Micro-Learning: Delivering a Wealth of Learning in Bite-sized Nuggets

It seems so simple. A deck of post-card sized cards, printed on both sides and connected with a ring.

One side or each card has a question:

The other side has the answer:

The whole exercise takes just 1-2 minutes - to read the question, think about it and have an answer in mind, and then turn the card over to see if you got it right by reading and considering the answer.

Twenty cards, twenty quiz questions and twenty answers, about 20-30 minutes of learning, chunked up in small bites. Learning Nuggets!

I would never recommend actually eating an elephant, but as the old saying goes - How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time... But what does this have to do with learning?

I have worked on many fascinating projects, such as the one for which we produced these learning nuggets, that generate a mountain of learning (an elephant of learning). The learning can be very intentional and structured, using for example a set of KPIs or a donor's reporting framework to guide it, or more organic, using the partners or project proponent's learning questions that emerge during the process (or both.)

The learning can be generated through interviews, online reporting systems, annual reports, workshops and meetings (and more). And the outputs can take the form of stories, case studies, spreadsheets, good practice reports, how-to guides, videos, photos (and on and on).

The Micro-Learning Nuggets answered an expressed need - many of the project proponents did not want to read long documents, or wade through a vast jungle of information. So the Learning Nuggets exercise was a way to consolidate and distill out the most important learning and deliver it in an accessible way - a quiz-type exercise where people had to work (a little) for the learning through a few minutes of "effortful retrieval" through applying their own knowledge and experience to the task, and then getting validation or course correction, with some new information.

We have used these cards in workshop exercises in many ways as you can imagine with people learning about industrial development PPDPs; we have shared them with our partners as a way to transfer lessons learned through the project (and they can in turn share them in their institutions); we have also recently launched a Micro-Learning Nuggets Newsletter, which is a curated online format for the Nuggets. Here is a sample of the second Micro-Learning Nuggets Newsletter (Note: You can click on the images below to see them in more detail in a larger format):

Once a month, an Micro-Learning Nugget Newsletter goes out with a topic, and one related question that has a multiple-choice answer that the reader can consider and click the chosen answer and then submit their response. They then get a "Congratulations! D is the correct answer" with some additional information, or "Sorry, incorrect! D is the correct answer" with the right answer which shares the learning. Here is an example of the Learning Nugget as an online quiz question:

The Micro-Learning Nugget Newsletter then offers just a few additional links for learning more if you are "Still curious?" This is great because it let's us link to selected resources all over the website, thus connecting the learner to existing documents (or specific parts thereof), knowledge products, videos, social media - all curated to the topic of the month's newsletter, and timed out (very important!) from very short to a little longer.

What I think is most interesting about this method for packaging and sharing learning, is that it is very simple - just one quiz question - but each one is based on the large body of evidence collected through captured experience, interviews, annual learning workshops, reports, Chief Technical Officers and partners experiences, and more. But instead of a drop box full of documents that people rarely use, this transforms and brings back the knowledge in bite-size Micro-Learning Nuggets, be it on a card or in your in-box once a month.

We developed two animated videos that took a similar approach - to boil down parts of the vast learning base into 2-3 minute videos. I wrote a blog post about that process: Condensing Learning Into 4 Minutes or Less? Making a Simple Animated Video for a Complex Project. 

Celebrating Our 500th Blog Post!!! (Remembering our first ever and sharing our top 10 of all times)

That last blog post tipped it over - 500 blog posts, written since 5 October 2006. With an average of 50 per year (nearly weekly) that's not too bad. In this celebratory blog post - I reread our first ever blog post and, using our stats, link to our Top 10 of all times.

Here is our very first blog post - it was about blogging, I wonder if I heeded my own advice?

