Want to boost your skills? Try microlearning
(請到這裡閱讀本文章的中文版)
When we talk about learning, most people think about our childhood experience of going to a school, where a teacher gives a lecture to a classroom full of students, as well as assignments and tests. Even though that’s how we studied as kids, it’s not necessarily the best way to keep learning new skills as adults.
In today’s world, keeping up to date by learning new skills is critical for finding and keeping a job we enjoy, and moving forward. But a full-time work schedule often makes it very difficult for us to find time for a traditional instructor-led class. Even recorded lectures on the internet have severe limitations.
Rather than fitting traditional hour-long classes around busy schedules, people are increasingly turning to microlearning, where they can learn and practice new knowledge and skills in small, manageable chunks, usually 5 to 10 minutes in length. These microlearning lessons can easily fit in fragments of spare time throughout the day, for instance, during the daily commute or in between meetings.
Say goodbye to rote memorization
Well-designed microlearning courses come with short and relatable exercises and quizzes throughout the lessons, allowing students to apply the learning material as soon as possible, and encouraging them to learn from their mistakes. They focus on helping students convert raw information into actionable knowledge, which can be easily stored in their long-term memory, ready to be recalled and used when needed. Say goodbye to rote memorization of complex theories and long lists.
The growing popularity of the internet and smartphones in the last two decades gave rise to microlearning. Though it is still a young discipline, scholars have been researching the effectiveness of microlearning, in contrast to traditional classroom instruction. Some studies showed that shorter, multimedia content, delivered anytime anywhere, increases a learner’s knowledge retention by 20%.
Embrace microlearning with Seymour
As a LINE-based learning platform in Taiwan, Seymour is all in on microlearning. All our English lessons are about 10 minutes in length, designed to teach one topic at a time. In every lesson, we focus on how to use one grammar pattern, one usage pattern, or one small set of idioms or vocabulary. The key component of a lesson on Seymour is the guided exercise within the lesson itself. In just a few minutes, not only do you get to see the key patterns and words sprinkled in a meaningful dialog, you also get to create your own short, complete sentences using the introduced patterns and words, as well as useful, constructive feedback on improving your sentences.
