{"id":37652,"date":"2022-02-02T15:27:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T20:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualsp.com\/blog\/macrolearning-versus-microlearning-versus-contextual-microlearning\/"},"modified":"2024-07-24T10:20:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T15:20:29","slug":"macrolearning-versus-microlearning-versus-contextual-microlearning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/macrolearning-versus-microlearning-versus-contextual-microlearning\/","title":{"rendered":"Macrolearning versus Microlearning versus Contextual Microlearning"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of our clients had\u00a0made\u00a0substantial changes in their web application\u00a0<\/strong>and was wondering how best they will\u00a0communicate those changes<\/strong>\u00a0to their\u00a0thousands of users<\/strong>\u00a0since they are all spread across the United States working from home.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The usual answer used to be to do a live training in person or through a webinar online.<\/p>\n

But does that really work? Will your users remember every step you showed them? No. They won't.<\/em><\/p>\n

My recommendation to them was to use\u00a0contextual microlearning<\/strong>\u00a0to their advantage so users can contextually experience the changes as they come across them.<\/p>\n

If you haven't seen\u00a0contextual microlearning in action\u00a0<\/strong>yet, I have incorporated some examples at the end of this short article.\u00a0Let me also briefly explain the difference\u00a0between\u00a0Macrolearning versus Microlearning versus Contextual Microlearning<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Macrolearning<\/h2>\n

This is the type of\u00a0formal learning\u00a0<\/strong>that most of us are already accustomed to. These are intended for deep learning by diving into a topic area. It's in the form of\u00a0physical or virtual classes<\/strong>\u00a0that are taught by instructors\u00a0<\/strong>or employ some type of\u00a0self learning<\/strong>\u00a0approach by the learner. As a trainee, you are expected to complete\u00a0quizzes\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0assignments\u00a0<\/strong>to demonstrate your understanding of the subject area.<\/p>\n

Will you remember every single thing you learned in class? Most of us will not. But hopefully you are able to grasp most of the main concepts and later know what to look for when you really need a specific piece of information you learned about in class.<\/p>\n

Microlearning<\/h2>\n

Microlearning has come a long way over the last couple of decades. We can\u00a0fetch an answer<\/strong>\u00a0pretty easily by\u00a0searching\u00a0<\/strong>for a topic online. For example, I want to make Nutella crescent rolls for my daughter so I search and find a 5 minutes\u00a0YouTube video\u00a0<\/strong>that I follow step by step and a few minutes later I see my daughter enjoying the best tasting Nutella rolls ever made by a dad \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Contextual Microlearning<\/h2>\n

The traditional microlearning still requires you to step away from your flow of work to search for some piece of information to find your answer. Contextual microlearning on the other hand brings the\u00a0learning to the learner<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0in context of their own environment\u00a0<\/strong>so there is\u00a0no context switching<\/strong>\u00a0involved.<\/p>\n

Contextual microlearning<\/strong>\u00a0is exactly what we\u00a0focus on at\u00a0<\/strong>VisualSP<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Examples of contextual microlearning<\/h3>\n

Contextual microlearning is best explained with visuals. No amount of words do justice to the power of contextual microlearning without just showing it in action. Having said that, here are a few examples of what contextual microlearning looks like.<\/p>\n

Salesforce<\/h4>\n


A 'reminder to call' tooltip comes up automatically when you visit an account in Salesforce that has an overdue activity for calling the client<\/em><\/p>\n

Dynamics<\/h4>\n


A walkthrough showing the navigation bar changes you've made in Dynamics 365 sales<\/em><\/p>\n

SharePoint<\/h4>\n


A short video about sharing files that comes up automatically when you visit your SharePoint document library for the first time<\/em><\/p>\n

These are the types of\u00a0contextual experiences\u00a0VisualSP<\/a>\u00a0builds for our clients<\/strong>. We truly believe that the concept of\u00a0contextual microlearning\u00a0is very powerful<\/strong>\u00a0since you are\u00a0delivering context sensitive answers<\/strong>\u00a0to your users even if\u00a0they don't know the right question to ask.

Let me know if you and your team want to see any of these or our other scenarios in action. We can\u00a0schedule a private demo<\/strong>\u00a0to show you what we have been up to with our clients around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of our clients had\u00a0made\u00a0substantial changes in their web application\u00a0and was wondering how best they will\u00a0communicate those changes\u00a0to their\u00a0thousands of users\u00a0since they are all spread across the United States working from home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7059,"featured_media":37653,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"cta":[],"class_list":["post-37652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7059"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37652"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39429,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37652\/revisions\/39429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37652"},{"taxonomy":"cta","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visualsp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cta?post=37652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}