What Did I Notice Sailing Around the Blogosphere? Learning About Blogs (first published on 6 October 2006)

We have just started our blog about learning at our organization and in doing so, I did some learning myself about blogs (after being completely inspired by a presentation on the power of this medium by Alex Steffan from www.worldchanging.com). I spent around 3 hours looking at many blogs about learning and here is what I noticed:

1. The blog itself needs a distinguishable title and a good tag line that talks about what the theme is. Otherwise it is hard to find it;
2. Colour and font are important for readability;
3. Short is definitely good. But too short unless there is some pithy content is not good. www.Dormgrandpop.com site has good length - long enough to develop a thought, and not too long to get boring;
4. Links are valuable;
5. Postings have great title names - clever (think New Scientist);
6. No spelling errors. This reduces trust in content;
7. Write in full sentences and with proper punctuation and capitalisation - otherwise it is not easy to take seriously; and
8. Archives are hard to use if there is not a search function on the site. It is hard to look into the date archives if you are looking for something special. Thematic archives seem easier to use, except that not too many blogs have thematic archives (some do.)

We are just going to start our blog and get going. We will no doubt find our pace in a few days...

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Well, I think for the most part we stuck to those observations.  I still believe in using English my mother would approve of (wait, is that a stranded preposition??) We have our search feature and our posts are tagged by topic to make them easier to use. Perhaps the posts are a little longer than I recommended to me by my 10-year younger self. Maybe I am getting wordier as I get older?

And for our top 10 blog posts of all times - here's what the wisdom of crowds thinks from 10th most popular to the 1st.....drum roll please!

10. Looking for a productivity gadget that's low tech for a change? Try Nu Board
09.  Fast and easy workshop reports with Penultimate
08. Suggested Facilitation Strategies: As the Facilitator how do you work with personal desires for harmony or debate? 
07. The Connected Facilitator: What's in the online toolbox?
06. Online Facilitation: Adapting to an online environment with free(mium) tools - Part II
05. Good Learning Design Discussions: Where to start?
04. Must See for Learning Practitioners and Educators: Remembering Rita Pierson
03. New Systems Thinking Game: The Flashmob Game
02. Learning with the Business Model Generation's Canvas

and the most popular post of all time...
01. Make a Game Out of Any Workshop Topic (The drier the topic the better!) 

There seems to be a little technology bias in the crowds, and a soft spot for games. Learning is one of our leitmotivs, so that isn't surprising, and facilitation is one of the most common tools we use to help groups and teams with their reflective practice and learning work.

Well, on to our next milestone, wonder what will be popular 10 years from now?

Too Good to Be True? Is Your Consultation Workshop Going Too Well?

I had the great honour and pleasure to be the process steward for a multi-stakeholder consultation recently around a complex new idea (which is exactly when you want and need a multi-stakeholder consultation) in the sustainable development field. The issue was one that had significant potential environmental, social, economic and political implications that people and their organizations felt very strongly about. In the room were representatives from a number of sectors - multi-national corporations, government officials, NGO and civil society actors, etc.-, and the potential for a good deal of power asymmetry to be expressed.

Pre-work for the consultation had shown a diversity of opinion on our topic. This 2-day face-to-face meeting needed to surface all the reactions, opposition, ideas, and suggestions from this diverse group of experts in order to make the idea more robust, more applicable and have more chance of success. Among our desired outcomes, we wanted to be able to anticipate and address the wants and needs of the sectors and organizations that could be implementing it in the future. We were clearly discussing a good idea with a lot of potential, thus the good turnout to the invitation to join, and the high level of attention and engagement of the people in the room.

The consultation process was designed to maximise the contribution that every individual participant could make, their opportunities to provide comments to each aspect of the idea, and the time they would have to explain the rationale behind their input. The focus for the committee presenting the idea was to listen deeply, be curious and ask good probing questions to further their understanding. At the foundation of this consultation was the firm belief that any question, input, challenge from the group could only make the idea better, more appropriate and more applicable in its second iteration. So we needed maximum authenticity and a safe space to share what might be opposing views.

This post isn't actually about the process that we used to do this - that's another article that I will write at some point. This post focuses on an observation that provided some powerful learning for me about the assumptions we all hold and bring into our processes and work with other people.

