Traditional training models have no place in 2024. Hear me out.

Programs that solely rely on one-off classroom training and tedious eLearning courses don’t belong in a digital world where people are busier than ever, and artificial intelligence (AI) technology is only speeding up the pace at which we operate our lives and businesses. And, to be frank, this way of learning was never in line with the way the human brain processes and remembers information. According to Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve, in as little as 30 days, 79% of knowledge is forgotten.

This is not to say that longer training sessions don’t have their place. Engaging, in-person and hands-on training are great ways to build team relationships and excitement around a new product launch or company initiative. However, you miss the mark by not adding a knowledge reinforcement component after these sessions.

The Solution: Knowledge Reinforcement

Your employees will never remember all the material you present during an initiative’s kick-off or hours-long training session. But by “dripping” key information from these sessions over time, you can ensure your employees are retaining job-critical concepts and applying them in their daily work.

Where’s the proof this method works, you ask? Several studies, including 20 peer-reviewed clinical trials, were conducted by Price B. Kerfoot, a former professor at Harvard University, proving the effectiveness of this approach to building long-term knowledge retention and changing behavior. Kerfoot uses “spaced education” in a testing format to force medical students to recall information at intervals that they are likely to forget, pushing that information from short-term to long-term memory.

He also found that busy medical professionals enjoyed this style of learning which catered to their busy, on-the-go lifestyles and incorporated game mechanics for friendly competition and self-assessment.

In terms of real-world results, those that use microlearning see up to a 170% increase in knowledge retention as well as 90% improvement in learner engagement. The top platforms also generate actionable analytics, such as the powerful proficiency metric, which tells you what learners know and don’t know. Users see up to a 35% increase in topic proficiency throughout the course of microlearning challenges, but some see even better results. For example, medical education association American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy saw a 48% increase in proficiency from one program and software company Autodesk experienced a 64% increase in proficiency.

Similar to Dr. Kerfoot’s study, this type of learning is ideal for today’s workers who want to remain productive and prefer to learn in the flow of work. But they aren’t the only ones who prefer microlearning. Training teams find that creating content for these smaller learning modules is much simpler than the long-form material needed for learning management system (LMS) courses and eLearnings.

Creating Microlearning Content for Knowledge Reinforcement

We’ll start by working with a multiple-choice style format. Your microlearning questions should be designed to both check knowledge and build skills using real job scenarios.

To formulate knowledge-check microlearning questions, go through your LMS course, in-person or other long-form informational session. What are the key concepts that employees need to know and understand to effectively perform their roles? Base your question stem around these concepts.

Next, offer some answer choices, including, of course, the correct answer(s) and some plausible distractors — i.e., reasonable and relevant selections. As the final step, once the learner has answered the question, provide immediate answer feedback and a detailed explanation. Add some rich media such as images or videos to the experience to make it more engaging.

To create a scenario-based question, pull another important topic covered during training and paint a picture of a situation where the learner needs to apply that information.

Here’s an example of a scenario-based question in a microlearning and knowledge reinforcement platform. This question was delivered on the heels of a new sales methodology training. The learner first receives the question, selects their answer choices and is given immediate feedback as to why the correct answers are correct and the incorrect answers incorrect.

How AI Speeds Up Microlearning Content Creation

So, where does AI come in? Today’s learning and development (L&D) teams are busier than ever, and many are being asked to do more with less. Less support, less technology and fewer resources. While creating microlearning content is faster and easier than designing traditional training experiences, AI only enhances this process.

For example, microlearning content authoring tools that leverage generative AI can create microlearning questions in a matter of seconds. All you have to do is supply the tool with phrases or reference materials to generate question stems, answer choices (correct and incorrect) and the explanation — all of which are then editable to meet your standards. As we all know, AI plus human intervention produces the best results.

Some solutions even give you the option to select knowledge-check and scenario-based questions to build the most effective learning experiences. In the following example, I am creating a knowledge-check question with a prompt on situational leadership. I plug this phrase into the AI generator: Situational leadership for handling low-performing employees. Here’s what it produces in under five seconds:

As you can see, the tool generated all of the components of a thorough, effective knowledge-check question. Now, all you need to do is review the content and make any necessary changes to the outputs.

Here’s what it looks like when you ask it to use the same prompt to create a scenario-based question. You get a much more robust output that asks the learner to really think through how they would handle the situation.

Again, you’d double check the text and make any necessary edits before moving on to create the next question in your microlearning program. A couple of pro tips: Include media such as images and videos to make the challenges engaging. You can also add relevant links to the explanation for further learning.

To summarize, adding microlearning and knowledge reinforcement to your existing training programs ensures that critical information is remembered long term and applied on the job. Authoring the content for these programs is a fairly simple process but using AI can significantly speed things up. This helps organizations get important training material to learners faster than ever before as well as facilitate continuous learning journeys. The end result? Knowledgeable, high performing employees that actively contribute to better business outcomes.