The Age of Bite-sized Learning is … now!

“Step by step, bit by bit, Stone by stone (yeah), brick by brick (oh, yeah), Step by step, day by day, mile by mile (ooh, ooh, ooh)”

Remember warbling that song?

Was Annie LENNOX thinking Mobile Learning when she wrote these famous lyrics for the late Whitney HOUSTON, back in the 1990s? Well today, she is totally in the air (although the song may not be anymore…)

The training industry revolution is on its way! The hegemony of Generations Y and Z, on tracks, in the working place is digitalizing training practices. These generations eat, sleep, dream numerical? According to a recent study, soon will they also learn, everywhere and 24/7 thanks to their addictive smartphone, thus revolutionizing the training industry and with it the related contents structure.

First, using a portable device for learning is pretty different from reading (and yawning and leaning), in front of an old-school e-learning course screen. E-Learning is usually organized around a particular 1-shot learning topic. Mobile devices contents must be in sync with mobile devices common usage, that is, sprinkled into an employee’s working day.

Second, recurring, bite-size pieces of information are more manageable and easier to remember, says…. I, in a previous article published on our Blog 🙂 (Memocard: get smarter while having fun).

The pursuit of a fun-tastic learning experience is Teach on Mars daily involvement! Gamify, fight against forgetting curves, offer personalized training program, and much more…! It all comes with a chunked content!

“A diamond is a chunk of coal that did well under pressure” (Henry Kissinger), so how to turn a content into a learning diamond chunk?

Have a look at these hints!

1. Storyboard your content: It’s an easy way to plan out your chunks of information before you start designing. It gives you a visual of what will be on each screen, showing you the overall organization and result of your chunking.
2. Content chunking accommodates working memory: working memory is the active part of your memory system. You are processing coming in information at the same time as you store it. ”Keep this in mind as you’re chunking content—if you present too much information at once, your learners won’t remember it”
3. Build on your learners’ knowledge: Content chunking induces prioritizing learning information. Think about learners’ increasing knowledge helps organizing chunks of content logically. Plus, learners won’t get lost from a course that skips around or jumps ahead!
4. Play up on bullets: Bullet points are simple and organized. They make content chunking easy—for you, the author, and for your learners, encouraging them to focus on the content.
5. Chunk it right: It’s like stopping to read a story in the middle of a chapter, it makes it tougher to summarize it! Make sure to chunk a content in-between two different topics and jog learners’ memory!

What is your chunking experience? What about sharing your best practices with us?

Fancy another song on content chunking?

Noémie Bertrand

Diplômée d’école de commerce et passionnée par les innovations du numérique, Noémie a enfilé son scaphandre et rejoint l’équipe Teach on Mars au poste de Content Manager. Elle intervient en marketing et événementiel tout en contribuant à Teach on Earth, une initiative sociale et environnementale.