Micro-learning miniblog series

We had the amazing opportunity to sit down with Gavin Nelson from MicroGo and have a chat about his journey with microlearning. What we learned inspired us to share the important discussion points from our conversation as bite-sized blog entries, which we’ll be sharing on the Pico Creative blog. Stay tuned over the next few weeks to read the full conversation.

Previously we learned about why microlearning is trending and how Gavin himself became a convert – read the entry here if you haven’t already!

With other methods it’s either you’ve done it or you haven’t. And if you haven’t done it, you’ve got to be pushed, and it’s a real stick approach. So I think the gamification was a great carrot approach. I’d build in some prizes like vouchers for coffees and merchandise from the company, so it was very low cost, and people could choose to win a prize by playing a game, and you earn stars that you can then spend. Not everyone did that, but then the other feature was the leader board, so for those that are competitive you can see where you are against your peers, and the ones to earn the most points would appear at the top. Some people love that as well, so it has a few levers you can pull as a learning professional.

I think I was very lucky to work with award-winning company EdApp, and now I’m a partner with them and enjoying helping companies implement their system, which is unique being mobile-first. We didn’t expect people to do it out of hours, at home, but if people chose to actually learn on their way home, or on their lunch break or that type of thing, by choice, they could take that – and most people did. This particular software is customised so that you can see any design pretty much on any device screen. If you’re 58% in on your mobile and you pick up the laptop, it’ll pick up from where you left off. With traditional learning, you get a tap on your shoulder from the boss saying, “Hey Gavin, you haven’t finished your training yet”. But now it’s self-managed, because you get a notification on your phone and you can see where you’re up to, and finish your own journey. And we know people respond well to being self-managed.