indeed, according to the 90/20/8 rule, people are totally alert and attentive during the first 8 minutes of a training course.
As a reminder, microlearning breaks down learning topics to make them easier to understand. The modules last an average of 5 to 10 minutes maximum. This learning technique allows access to the learner's long-term memory, which makes microlearning interesting in the context of learning technical skills.
Microlearning is based on cognitive science with the use of spaced repetition to allow learners to learn better and more effectively.
In short, microlearning aims to enable learners to quickly understand, assimilate and apply knowledge on a well-defined subject.
Social learning and microlearning are rooted as training methods that therefore make it possible to learn better.
