How Much Is Enough

As an L&D professional, I have focused most of my energies and resources over the past few years in either curating learning courses and videos using libraries such as Lynda.com, HarvardManage Mentor and Skillsoft or by designing and creating curricula made up of short learning burst modules. With few exceptions, the majority of the modules were 5 minutes or less with a small percentage closer to the 10 minute mark.

While I still feel strongly this is the right approach……particularly for adult learners who have limited time to devote to study and usually have a specific need they are trying to solve for…….I have given much thought as to whether I am doing right by my clients by breaking down their learning into such small chunks. I realize that there is no consensus over what the length of a microlearning course should be.......and the discussion runs the gamut from as little as two minutes to as much as 20, the propensity to automatically think that smaller is better can have an impact on the learner and their ability to get what they need.

While we don’t necessarily need to go back to lengthy eLearnings (which is not to say that at times this isn't the best approach), are we not giving our learners enough credit when it comes to the desire to learn and improve and solve a problem? Everyone got jaded by the “click the next screen” design but is it not reasonable to think that a learner can devote 15 or 20 minutes to a subject without losing interest or patience?