March 2016
Issue Map
The Buzz

When Attention Spans Shrink, Microlearning Delivers

Sunday, March 13, 2016

As technology has proliferated, attention spans for the tasks of daily life are shrinking proportionally. How, then, should employers craft meaningful training sessions when it’s hard to command a worker's attention for more than a few moments? “The way that people learn has shifted,” says Calvin Ng, director of learning and development at Pernod Ricard USA. “Employees are not necessarily engaged by sitting down in a classroom and looking through hundreds of slides and being talked at, and time is a big concern, with regards to training.” In fact, the average attention span—defined as the amount of time the average person can stay focused on a single task while filtering out other distractions—is a mere eight seconds, according to a Microsoft study. The answer, many employers are finding, comes in the form of microlearning. These short, digital learning sessions are available at the employee’s convenience and negate the need for long classroom sessions. The approach can be used to teach both hard and soft skills, and help employees retain the information presented by keeping them engaged over short periods.

Be the first to comment
Sign In to Post a Comment
Sorry! Something went wrong on our end. Please try again later.