What Happens If There Is a Chip On Your Windshield? Cases of Microlearning Impacts - Tip #158

Monitoring the impacts and contributions of Microlearning is like figuring out how fast you are falling while you are actually falling from the sky.

We can only catch glimpses of moments of impacts rather than substantive end-of-the-year “bean counter” ROI studies. I am uncomfortable about ROI because is it a buzzword and wholly different in context and issues we are trying to improve on. Moments of impact might be more valuable to Microlearning impacts. “What would happen if...?”

When we speak of impacts in the L&D world, we tend to think of ROI as an accounting of payback for expectations or process of using Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Learning Evaluation. However, in my discussions with clients, workshop participants and partners of The Club, many report more of the "Operations" of insights. They are more informal and like snapshots. They are instances of impacts and contributions rather than methodical assessments. I suspect that capturing snapshots of impacts is mostly anecdotal because of the very nature of Microlearning. Nonetheless, we learn a lot from these snapshots to guide us if we are creating some good returns of our efforts. These trends and patterns could guide us when incrementally tweaking our Microlearning approaches.

In reviewing the snapshots, watch carefully for these elements:

• Where does it happen?
• What are the drivers?
• What are the impacts?

Case # 1 Large Multi-Manufacturing Operations

"Maintenance Pills"

"What would happen if you missed your maintenance pills or medicine?"

According to a client:

"We started sending out to our teams very simple and tiny content messages; snippets. It was as simple as an update of a procedure in a section of an equipment. After a few dozen times of sending our snippets we started getting feedback that those snippets we describe as Microlearning, are actually saving team members time. The snippets raised their awareness of a potentially critical issue, if unattended, may cause damage from a loss in the yields of the equipment or even cause a downtime."

"It is like maintenance pills. It is as if we are sending daily vitamin C supplements for maintenance."

Case # 2 - Large Hospital Network

"Missed to Apply"

What would happen if you have a small chip on your windshield?

According to a client:

"Hospitals have been going through many major software upgrades due to legislations and operational needs. These changes are so frequent that calling team members to come to a classroom briefing does not work. It takes too much time to assemble and organize them, and they require a coordinated schedule. So, many of the team members don’t get the updates on time.

However, we begin to notice that when we send out Micro-Videos on these software and procedure updates, people receive them immediately. We have calculated that because of this timeliness of the Micro-Videos, we reduced certain costs that could have been due to errors and non-application of the updates.

This we call avoiding the "missed to apply" opportunities. Without the Micro-Videos, many of the tasks that nurses, doctors, technicians and others may be skipped, delayed, and applied wrongly - causing major issues in hospitals. The SKIPPING of applying new knowledge is like a chip or crack in your windshield, it could hurt you and your family if you don't take care of it while it is still small."

Conclusion

Microlearning impacts do happen most of the time when we observe the operations where the knowledge becomes part of a solution to reduce errors, lower costs, avoid risks and improve solutions. Unlike large ROI studies, Microlearning impacts are small - which is its nature.

Ray Jimenez, PhD

Vignettes Learning

"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"