The first day of our consultation went very smoothly. The group was high-level, well prepared and worked together diligently to provide comments, document them - discussing, analysing and developing some very useful key messages from their small group analysis. There was laughter periodically in the room in spite of the seriousness of the topic, great questions were asked, the wall templates were filling up with colourful nuggets of incredibly useful and thoughtful contributions. Everything looked rosy.

I was getting very nice feedback from people at the end of the day and during our group dinner. And then the question came.  A member of the idea committee asked earnestly, are people being too nice?

Where's the clash? Where's the conflict? Are people giving their real opinions? This took me a little aback. I would say in a very useful way. It gave me the opportunity to think about assumptions (which I always enjoy) - all the different assumptions that people hold that are creating the reality we are sharing. Including me.

I could see that the assumption on the part of the person earnestly questioning if we were getting what we needed, was that difference in opinion in their experience was signaled by overt public disagreement, which can lead to passionate speeches, high emotion and possibly visible conflict in a face-to-face meeting of minds. This was clearly absent in our process so it caused a question mark to pop up for this person and then a desire to go around and check with people to see how they felt about the environment we had created to provide inputs. Hmmm, interesting.  I felt my face - was I wearing rose-coloured glasses?

For me, as the process steward and facilitator, my assumption was that people were happy because they were able to provide their viewpoints in a structured and constructive way. So the absence of open conflict was a sign that the process was providing them this opportunity, and so they were satisfied and comfortable, able to both provide their views and get to know each other and laugh from time to time. I actually very rarely have any kind of open conflict in my workshops and processes because I try to use different methodologies that aim to capture all inputs (rather than those of the loudest or most persistent), provide anonymity when needed, value inputs through multiple levels of discussion and analysis that allows people to work with ideas rather than refute them. I use Appreciative Inquiry to inform my question articulation and keep the pace moving and visually stimulating, and mostly out of long, open, unstructured plenary sessions where speechifying and checking your email is tempting, and the feeling that you are not making progress is tiring.

So the question made me usefully pause and notice again my assumptions and gave me an opportunity to check in with the group. This was a good idea for all - it would help me understand if the process was providing space to capture opposition to our central ideas (rather than being designed  for harmony at the cost of good input), it would help the person who feared that the lack of open and vociferous dissent meant that people were being too nice (and that nice meant no opposition); it would reinforce our principle for participants that all views were appreciated - the good, the bad and the ugly. We wanted them all!

I decided not to just ask the BIG question to the group in plenary at the beginning of Day 1, as that would be a risky format to do it and in that situation people might not feel comfortable to single themselves out and speak up in the awkward silence after such a question so early in the morning. So instead for the next set of discussions around the inputs, which were a little higher level and bigger picture, we asked for the "elephant in the room" (things that have not been spoken but need to be spoken) as well as key messages from their analysis and small group discussion.

The addition of that little question worked very well. It was an unexpected visual, amusing and energising question at that moment in the consultation (we were talking about biodiversity and had already spoken about elephants once in a more realistic context). Groups could identify one big elephant or a herd of small elephants. It invited everyone to think about what might be some of the underlying and potentially unspoken or softly spoken issues, at any level, of our consultation.

It also gave another way to analyse the patterns of the contributions, and it allowed us to see if there was anything new that we had not heard rumbling up before, or if the elephants identified now were more thought-through conceptualisations of things that had been emerging but perhaps not yet fully formed in all the different discussion activities as we went along. We found more of the latter which was heartening and also found it to be a valuable way, towards the end of our consultation, to help summarise and crystalise collectively the most important action areas for the idea moving forward.

It's not often that you get a stop-and-think-question like, "Is this going too well?" that helps you test your assumptions (and those of others) while you still have everyone in the room. In the end, the consultation went well, the energy in the room was high, and we got those comments, ideas, gaps and elephants, with and without my rose-coloured glasses.