A good microlearning content needs to have three distinct features. I discussed the first principle -Less is More- here with a business case.

As a summary, we applied simplification techniques to reduce a long cyber security training content from 28 minutes to 12 minutes. But it was still too long to launch it. As Josh Bersin states recently, employees “are so overwhelmed with e-mails and other tasks that,” their learning sessions are “interrupted constantly. One client told me recently ‘even TED Talks are now too long for our people; they don't have eight minutes at a time to learn."

After producing more than 500+ training videos and having feedback from our clients, I can say that, a learning content should not exceed 600 words or 4 minutes.

So here’s the challenge. If the duration of your training content exceeds this critical threshold, what you need to do? Apply the second principle: “Cut to digestible segments.” Instead of forcing them to eat the whole cake, give them one pie after another.

Here’s an example:

In the cyber security e-learning case, the simplified content was 12 minutes long. Too much. After the 5th minute, as we saw in the figure above, we would lose most of our audience So we cut it to well -planned, three digestible segments.

The First Part: “What is Phishing?”

The Second Part: “How to Inform Clients to Avoid Phishing Attacks?”

The Third Part: “What actions needed when you face a Phishing Attack?”

The viewer starts the first video with a full focus, and when he or she starts to lose interest, the training video ends. The viewer would start the next one with a full focus. The result is, better concentration and far more information will be memorized by the learner.

Here are 4 tips to apply this technique:

1. Never exceed 4 minutes for a training content.

2. If it “has to” exceed, then cut it to well-planned segments.

3. Use “Q&A” technique: Define every segment as a question like: “How to communicate effectively with non-Americans?”

4. Or apply, “Step 1-2-3” approach. Define your content as a workflow or a listicle like “Principle 1: Less is More”, “Principle 2: Cut it to segments”, “Principle 3: Stimulate.”

I’ll discuss how we can apply the last but not the least principle (“stimulate!”) in my next blog.

To learn more about these techniques for your own business request a demo today

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About the Author: Tugrul Turkkan is the founder and CEO of Vibons, a community based animation platform focused on corporate learning and communication.