With countless families going back to school this week and tackling the challenges of virtual at home learning, we think it’s a great time to focus on new and improved ways to absorb information and the different ways this can be achieved. These tactics apply to not only families, but any company or brand looking to effectively explain their mission to their ideal customer.
Last week we focused on microlearning and all it’s benefits - this week we discuss informal learning and how these two approaches work hand in hand.
Let’s recap from last week on microlearning. This approach encourages shorter and more concise content that clearly and specifically explains the subject matter. This type of learning is great for keeping the learner engaged and continuing to take in the message you want delivered. Now let’s compare this to informal learning and you’ll see how the two complement each other...
What is Informal Learning?
Informal Learning puts a spin on more traditional, or “formal” learning. Informal learning involves the training material being available online or in another easily accessible format. This puts the learner in control of how fast they want to cover the material and allows them to skip over content that may be less relevant to their end goal. It’s essentially knowledge on demand. Informal learning can also be created by anyone who has knowledge in a specific area. Do you have a message you want to be heard? Here are 4 easy steps to creating your own informal learning library:
STEP 1: CREATE YOUR CONTENT
Before we can create a library of any kind, we need content to go into the library. You can easily make training content with screen capture software, such as Snagit. Snagit allows you to take screenshots or video of your computer screen so you can walk through content on your computer, narrate as you go, and record the whole experience. This is a super quick and simple way to create training content that can be watched anytime, rather than needing to arrange in person training sessions. This works particularly well for new employee on-boarding and showing how to use programs that have set tasks, like HR systems and how to submit time off requests, for example.
STEP 2: UPLOAD YOUR CONTENT
Online hosting platforms are great options to store your content online. They also make it easy for people to go and replay them as many times as they wish.
Screencast.com provides a simple way to organize and share content from Snagit and Camtasia with anyone you want. Other platforms, such as YouTube are used to exclusively host videos. Be sure to choose the right platform for you depending on what kind of content you intend to share, and whether you need your content to be private for your audience only.
STEP 3: ORGANIZE YOUR CONTENT
Now that your content is uploaded, arrange it to fit how you want it to appear to your audience.
It might also be a good idea to include an introduction and conclusion video to each topic or playlist. When doing this, you’ll also want to keep in mind how easy you want it to be for your intended audience to find your content.
Some platforms allow you to place tags onto your content. All platforms should allow you to place titles onto your content. Both of these identifiers can be opportunities for your content to appear more frequently in web-searches, and they both also help your intended audience find your content more easily.
STEP 4: SHARE YOUR CONTENT
The last step is to share your content by either sharing a link with your audience, or sharing it with people individually.
Informal learning takes place in the business world, the higher education world, and in our everyday lives. Learning is a lifelong process, so it’s important to not always tie it down to forcing into a certain structure. Informal Learning returns control to the learner and injects life into the learning process.
Regardless of the tools you use, creating micro video content is time consuming and tedious. Many professionals do not have the time or desire to dedicate toward creating these. Inexperience can sometimes lead to low production value so keep in mind that the DIY approach can be hard and if you hit a wall or decide bringing a pro on board would be easier, we’re here to help.
Here is an example of a quick tutorial video we produced for a mobile web app called Dial N Document-