Microlearning in China

Relying on the pervasive smartphones, microlearning isplaying an increasingly vital role in the corporate learning ecosystem.Corporate microlearning has made a great leap forward in China since 2015. Asan emergent learning strategy for efficient skill enhancement, knowledgeharvesting, and sharing, microlearning fits particularly well with front-linestaff training in today’s fast-changing business world. Microlearning’spotential to deliver instant performance impact and efficiency optimizationacross industries is just starting to evolve and will quickly accelerate in thenext three to five years. The following results from a 2016 national surveycapture today’s microlearning practices in Chinese companies and makesuggestions for how business firms should move forward.

Background

Companies across the nation are steadily adopting microlearning,making it an increasingly important tool for driving employee learning. Ourannual study examined microlearning data collected between November andDecember 2016 from 296 firms. The survey covered 19 industries, among whichmanufacturing (19.5%), healthcare and social security (18.5%), finance (11.8%),and education (10.4%) are more involved. Large companies with over 1,000employees are the majority of our sample (61.3%). Firms with 200 – 999 employeesand those with fewer than 200 employees had almost equal shares, 19.2% and19.5% respectively. A majority (60.9%) of respondents were from training orhuman resource departments.

Awareness of microlearning

Almost half (46.5%) of the respondents are very familiarwith microlearning. Slightly more (48.1%) have heard of microlearning but haveno experience (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Nearly 95% of respondents knew about microlearning

However, the survey data reveal wide variations inpractitioners’ awareness of “what microlearning is.” Based on word-frequencystatistics, we find that respondents mainly interpret the concept from theperspectives of “micro” and “learning,” such as short (“no longer than 10minutes”), focused content (“single knowledge point/specific skill or problem”),“easy-to-understand and practical,” “courses or learning resources,” etc. (Figure2).

Figure 2: Respondents’ awareness of “what microlearning is” (Note: Inthese bar charts, the X axis shows the response count)

The top five choices believed to describe microlearning(Figure 3), primarily online, are:

1. Videos of a single knowledge point (82.2%)
2. Demo videos of a particular operation (73.4%)
3. Videos under 10 minutes (73.4%)
4. Bite-sized learning contents or resources(72.1%)
5. Short training courses (70.0%)

There are also certain respondents considering offlinealternatives, such as “short training courses” (70%), “flipped classroom orblended learning projects” (26.6%), and “offline experience sharing” (21.5%).More than half agreed that mobile learning platforms are a manifestation of microlearning.

Figure 3: Microlearning manifestations

Current practice

Companies’ speed of adoption of microlearning isaccelerating. Close to 70% of firms have engaged in microlearning, although atdifferent stages (Figure 4): “have explored microlearning in a systematic way”(17.5%), “have developed some microlearning, but not systematized” (26.6%), and“just started developing microlearning” (23.9%). About one-fifth (19.2%) of thecompanies already had a plan and were prepared to develop microlearning. Only12.8% had no plan.

Figure 4: Current microlearning practice

Internal trainers and subject matter experts (SMEs) stillrepresented the main force of corporate microlearning development at 53.2%(Figure 5). Meanwhile, user-generated content (UGC) emerged rapidly (47.8%) andbusiness units, not training departments, gradually dominated (34.3%).Meanwhile, corporate university or training departments are still playing arelatively important role in microlearning (29.3%). Outsourcing or hiringexternal consulting firms was the least popular option (12.1%).

Figure 5: Who are the developers?

An outstanding trend we find is the rise of UGC as thesecond leading source of corporate microlearning. Microlearning content is short,highly focused on a specific work task or scenario, but in huge demand—thus itis not feasible to rely on a limited number of professionals (such as trainersor SMEs) to develop. Corporate university and training departments, as they arenot familiar with the real story of the operational front lines, are notefficient enough to lead the development of microlearning. Therefore, theoptimal framework of microlearning development would be led by business units,with front-line employees’ participation, and boosted by UGC.

In terms of presentation format (Figure 6), the dominantoptions were WeChat sharing(68.4%), eLearning (53.2%), and mobile learning (48.5%). This result showed thatcorporate microlearning mainly leveraged the power of social media and mobileInternet technologies, which contributed to the rapid spread and wideapplication in China.

Notably, “short courses delivered by trainers” and“knowledge sharing” appeared to be two other important manifestations (43.8%and 42.4% respectively). This indicated that some companies have been utilizingflipped classroom or other means to explore microlearning in the workplace. Jobaid tools (22.6%) and experts’ experience sharing (21.5%) were less preferredmeans.

Figure 6: Microlearning manifestations

Feedback from this national survey described four major usecases of corporate microlearning (Figure 7):

1. Newemployees’ training (63.3%)
2. Front-lineemployees’ operational skills training (60.9%)
3. Peerexperience sharing (55.6%)
4. Up-to-date product knowledge updates andbusiness, or hot topics (53.9%)

Microlearning could be applied independently or in conjunction with other trainingsessions and/or informal learning approaches. Currently, there is still greatroom for growth and further development in areas of “blended learning” (40.1%),“communicating with and serving clients or external partners” (25.9%), “jobaids, tools, and performance support” (23.9%), and “leadership developmentproject” (16.8%).

Figure 7: Use cases of corporate microlearning

Of the participating companies, 57.6% had designed anddeveloped microlearning (Figure 8). Among those, 11.1% had rich experience,while 46.5% were just at their initial trials. The other 42.4% of respondentshadn’t touched microlearning development.

Figure 8: Well over half of thecompanies had development experience

The top three reasons preventing firms from attempting microlearning(Figure 9) are:

1. It’s not a “must” and not urgent (38.4%)
2. Too busy with job duties, no time to develop microlearningcontent (36.7%)
3. Willing to do, but don’t know how to do it whenlacking guidance (30.3%)

Although the technology barriers to developing microlearninghave been greatly reduced compared to traditional training courses, developersstill need to learn some new skills and spend extra time. It is a challengingtask that requires technical skills (23.9% of respondents indicated “almostfinished, but too ugly to present,” and 14.8% admitted that they “gave upbecause of too many difficulties along the development process”). We believe insufficientsupport and incentive from top management are the key factors of laggedimplementation. Only 5.4% didn’t plan to use microlearning due to their unfavorableview of it.

Figure 9: Why respondents didn’t engagein microlearning

Most reported difficulties were at the development and designstages (Figure 10).

Figure 10: Major obstacles inimplementing microlearning

The five key success factors of microlearning (Figure 11)were to:

1. Understandthe learning needs of target employees (75.8%)
2. Extractthe most valuable content in concentrated format (71.4%)
3. Knowwhich kinds of content are appropriate for microlearning (61.6%)
4. Makelearning content interesting, innovative, and enjoyable (56.6%)
5. Choose suitable media to present the learningcontent (54.2%)

Topic selection, content curation, instructional design, andimplementation are four critical aspects of microlearning success. In addition,“personalized learning platform” (38.4%) and “systematic learning framework”(38.0%) are very important. Different from the traditional face-to-facetraining, respondents believed that an instructor’s capability was the leastimportant factor in microlearning (only 21.9%).

Figure 11: Key success factors of microlearning

Values and prospectof microlearning

The most attractive benefits of microlearning (Figure 12)were that it is:

1. Rapidto spread (80.5%)
2. Shortand concise (72.4%)
3. Simpleand focused content (65.0%)
4. Convenientfor mobile learning (64.0%)
5. Flexible(58.9%)

Figure 12: Benefits of microlearning

Based on semantic analysis of the feedback from anopen-ended question, we summarized the following recommendations, focused onseven aspects:

1. Companies should accelerate the promotion andawareness program in order to facilitate whole participation from employees
2. Microlearning is not the silver bullet; thusright positioning can maximize the benefits of microlearning and foster itseffective implementation
3. Establishing the management system of microlearning,careful planning, developing, and evaluating microlearning are on the agenda
4. Micro but not fragmentary; microlearning needsto be systematically integrated in order to fully unleash its value
5. It’s a must to provide timely and strong supportor hands-on help for microlearning design and development, including thenecessary software tools
6. Only when aligned with the practical needs ofbusiness units can microlearning enhance employees’ performance and gain widersupport throughout the firm
7. Companies should cultivate a favorable climatefor microlearning by establishing corresponding assessment and incentiveschemes

Conclusion

Microlearningis steadily progressing in China. Companies at the forefront of this trend areusing their capabilities to equip front-line employees with operational skillsand to share experiences and serve customers. The application scenarios of microlearningwill continue to be more specialized and diversified, embedded in the businessprocesses and impacting in more depth. It is foreseeable that performancesupport will become the next “Blue Sea” of microlearning applications.Employees are motivated to design and develop microlearning content, and enjoythe super-rich and instant learning resources generated by one another. Once itobtains solid management support from companies and business leaders, microlearningis about to revolutionize the landscape of corporate learning in the nearfuture with a whole new mindset.